Disclaimer: ATTENTION DUELISTS! My hair requires me to inform you that everything belongs to Kazuki Takahashi.
In the beginning, he could remember a little.
Just images, really. Not nearly enough to stimulate total recall.
He remembered the heat, the hot desert sand that couldn't, and would never be tamed. Sometimes, if he thought about it hard enough, he could almost feel it on his arms and legs and forehead. He'd run dead fingers along dead skin, wiping away sweat that didn't exist, and imagine long hot days stretching on like the Nile, winding and aimless and flowing like music.
He remembered laughter. Sweet and bitter and thrilling, over and over and over. A girl. He couldn't place the voice. He couldn't recall the joke. But the sound made him want to smile, amused and maybe a little pleased.
Maybe he had made the joke.
Sometimes, a splinter of recognition would widen his eyes and cause his breathing to quicken in hope. He would stand abruptly, jolted from one of his daydreams, tensed and ready as if there was something he could actually physically do to welcome more of it.
When the moment of remembrance came and went again, he would sit back down and wait.
He didn't know what he was supposed to be waiting for, but then, he didn't know much at all.
Sometimes, people would come to visit him.
…. Well, he pretended they were coming to visit him. Brute, rugged men who swore continuously and laughed as they wound through the maze of corridors, avoiding the traps. They all thought they were going to make it through the tomb unscathed, lay claim to the treasure and go home happy and rich men.
A part of him knew they weren't supposed to be there. It made him angry when they mocked the wall paintings, and recounted with something dangerously close to disrespect stories of the occupier of the tomb. The dead man, who centuries and centuries ago may have been someone important.
After the day he came to the conclusion that that man was probably him, he was even more angered by them.
So it always gave him a sort of guilty satisfaction when they fell into the pit of shadows.
In the beginning, it frightened him that he could feel like that. After all, no human being should rejoice in the death of another.
But after a few millennia this guilt faded , little by little with each passing second.
In face, he began to enjoy watching them die.
They were getting what they deserved.
Then something else changed as well. The few remembrances he had became harder to recall, and there was nothing he could do.
The desert heat cooled. His skin felt nothing, not even the ghost of a memory. Blown away with the same lonely wind that carried the achingly happy laughter, further and further down a long river that drifted on without him.
So it wasn't surprising that his past wasn't the only thing the Spirit lost in that chamber.
And once you lose your mind, it's very hard to get it back…