I didn't originally want to do this, but oh well. Carrying on warnings, notes, comments from the summary box as it's too short.
There are no proper ships in here. I suppose there's some JoeyXMai, TristanXSerenity, and YugiXAnzu, but they are literally only brief, one-line mentions. I am not a puzzleshipper, and this story is meant to be Gen. However, if you ARE a puzzleshipper—or a shipper of anything else—and the story appeals to those feelings, then great. Interpret it as you like. But, for the sake of my sanity, know that I do not write it to be Puzzleshipping, or just about any other kind of shipping.
Rated T because there might be mild language, possibly violence, but mostly because I rate everything T.
Sorry if I sound really unpleasant right now and make the story seem off-putting—I'm having an off-day, and perhaps I shouldn't be writing this during such an off-day, but there you have it.
I hope you enjoy. Please leave reviews if you have comments—it's the only way for me to see that people read and give the slightest care about this story.
-_-_-_ Prologue _-_-_-
His back arched and he screamed. Thick black liquid choked his throat and clung to his skin, to his body, holding down and pushing him inward, crushing his consciousness out even as his thoughts washed in. He tore at the stark darkness around him, at the fluid that was choking him crushing him into nothing.
Atem thought desperately, forcing understanding to come to his pale, faded consciousness. He felt like an incoming tide, only partially present on the shore that was reality, or at least this reality, or where even was he? He coughed and choked on black fluid, trying to clear it from screaming lungs.
Where was he? He was dead. So why did he feel so alive?
He screamed again, lashing out with his feet and clawing at the space above him with his fingernails. Black ooze fell like blood from his mouth. He couldn't see anything, couldn't feel anything at all. He was on his back—he could tell that, now. The tide was coming in clearer. He was on his back, and his entire body ached, his heart strained under the pressure of trying to push thick, new blood through virgin veins, his fingertips grazed the edge of a thin, liquid-like rubber. A membrane.
The wordless, animalistic part of his brain shrieked and he clawed at the membrane like survival was what lay on the other side.
He was dead. He knew that. He had all of his memories—all of them, being a young Pharaoh in Egypt, dwelling within Yugi Mutou, for the first time in more than five thousand years losing a duel and winning the right to pass on. He had passed on. He had passed on. Why was he alive again?! Who had pulled him back?! Why?!
HE WAS AT PEACE! AFTER FIVE THOUSAND YEARS, HE WAS AT PEACE!
He kicked and thrashed and struggled and clawed at the membrane, at the fluid, with all the fury of the wordless, thoughtless part of his brain. He couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't hear his own screaming as it tore through his throat. He had to get out. He had to get out, out, out, out out out outoutoutoutoutout!
The membrane split beneath his nails. He gasped, dim orange flight flaring behind his eyelids, his throat drawing in musty air and the black fluid that even now fell from around him, no longer trapped in the membrane. He hacked and coughed, trying to clear his throat, and forced his eyes open. They stung, and the light from the room seemed to pierce through his pupils and cut into his brain.
His body stretched and twitched with mindless instinct. His entire body arched, not with simple soreness, but with the stiffness of something newly breaking.
He tried to glance around, even as his heart raced and he struggled for breath.
His brown skin was completely bear, except for the black liquid that seeped off of him with the slow viscosity of congealed blood. He was on a slab of something hard, elevated above the floor, which, like the walls he could see, were dark yellowed sandstone, inscribed and painted with the characters of his life, the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt. Bowed along the floor were people, obscured in dark cloaks, their backs bent and not moving even for breath.
"What—" Atem began to say, a voice weaker than his body scraping and scalding an unused throat; he tried to raise his arm, but he couldn't.
His body went limp, his head lulled to the side, and he fell into an unconsciousness as deep as the death he had been drawn out of.