Bakura will not die here.
The sun is too bright in the sky for him to die here; the city is too close. The limestone floor of the shrine he's stumbled into is too cool against the burning wound through his right eye, too gritty from the sand the pilgrims have tracked inside. Too real.
Bakura thinks he will die at night, under the stars and moon, against the sand, far from anything but the half-dream state of his victory. And so, though his breath and heart quicken, though he feels the fever rushing from the wound in his face up through his body and brain, because he's pressed against the floor of some forgotten shrine to the god of the underworld, miles from the capital and his destiny...Bakura will not die here. He will not. He cannot.
He laughs weakly, deliriously, unable to move his face from its position pressed wound-down into the limestone. He thinks he feels pus leaking out of his cheek, and then he thinks he feels it burning through the floor. He wishes he had fallen on the Osiris stela so he could burn through god.
He is delirious. He is dying. But he will not die here.
Abydos is Osiris's holy city, but Osiris is not Bakura's god.
The shadow of deliverance darkens the doorway, and Bakura laughs again.