I practically skid down the stairs in my bad attempt to find my way down in the dark. I hear Evan clunking down after me, and I try to keep a hand on the wall to my left so that I don't walk right into something.

The basement is cold, besides being dark, and I can smell something damp. I feel my way past a cabinet.

"Evan, I'm scared!" I think it's Miyu who's shouting. "I-It's really dark!"

"Where did Martha go?" Nana cries. "And—And Jun, Takuya, and Micchan!"

"Martha went out to look for them, they ran outside after the others," I say. "Follow my voice. Over here."

A little hand grabs onto the leg of my overalls, and then the little body it belongs to dives into my arms. A second tiny form squishes against my side.

Miyu's voice says, "I-I'm scared of the dark!"

"Okay, okay," Evan remarks. "It's okay, you two. I think I still might have enough to make a light."

"Enough what?" I say, and then—across from me, suddenly, Evan's face lights up. Crackling upward from his open palm is a thick tongue of fire.

Seeing it makes me think a hundred different things, like what is he doing and how is he doing it, but the biggest thing on my mind is that Divine could make fire.

"Quick," he says, "Get a candle, before I run out."

Nana shoots away from where she was curled into my side, and the fire brightens outward for a second, as if to try to shed light on the whole room. Before I know it, Nana's holding a lantern up toward Evan and his flame. It keeps crackling off of his skin for a few seconds even after the lamp is lit before it vanishes into the air.

"That's a little better," Evan says. "...Silvan, are you okay?"

I swallow a thick feeling that's formed in my throat. "H-How did you do that?"

He looks genuinely confused. "You mean… you can't do it, too?"

"W-What?"

"You said… You said we had the same powers," he explains. "I guess I just assumed?"

"What," I repeat, "was that?"

"I don't know what it's called," he continues. "Just that I can do it. It's usually stuff like rain, or—or fire, but most energies I can touch, I can absorb. I've absorbed impact, too, like from falling down or getting hit. Then, if I need the energy later, I can just push it back out." He gestures to the candle. "I keep fire on purpose, most of the time. Just in case."

I—I know that class. He's not an Elementalist. That makes me feel a teeny bit less nauseous. I just have to scrub the memory of him making fire away. "Why didn't you tell me about it?"

"You said we had the same powers! I thought I wouldn't have to mention it."

"I-I thought we did." I put my focus on Miyu, still squished between my arms, to try and keep my knees from wobbling. I don't want my legs to give out on her.

"Maybe we are the same?" He tries. "Maybe you've just never figured to use it before?"

"Or maybe," I say, swallowing, "it got shocked out of me."

"No, it couldn't have." He shakes his head. "One time I stuck my hand too near an open wire, and I just absorbed that electricity. If you had it, too, you would have absorbed all that. Right?" He sighs. "I don't know. I don't know a lot about it."

"It's... It's called Internalism."

"...you know what it is?"

"Yeah," I say softly. "I've read about it. And its' counterpart, Expulsionism." That calls back blurry memories of me going through books, wondering what other types of psychics were out there; Expulsionists, Internalists, Mediums, Twisters, Empaths… "They usually go hand in hand, that someone can Internalize and then Expel, but I read a few cases where some psychics could only Internalize. It's a really, really rare class."

"Well, that's neat. I'm rare." He motions Miyu and me toward him, and we shuffle together to sit with him and Nana around the lantern. "I started doing it pretty early on. Not long after you vanished. I went out into a rainstorm and damn near killed myself with the pneumonia. Every time I sneezed, I'd shoot water everywhere."

"That's… pretty funny, actually."

"...are you sure you've never done it?" He asks. "You haven't ever tried?"

"I-I didn't know it apparently ran in our family," I stammer. "And… And I feel like, if I could do it, Divine would have known about it and exploited it."

"We're twins, we should be the same," he complains. "Maybe I could teach you how to do it! I just want to be sure…"

"I appreciate the sentiment—"

"Please? I gotta know if you're just… dormant, or something. If there's some part of you Divine didn't mess with."

I shift uncomfortably. "...fine. I'll humor you. How does it work?"

"Well you have to have absorbed something first."

"Internalized."

"Right. And since we don't know if you have, the best way to find out is to try to push it out."

"Expel."

"...I'll have to get used to that."

"So teach me how it works?"

"It's... weird," he says. "You know how, when you Waste, you sort of go about it like you're digging down in yourself? It's sort of like that. I can't really explain it other than the fact that it feels like tunneling down until you feel something there, and sort of… I don't know, breathing it out."

"Well, if it's that similar to Wasting, it shouldn't be that hard to pretend I'm capable of it."

"You said you were going to humor me."

"I didn't say I'd humor you without complaining."

I see him roll his eyes. "Just try it. Hand out and go to town."

I rest my hand on my knee and try to translate his explanation to something I can actually try to accomplish. I know very well how hard it is to use your powers if you, first, don't know how, and second, have a teacher that doesn't quite know how to explain things.

When I Waste, it's like I have another pair of hands. I can reach out and grab or push or throw. All it takes is for me to gather my focus into two points that turn into those hands, and once I have that, they'll go wherever I ask them to. I've practiced enough that it takes me only seconds to gather up the power to Waste something, even though I can't usually do it for long amounts of time. I don't know if this is supposed to feel the same. I really don't expect to feel anything.

I reach down, down, down, like I'm going to Waste, looking for something, anything, that might be like what he was talking about.

"See?" I say after a second. "Nothing's happening."

"You didn't even try for that long!"

"Evan, I'm telling you, I'm not like you."

Right as I say it, a burst of blue electricity crackles upward off of my open palm.

Evan jumps up, like he's victorious or something, but a scream struggles out of my mouth as the electricity dissipates into the air.

"What the fuck, what the fuck!"

"Children," Evan moans, but he sounds torn between trying to keep the basement rated G and checking on me; I'm feeling like I'm going to throw up. He's next to me all of a sudden, clasping my trembling hands between his. "Hey, it's okay, it's okay."

"W-What was that! What… What did I do!"

"You… you Expelled something, right? That's what's it called? You can do it, Silvan, you—"

"I-I need to lie down. Oh my gods. What the fuck was that."

Where did that static come from? From me? Forget the subclasses I didn't know I had. I couldn't… I couldn't have taken that in from Arcadia? Could I? But where else would it have come from?

The fact that those punishments—that Divine and all he's done to destroy me—are still there, lingering inside me, makes me feel like I'm all the way back at square one. I can't escape him. I can't escape anything he did.

"Hey, just breathe," he urges. "You're bleeding. Here, let me get you something."

Miyu curls into my side and strokes my arm. Nana scoots closer and puts a hand on my leg. Evan gets up to go shuffle through some of the crates and shelves. I lift a shaking hand to try and wipe the blood away from my nose, keeping the hand that Expelled electricity curled against the floor, far away from my face.

"I'm sorry," I hear him say as he presses a slightly damp rag into my hand. "I should have guessed… I shouldn't have made you do that."

"...b-but now I know," I whisper, even though it doesn't make me feel any better. I press the rag against my nose.

"No, that was really stupid of me. I should have known better. I'm so sorry. You don't have to do that ever again."

"D-Don't… Don't apologize, I just…" I trail off because I have to stop talking about it, otherwise I know I'm going to throw up.

I could have gone the rest of my life without having anything to do with any sort of electricity. Seeing it again, and even more seeing it come out of me, feels an indescribable kind of awful.

I don't even know how I did that. How long I've been able to do it. Divine never had me use it. Did he know I had it? If he did, wouldn't he have made me use it? If Evan just discovered he had it one day, why didn't I? Why did I have to put in the effort to call upon it?

I get to lie down on my side for a little bit, the rag clutched in against my nose. It's eerily quiet down here, and underground enough that I can't hear the house creaking anymore.

"Evan?" Miyu's tiny voice asks after a while. "What is Yusei doing?"

"There are bad people that want to do bad things to Satellite," Evan tells her. "He's fighting them. Everyone out there is."

"What kind of bad things?" Nana chimes.

"Hurt people. Destroy their homes."

"A-Are Jun, Takuya, and Micchan going to be okay?"

"I'm sure they will," Evan says. "Martha's going to give them an earful for thinking they can just run outside in the middle of all of this."

"Will the bad people hurt them, too?" Miyu asks.

"I hope not."

"They have these monsters," I say hollowly. "Big black monsters, like shadows, with lights in patterns on their bodies like electric signs. They're taller than the tallest buildings, and they steal the souls of people to keep themselves alive."

"W-Will… will they steal everybody's souls outside?"

"I-I don't know," I stammer. "I've only ever seen one of them. It… It was what hurt Yusei."

That Dark Signer outside will no doubt have his own Immortal. If Yusei was right, and I really did save him from Kiryu's… will he be able to save himself this time?

"Evan?" Nana asks. "Was what Yusei was saying really true? About the bridge?"

"If he said it, it's probably true. I don't see any reason why he would have lied about it."

I try to listen to them talk, the little questions and answers and words and soothing voices, instead of the way my body feels. Truth be told, I feel like I'm trapped in somebody else's corpse. Maybe it's Cipher's. All I know is that I'm tired of having no escape.

For a very long time, the four of us are there in the basement, and I watch wax drip off of the candle to pool down in the base of the lantern. Usually, I'm good at numbing myself against certain self-realizations. This time it's taking longer than it normally does.

"Silvan?" Evan murmurs. "Do… You feel that too, right?"

I raise my head off of the floor a little. "What?"

"Do you feel that?" He repeats, pointing upward. "There's somebody upstairs."

I swallow and take a second to try and figure out what he's talking about. When I get myself out of my own mind, though, I find that it's almost impossible to ignore. Something's definitely moving up above us. "...they… they don't feel like a psychic."

"I know," he says gravely. "I feel like I need to go check."

"Don't," I urge. "We can't sense anything but psychics, Evan, so whatever it is, it's definitely not a normal person, but it can't be a psychic, either."

"I'm in charge. If someone is in Martha's house and they're not supposed to be," Evan says softly, "then I need to know who it is."

"I-I'm going with you."

"No. Somebody needs to stay down here with Miyu and Nana, and you still look really unwell."

"Evan, I don't want you going up there alone," I say. "Whatever it is doesn't feel right. I don't want you in danger. Especially given the situation the others are in right now."

His eyes look very dark, even in the candlelight. "...I wish we could lock this door from the inside."

"I'm going with you. And I'm not arguing about it."

"Fine." Evan puts his hand on Nana's head. "Kid, Silvan and I are going to be right back. You need to keep the door closed and only open it if you hear me call for you. Okay?"

"D-Don't leave!" Miyu cries.

"Shh." Evan's voice is a special sort of gentle. "There's somebody upstairs, and my magic told me it might not be somebody good. Let Silvan and me go take care of the bad guys and keep you safe. Okay? I'm sure Martha will be back with Takuya, Jun, and Micchan soon. We'll be right back, too."

Nana puts her arm around Miyu, and the two of them huddle closer around the lamp. Together, Evan and I fumble our way up the stairs and creep outside, into the hall, shutting the door behind us.

Evan walks very softly. He must know where every creaky board is in this house, because he doesn't make a sound. I try to follow in his footsteps as exactly as possible.

We're halfway toward the kitchen when he whispers, "They're… They're upstairs."

"Lead the way," I say.

We creep up the stairs, and I'm wondering what the best course of action might be against an intruder. It can't just be a random looter that walked in when the house was empty, can it? If it were, I don't think I would be able to feel like this. I just feel… wrong. Like I did when Yusei and Kiryu were racing to the death.

Maybe I'm sensing Yusei fighting that man, Rudger? How far away are they, even? Then again, how would Evan know that there was somebody upstairs?

I follow Evan towards—towards his bedroom. Is it a coincidence that this intruder's wandered their way into my brother's room?

All care suddenly leaves him; when we get close enough, Evan kicks the already ajar door open and it hits the wall with a loud, jarring 'bang' noise. My brother looks like he's ready to start a war with whoever it is that's wandering around his room, until a voice says, "What an entrance."

I... I've heard that voice somewhere. And I know Evan has, too, because suddenly all the color has leached from his face.

A silver haired boy turns from where he's standing by Evan's tool chest. He's holding the picture I've seen behind the door, of Evan and the Duel Gang. "Hi there, handsome. Have you missed me?"

"Kiryu." My brother sounds so far away.

"I didn't know you still had this picture." He spins the frame between his pale hands. "What a horrible reminder of what pitiful people we once were."

I think Evan's doing his best to compose himself. But it takes him a second to say, with a very obviously forced calm, "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you, of course. Have I been too silent over the past few years? My apologies for not calling you back, I was a little occupied."

Evan, very softly, says, "Look at you."

Kiryu grins. "What about me?"

"What have you become, Kiryu?"

"I was nothing before this."

"You're wrong, and you know it."

"Am I?" He takes a step forward, and Evan leans like he wants to back up, but he's rooted to the floor. "I did a lot of thinking in the Detention Center, really. Yusei did put me in there, so maybe his death will be the thing that finally satisfies me."

"Yusei didn't put you anywhere. Kiryu, you killed somebody." He pauses. "Is that what this is about? Is that why you want him dead, because you think he turned you in?"

"You poor sweet boy, I saw him selling me out. Whatever he's told you, I'm sure it's only to turn you against me. I was always going to come back for you, no matter how I ended up escaping that place. I wouldn't leave you behind like he did."

Evan's still seemingly rooted to the ground as Kiryu slinks closer, hand outstretched, like he's going to touch Evan. I dart underneath my brother's arm and spread my hands out in front of him. Like a bad attempt to keep the two of them separate. "L-Leave him alone! Don't touch him!"

"Oh, I know you," Kiryu remarks. "You're the little thing that helped carry Yusei off after I ripped him open. Shame, you should have left him there to bleed out. You would have done us all a favor."

He's so close to us now, I can see where the faint shadows of bruises bloom on his face and throat. He's pale as death, and stands as still as it, too. I think it's a Detention Center mark on the right side of his face, curving down over his brow and straight down his cheek to his jaw, but it's not yellow like Yusei's or Crow's. It's reddish, like dried blood.

And, oh, fuck, his eyes. That's the thing that makes me sure that he isn't human. Not green, like they are in the picture he's holding, but a startling bright gold. And, where the whites of his eyes should be, there's only black.

"Oh," Kiryu exhales suddenly, as if in realization. "Oh, I see the resemblance! You must be Silvan, alive against all odds. Your brother used to tell me about you. The two of us are alike, then, if we've both come back to him straight from our graves."

"I-I'm not like you," I stutter. "I-I don't want anybody to die."

"You're young," he scoffs. "Naïve. You'll learn soon enough that some people just shouldn't be allowed to keep living."

"Maybe you didn't deserve to die," I say, "but neither does anyone else."

"You must know so little about your brother's world. His friends. I won't hold it against you that you haven't had the time to accurately judge them, but I would advise you to stay away before it's too late." He collapses into a fit of laughter all of a sudden. "Or, better yet! You could help me put an end to them once and for all, before anyone else winds up like me."

What is he asking? What does he want? I don't know how to deal with this. With my brother, frozen at my back, and a Dark Signer less than a foot away from me.

"How about it? You could be one of us, Evan. I know you have reservations about Yusei, especially after he left you here to go chasing Jack."

"How… How did you know that?" My brother asks.

"You were always different. You were too good for the rest of them." Kiryu pins his black and gold eyes on my arm, spread out in front of my brother's chest. "You could come with me. We could be so wonderful together. Everybody else left you, but I didn't. Not willingly. We can still be together. You and I can give Yusei and Jack exactly what they deserve."

"I… I won't help you kill more of our friends, Kiryu."

"They were never our friends, not after what they did." He extends his hand for Evan. "Just come with me. Everything will be okay again."

"You can't," I blurt. "I-I don't know what he's asking of you, Evan, but you can't. I know Yusei is good. And I'm not going to lose you, not after I just got you back."

"I know you, Evan," Kiryu croons. "I know you can't walk away from anyone you love."

My brother, his voice soft and stoic, says, "I loved you."

"...I wish he hadn't turned you against me." Kiryu's voice becomes very, very dark.

"I wish you were still alive. That you were still Kiryu. I wish you understood that Yusei isn't the enemy here."

"There are sides in this war, Evan, and I want you to pick the right one. My offer will always stand. Sooner or later, you'll realize that I'm the only one who can protect you from what's going to rip this pitiful district apart, and when that happens, you'll come to me in the B.A.D."

"I'm… not going to do that, Kiryu. I love our home, and you once did, too. If you want it gone, you're going to have to get rid of me, too."

"...always a martyr. Such a disgusting trait. You must've learned it from Yusei." Kiryu turns and lays the photo from the wall on top of the tool case. "I won't give up on you. If I have to give you an incentive, I will. I'll make you see my side long before the old gods reign fire on this world."

Then I—I blink. And Kiryu is gone.

"Fuck," Evan breathes. "Fuck I'm gonna fucking die. What the fuck just happened. Fuck. Silvan, please tell me you didn't see that too. Please tell me I was hallucinating. Please tell me that wasn't fucking real."

I dive forward to try and support him as he wobbles off of his feet. "E-Evan, breathe. Breathe, please."

He keeps cursing and hyperventilating, and I keep trying to hold him up; before I know it I'm on the floor holding my sobbing, dry-heaving brother, who's also effectively three times my size and practically dead weight in my arms.

It takes a while for him to listen to me and actually breathe. I listen to him take breath after long breath, and I count the seconds between inhales and exhales. Four seconds in, four seconds held, eight seconds out.

"Good," I murmur. "Breathe. I'm right here. Everything's gonna be okay."

"I-I thought, after what Goodwin said, t-they'd just be those fucking spirits using their bodies. L-Like… Like puppets, or some shit."

"Okay. Okay."

"B-But… that was him. I mean, it was really him." His voice sounds so tiny. "He's really like that now. He's really gone."

"I'm sorry." I don't know what else to say to him. "I'm so sorry, Evan."

"H-He was asking for me to be like that. He wants me to be like him. What a sick fucking joke."

I stroke my fingers through his hair. "I know. I know."

"Fuck. This is fucking fucked."

"Okay. I know."

"...A-At least there's one fucking bright side to this."

"What's that?"

"We're both fucking messes, so maybe this time I don't have to suffer all by myself."

I can't manage anything like a laugh, I feel so emotionally drained from my own incident down in the basement, but I do say, "I'll punch your ex, you can punch the front door of Arcadia and pretend it's Divine."

"I wanna take a fucking axe to the whole thing, is that allowed? And maybe change punch to piledrive."

"If that helps, then okay."

"...the worst part about that is that he still wants me, after all this. After prison, after death, after this wild fucking magic shitshow, he still wants me. After I told him to go away."

"Maybe that wasn't all him, then," I say. "Maybe it is what you think. Maybe it's half puppet show, half Kiryu. He's dead and possessed and lonely and he still needs you."

"But I'm… I'm not switching sides for him. Not ever. I can't do that to everybody else I love. I won't."

I swallow a thickness in my throat. Divine, an abuser. Kiryu, a murderer. "...I wonder why we couldn't just love normal people."

There's a pause before he says, "We're not normal people."

"We could be," I murmur.

"Yeah, but… not anytime soon."

We sit there together, curled into a ball, for a long time, and I listen to the house creaking with the wind and my brother trying to remember how to breathe.

The wind outside sounds too heavy to be natural. It makes me think of the Signers, my friends, and where they could be right now. If they're okay. In a way, I'm glad they aren't here right now. I'm glad it's just me and Evan—the other half I never knew I had—leaning on each other. It makes me think of what he said the first day we met, the first day we really talked. It's easy rationalizing losing parents you never met. A sibling, the only blood you have besides yourself, is so much harder to let go of.

"We should get back to the girls," Evan sniffs, pulling away from my shoulder. "Do I look like I've been crying?"

"...yes, but it'll be dark down there. I don't think they'll notice."

"Okay. I guess you're right." He pulls himself to his feet and holds his hand out for me. "I'm technically the adult, I have to pretend I'm not scared."

I take his hand. "Look, I'm almost positive all of adulthood is pretending you aren't scared."

"Yeah, that's fair."

We walk downstairs together, me taking up the rear. He walks slowly enough that it makes me think he doesn't want to quit being alone. But we do have to keep watching over Miyu and Nana, who are only children and already frightened enough without us losing grip on ourselves.

Evan knocks on the basement door when we get downstairs. "Nana? Miyu? It's Evan and Silvan, we're coming in!" He pulls the door open and slips down inside; I can see the candle flickering in the lamp from here.

Then there's a hand on my shoulder. I whirl around, the basement door still half open in my hand.

"Boo," Kiryu says.

Then, I don't know where I am. Just that it's no longer Martha's house.