Malik was the first out into the living room.
"Ryou!" he shouted, skidding to a stop before he ran into the couch containing the fallen form of Yami Bakura. "Ryou, we just…"
He suddenly looked down. The white haired teen didn't look up. He didn't even acknowledge Malik's presence.
"Ryou?"
The boy's entire body was shaking, trembling with desperation. Tears clung to the sides of his eyes, trying not to fall into the shadows beneath his chin. His hands clutched onto a matted lock of his yami's bloodstained hair, as though releasing it would cause him to loose his own soul into a maze of unrelenting despair.
"Ryou?" Malik repeated again.
"He's dead." Ryou whispered, his breath heavy.
Isis walked up slowly beside Malik.
"Ryou, we thought of…"
"He's dead…" Ryou repeated louder. "You win… You all win… he's not coming back."
Silently, and with a hollow sigh, Ryou stood up. A pair of tears made their escape down his pale cheeks, carving tiny new rivers through the white desert. He wiped his red hands across a shirt that was already stained with his yami's blood. And gently, he closed his yami's eyes.
"I hope you're happy." Ryou finally whispered. "You've saved the world."
Malik and Isis stared at the young man, barely holding on to his own grief.
"It's just like they always say, right? The good of the many outweighs the good of the one?" Ryou attempted to laugh, but choked on his tears instead. "I guess that maxim's truer than the one about the darkness never dying…"
His hands shook as he tried to wrap them around his body.
"I got what I always wanted…" he bowed his head. "I guess I should be grateful…"
"Ryou, please… we need to talk." Malik attempted to insert.
"What for?" he finally stared the tomb keeper in the eyes. "He's dead! Isn't that enough for you?"
"That's not what you wanted." Isis sighed. "Was it…"
"It's certainly not what I wanted…" Malik attempted to intervene.
"Isn't it? This is what your ritual did to him!" Ryou shouted, pointing angrily at the corpse resting so peacefully on the couch. "This is what you did!"
"Ryou… that was a ritual of light!"
"That doesn't look like light to me!" he shouted back. "A ritual of goodness wouldn't leave a man, even an evil man, as a withered, broken shell! A ritual of goodness wouldn't starve a spirit, even a guilty one, until it had nothing left inside!"
"Ryou, please…"
"Don't 'Ryou, please' me!" he demanded, glaring with an almost sadistic tremor. "Malik's darker half was the embodiment of darkness, not mine. His was created out of hatred, resentment… mine… my yami was a human being!"
Isis trembled where she stood.
"A wicked, destructive human being. But a person! With thoughts, memories, feelings. With needs, desires… fears…" Tears streamed freely down Ryou's face, splattering messily onto the deceased yami down below. "And you killed him."
Ryou's fists quaked.
"You killed him!"
"Ryou, we were just doing what you…"
"You wanted so badly to destroy the darkness, look what you did…" Ryou sunk back to his knees, his cheek falling on Yami Bakura's lifeless chest. He looked up. "Look at him, Isis! Look at him, Malik!"
They complied, quickly returning their gaze to Ryou, lest he strike out at them in rage.
"Does this look like a threat to you?"
"Ryou…"
"No! It doesn't…" he slumped. "Pharaoh, why not come and see your thief king now?"
For the first time, Malik and Isis realized that Yami Yugi hadn't followed them out of the game room.
"What's the matter, pharaoh?" Ryou laughed nervously to himself as he cried. "Sphinx got your tongue?"
"Pharaoh?" Malik turned around. "Where are you?"
Isis turned back towards the game room, leaving Ryou with the body of Yami Bakura.
"Pharaoh?"
She pushed open the door, only to find Yami Yugi unconscious on the floor, the millennium puzzle literally rattling against the wood.
"Oh my… Malik! Come here! Hurry!"
The sharp change in her voice drew Ryou from his resentment. Something must have been very wrong for her calm demeanor to suddenly fall apart.
Malik rushed back into the game room, stopping dead in the doorway.
"Isis, what's going on in…" he froze. "Pharaoh!"
Malik bent down, and lifted the yami's head and shoulders into his lap. He shook the man gently, but could elicit no response.
"Pharaoh!"
Ryou approached the doorway with a gasp.
"Pharaoh?" Not you too!" he shouted, shaking the yami as furiously as Malik had just done. "Please, not you too!"
"Let go of him, Ryou! Please!" Isis tried to pull the white haired youth away from Yami Yugi, but his hysterics couldn't be broken.
"First my yami… and now Yugi's?" he shrieked.
"Calm down!" she shouted, her voice rattling the figurines stacked neatly on the edge of the game table. "Everybody wait!"
They stopped.
"I don't think there's anything physically wrong with the pharaoh!"
"The what's going on?" Malik demanded a quick answer.
"I think there's something wrong with the puzzle!"
Their eyes traced the chain around Yami Yugi's neck, the millennium puzzle still rattling and pulsating with every erratic beat of his heart. Small beads of light could be seen from between the cracks, expanding ever since Ryou had entered the room.
"The puzzle?" he whispered, turning to Malik. "But what…"
"Pharaoh!" Malik shook him again. "Pharaoh, can you hear me?"
Again, there was no response, other than the puzzle's dramatic seizures.
"It's no use, Malik…" Isis stepped back, and crossed her arms. "He's deep inside his soul room. Along with Yugi."
"But why?"
"I don't know…" she responded. "But something's definitely going on in there."
"Pharaoh?" Ryou whispered, now clutching the other yami's hand.
"And if it keeps up…" she sighed. "I think that puzzle is going to shatter."