Yami Yugi saw the ambulance pulling up to Domino high school as he sprinted down the street. He glanced over his shoulder. Tristan was handing Ryou to one of the doctors, with Joey and Tea huddled tightly behind him.

'Ryou will be getting help' he thought to himself. 'For now at least.'

Suddenly, his hikari's voice rung through his mind.

'Aibou, what's going on? What do you mean help for now? What's wrong with Ryou?'

'There is a lot that you don't know about shadow powers…'Yami Yugi answered timidly as he ran. 'The Shadow realm is a dangerous place…'

Yugi paced back and forth in his soul room, concerned.

'What happened?' Yugi demanded to know.

'Do you remember what happened in Duelist Kingdom, aibou? When the duel with Pegasus became a Shadow Game?'

Yugi nodded silently.

'When we switched back and forth, in order to confuse his millennium eye… You could barely stay conscious in the duel.'

As he spoke, Yugi thought back to the duel. Whenever he was in control of the body, he was fighting spasms of pain from the environment as much as from the duel monsters' attacks.

'That was merely a shadow game, aibou. The Shadow realm is far worse…'

Yugi shuttered at the thought.

'For a spirit banished to the shadow realm, it… it is torment.' He added. 'But for a human body to be sent there… it is far more dangerous.'

'It's…'

'It's something I would never do, aibou. The consequences are devastating. So much so, that I forbid any of my priests to subject even the worst criminals to such a punishment.'

'But Ryou…'

'Aboard Kaiba's battle blimp, when the spirit of the millennium ring lost the shadow duel with Malik's dark side, it was not just his soul that was sent to the Shadow realm, but his body as well. Ryou's body.'

'But it was nearly a week before we were able to defeat Malik's darker side, yami!' Yugi suddenly grew quite concerned.

'I know, aibou…' Yami Yugi sighed. He had tried to work faster, but duels take time. It was, of course, time that they didn't really have. He shuttered as he imagined the pain that Ryou suffered while physically roaming in the Shadow realm. Although, it was likely that Ryou didn't remember any of it. That, he thought, was probably for the best.

'Could Ryou have… died in there?'

'Yes, aibou.' Yami Yugi admitted. 'And that was what I was most afraid of.'

He kept running.

'When I saw Ryou back on the blimp after the duel, smiling as he always does, I was relieved.' He added. 'It appears, though, that I spoke far too soon.'

'He…'

'I'm sure his yami must have protected him as best he could… but something got through that layer of protection… something… something deadly… that didn't affect him at first, but is starting to take its toll on his body.'

'An illness?'

'You could call it that.' The pharaoh answered his hikari. 'But it is not your typical cold or flu… or even what you call a cancer…'

Yugi gulped. Ryou looked dreadfully ill. The thought the he might actually… die… tied Yugi's gentle heart in knots. It left him with a loss for words.

'Yami… where exactly are we going?' he finally spoke up again.

'To the home of the Ishtar clan.' He answered. 'I don't know of a way to stop this kind of shadow force… but perhaps as tomb keepers, his family might…'

Yugi nodded, and the pharaoh sped up his pace.