Another short one, primarily because this is the end of a book.

Two more Items down, one left. This is the home stretch, y'all.

I won't keep things up for long. I just hope you have fun with this.

It's been a long time coming.

Verse One.

By the time Seto returns to his soul room, with his counterpart in tow, Kisara is preening like a proud mother. She strides ahead of him like she fully intends to take up a trumpet to sound his arrival. Seto supposes he can't blame her too much; the looks on the Yagamis' faces when they see their lost member step into the room is . . . transcendent.

Seto pulls back his shoulders and spreads out his arms.

"I must extend my deepest apologies for my conduct when you first arrived," he says. "I was not myself, and it took my most trusted of champions to make me aware of it. You deserve better than you received from me. Divergent timeline or not, you are family."

Seto's counterpart is most assuredly not listening. After tackling his family into a hug, crying into his mother's shoulder, and finally allowing himself to understand what he's gone through, he immediately sits at the table and starts piling his own body weight in rice, beef, and broccoli onto a plate.

It's Kohaku who turns to look at Seto, to acknowledge him.

"If it will make you feel more at ease," he says slowly, softly, gently, "then I think I speak for all of us when I say: your apology is accepted. But . . . I think I also speak for all of us when I say that none of that matters now. You brought him back to us. Anything and everything you've ever done, forgiven. Carte blanche."

Yuki, still wiping tears from her eyes, nods fervently at her husband's side.

She has one hand on her firstborn son's back, like she's making sure he's still there, still present; like she worries he'll vanish if she ever takes her hand off him again.

"You should sit," she says eventually. "If we're family, then you should eat with us."

Seto chuckles. "Well," he says, "when you put it that way, I don't think there's any proper way for me to refuse."

Kisara doesn't sit with them; she stands near the door like she's keeping guard. Seto can't help but think she's doing precisely that, and he strains not to let himself be distracted by thoughts of what she might be guarding them from. He shares a meal with a family that isn't his—but isn't it?—and he shares stories with them like it's the most natural thing in the world.

"What card did you show Pegasus Crawford back there?" Seto's counterpart asks him, after a time. "The one that scared him so much. His face went white when he saw that card. I've never actually seen someone look that terrified before."

Seto reaches into his pocket and sets his dueling deck on the table.

He draws up the first card and sets it down, face up.

He smiles when Obelisk the Tormentor glares up at him.

"A card that, by all rights, should not exist," Seto says. "I shouldn't know about it, and I certainly shouldn't have it in my hands. I'm sure, as far as Crawford knows, this card is buried in the desert somewhere, never to haunt his dreams again."

He laughs.

Verse Two.

Seto Kaiba opened his eyes and returned to his body, still on the floor of Turtle Game, for what felt like the hundredth time. He rose to his feet and eyed Shadi suspiciously. He decided it didn't matter if he just said the quiet part out loud; there was no point in playing coy about it.

"I don't suppose you're going to call foul," he said, "since I had . . . assistance in there."

Shadi's face didn't twitch, and Seto wondered for a moment whether the spirit even heard him. Eventually, though, Shadi shook his head. "There is nothing foul about this," he said. "The white wyrm is entwined with your soul, son of kings, and there is naught I can do to untangle her from you. The gods make no distinction between you and she, and so I make no such mark myself."

There wasn't any kind of ceremony.

Seto knew there wouldn't be, but looking around at the others, he realized that they were expecting something. All the same, he already knew the truth: Shadi said he wouldn't leave this shop without the Ankh, without life, but the truth was closer to the wire than that.

If he'd lost this challenge, he never would have opened his eyes again.

If he'd failed this trial, he would have slumped dead to the floor.

Mokuba was at his side. He looked up at his brother. "Niisama," he said, quietly. "I had a weird . . . well, I mean, I want to say dream, but I don't think that's right. I didn't fall asleep." Seto looked down at the young Kaiba and waited. "I saw you," Mokuba went on, "in that dungeon. Pegasus was there. He tried to threaten you, and you told him off. You showed him a card, and he ran away. Like, he literally ran out of the dungeon."

". . . Yeah," Yugi said. "Yeah, I think I remember that too."

"Did we all have some kinda vision or something?" Joey asked.

"What the hell did you do while you were konked out, Kaiba?" Tristan wondered.

Seto laughed. "There's no simple way to answer that," he said. "Suffice it to say, I was forced to reckon with the consequences of my choices in a much more . . . tangible way than usual." He turned to Shadi, and was only slightly surprised to find that the spirit wasn't there anymore. "I suppose," he said, directing this next at the void where his silent judge had been standing just a moment ago, "I can sleep easy knowing that I handled it well."

Noa snorted. "That's a lie," he said. "You haven't slept easy in fifteen years."

Seto rolled his eyes. He turned his attention to Yugi. "Let me know if there's anything else you need repaired, as a result of today's . . . events. I'll see to it."

Yugi looked surprised, but he smiled. "Thanks, Kaiba," he said.

"In case you wonder," Seto said idly, "the card was Obelisk. That's why Crawford ran from me."

Verse Three.

Well past three in the morning, Seto sat in the front parlor of Kaiba Manor. Surrounded by his brothers, Kisara Mayer, and Roland Ackerman—in other words, the only people he knew who understood anything about Millennium Magic, and who wouldn't have him committed for talking about it—he looked as grim and solemn as he ever had.

"Are you . . . feeling okay, Niisama?" Mokuba dared to ask.

Seto drew in a breath. "Truth is, kiddo," he said, "I'm not sure. All I know is this: I've reached the point of no return. This is it." He held out his hands, and a flash of golden light filled the room. When everyone regained their vision—Roland, with his ever-present shades, was first—they watched as more flashes twirled around in Seto's right palm; six of them.

Rod, Eye, Torque, Scales, Ring, Ankh.

"There's just one left," Seto said. "The Puzzle." He looked up at his court and locked eyes with each of them in turn. "I haven't faced the king in any arena for . . . years. Excepting the one time I allowed myself to cheat, I've never walked away from such an arena with a victory. I don't know if I'm going to walk away with all seven of these things, nor do I know what will happen if I do, or if I'm just going to end up a footnote in his story again."

Mokuba frowned. "You always say you'll win next time, whenever you face him."

"Hubris," Seto said, "and bravado."

"Come on." Noa looked affronted. "Don't go defeatist on us, Aniki. You know damn well that doesn't suit you. You don't even know what's going to happen. For all we know, it won't even be a game. I'd hardly call any of these trials you've faced . . . games. From what you've talked about, they sound more like the Labors of Heracles."

Seto shrugged. "Perhaps," he admitted, "but I have never managed to permit myself to believe good fortune lasts. This all has gone too easily for my tastes."

"Let us not pretend you have had an easy time of things," Kisara said, stepping in for the first time. "The roadblocks that most people would face on journeys like this, you have already faced several times over. I think you might be underestimating just what you've done in the past forty-eight hours, simply because that's all the time that's passed. Time spent doesn't equate to difficulty. That concept is fallacious at best."

"She's right, sir," Roland said, nodding along. "I daresay someone else facing what you've done would have had a much harder time of it. I don't think there's any denying that the majority of these trials, you've been trained specifically in the skills necessary to best them."

"Yeah!" Mokuba looked excited. "Exactly! So stop being all mopey! You're gonna get up tomorrow, and you're gonna kick the pharaoh's butt, and that's all anybody's ever gonna remember about your rivalry!"

Seto opened his mouth to speak.

To say what, he didn't know.

Eventually, he settled on:

". . . Thanks, Mokuba."

END.