Isis is interesting here. I fully bought into the idea that, thanks to her Millennium Item, she knows precisely how canon is supposed to unfold. So, she's kind of an audience stand-in. She knows what we know, for the most part.

I don't usually have a character like that in my AU stories.

But now that I have one, I think I like it.

.

Isis Ishtar had never once felt her age; she'd always been older than she was. She spent each night studying the future, working through what she would have to do, so as to see things unfold properly. She thought of herself as a custodian, in a way; the Millennium Torque had been entrusted to her, and her alone. That meant something. It had to mean something. This was what she'd struggled all this time for. All this time she'd spent alone, all this time she'd spent exhausted and in pain, hungry and desperate, was for this.

This was her moment.

This was why she'd been given the magic.

Isis watched as Seto, Noa, and Mokuba all filed into the room, each understanding in their own way that this was an important meeting; the older boys were quiet and grim-faced, while Mokuba held onto the hem of Seto's shirt and hid behind him.

She pictured the Seto Kaiba in her imagination—that walking thunderstorm of rage and trauma—and tried to place this boy in that position. Isis tried to run through what sort of life this boy would need to lead to turn him into that man.

She couldn't do it.

Isis wondered if that was as catastrophic as she feared it was.

Then again, whenever the Torque showed her this man, this boy, this linchpin of Fate, he always found some way to surprise her.

Seto noticed Isis watching him. He lowered his head. "Hello," he said carefully; even in this timeline, he was guarded. "My name is Seto."

"I am Isis," she said, with a bow of her own. "It is a pleasure to meet you."

Isis didn't know how to tell Seto that she'd met him ten thousand times already; something about the way he looked at her, though, told her that he knew.

"I'm Noa," said Noa.

". . . Hi," offered Mokuba.

Noa. The core of this conflict. Isis found herself more fascinated by him than any other element. Somehow, even more than his mother, he was the rare one. Amaya Kaiba was familiar, though far less so than her husband or her adopted sons; Noa, though, was an anomaly. He was always dead. Always a memory. He never made it this long, this far.

Never.

It felt like being haunted in reverse.

"Chichiue says you're here to help," Noa said, and Isis pulled herself back into the moment to offer a nod. "He says you know about this . . . Paradius place. Group. Thing. Whatever it is."

"Cult," said Isis. "Its leader, Lord Dartz, fancies himself a prophet. He thinks he is destined to usher in a new era, build a new world, and anyone who does not bow to his whims is an enemy." She thought about telling Noa that Dartz was targeting him specifically, but she eventually decided not to. "Whether he succeeds at his aims . . . depends on what happens in this house." She drew in a breath, let it out. "It is no mistake that he has turned his sights on your family. You are a threat."

It was difficult to choose the right words. She didn't want to lie to them; they were smart enough to know if she told them an outright falsehood. The only hope she had was to rely on omission. Let them think that Gozaburo was the threat to Dartz.

After all, Isis thought, wasn't he?

"Why are we a threat?" Seto asked, cutting through Isis's thoughts as cleanly as a knife.

"You have been marked," Isis said. "It doesn't matter why you present a problem for this Dartz. His followers worship him as a deity, and will throw themselves, to the last man, into any work he demands of them. You could simply offend him by wearing a color he finds objectionable. It wouldn't matter to Paradius." She paused. "That said, you do present an obstacle. Your family is strong, stubborn, and can shore up a great number of resources. You present a problem that cannot be ignored."

"He thinks we stand in his way," Noa murmured, "so the best option open to us is to actually stand in his way."

"Yes," said Isis. "If he wishes to make sport of you, you must play the game. But you need to play it better, faster, with more conviction. Your strongest asset is that he underestimates you. He knows you are a threat to him, but he does not understand. He has yet to feel the fear of loss. This is what you must instill in him."

"How are we supposed to do that, exactly?" Seto wondered. He crossed his arms. "We're one family. We're kids. How are we supposed to make a cult leader afraid of us?"

Isis found a smile. "You know how to strike fear into the hearts of other children; you can do the same with a man. Do not think so little of yourself. He thinks you are an obstacle. He thinks you are a distraction, not even a thorn in his side. Show him the truth. Show this cult that you are a dragon."

Seto's eyes snapped wide. He stared at his new acquaintance, searching, wondering why she would say that. Isis knew well that she'd caught him. There was one thing she knew about Seto Kaiba in all timelines, all possibilities, all histories: he was a dragon.

Even as young as he was, as small as he was, as vulnerable as he was.

He was a dragon.

Seto flashed a grin. "I think I like that," he said.

Isis's smile widened. "You have a family again," she went on. "You have a home again. Remember, if you remember anything: they cannot take that from you. You won't let them take that from you. Isn't that right, Seto Kaiba?"

". . . Yes. That's right."

Seto clenched his fists; just for a moment, just for a flash, he looked like the man Isis had studied for so many years. The man she would have met years from now, who bent the world to his whims, who struck fear into gods.

The man who would save her.

.

"You don't believe me."

Amaya didn't turn to look at the girl, busy as she was putting together what she would need for whatever standoff was coming. She was sliding a knife into place inside her left boot when she said: "It doesn't matter what I believe. What matters is that my children survive the threat to their lives. Magic, beasts, shadows, none of it matters to me. If it's an enemy, it dies."

"You must be ready to face what Paradius can conjure," Isis said. "You will not be able to do that if you refuse to believe. You will be bested." When Amaya finally turned to look at her, Isis was watching her with that unnerving stare she had that saw through her soul. "This has nothing to do with skill or experience. I am not insulting you. I am warning you."

Amaya tried to force down the annoyance that kept trying to rise up in her mind. She crossed her arms over her chest. "All right. I'm listening. What do you mean when you say that you've seen how things unfold? Let's start there."

Isis reached up and gently placed her fingertips against the necklace she wore. "This," she said, "is called the Millennium Torque. It permits me to view the unfolding of time as it is, and as it could be. I have been studying our potential futures for many years. I found my way to your husband because this is not the future that was meant to occur."

"What, then, was meant to happen?"

Isis sighed. Drew in a breath, let it out. "Your eldest son," she said, "Noa, was meant to die when his godfather struck him with his truck." Something frigid ran up Amaya's spine; there was no way for this girl to know about that. "You were meant to leave your husband. Seto and his brother were meant to be adopted into an empty house. With only their father and Mister Muraoka to guide them."

Amaya's eyes narrowed. "Seto, and Mokuba, were meant to be trained by that old demon."

"Yes."

"How is it that you know this was meant to happen?"

"That's how it usually happens."

The girl knew too much. Normally, Amaya would wonder if she was a spy. How could she possibly know that Noa's godfather tried to kill him? Nobody knew about Ishmael Faraji. But there was something about Isis, something so unwaveringly earnest about how she spoke, that made Amaya doubt herself; that, and the fact that her husband—the most no-nonsense man she'd ever met—seemed to buy into all this magic nonsense.

Maybe . . . it wasn't nonsense at all.

"Do you have any way to prove this?" Amaya asked. "I mean no disrespect, dear, but I think you know that your explanations so far have been . . . unorthodox, to be polite about it."

Isis held out one hand, while the other still touched her necklace.

"I can show you," she said.

.

He was too sharp. Every corner of him, every hard angle, looked like it could cut to the bone. There wasn't a single piece of him that looked soft enough to touch; Amaya felt like she was bleeding, just from looking at him.

He was dressed in black from neck to foot, buckled together with leather straps and spite. He wore a long violet coat like a battle standard, and his eyes were on fire. She watched him stride through an empty, haunted hallway like a man possessed, his boot-heels clicking like bullet casings on the stone floor. At his side, dutiful, loyal, terrified, was a boy no older than twelve, hunched over in all the fear that he didn't allow himself to feel.

Isis stood next to Amaya, holding her hand.

"You recognize them," she said; it wasn't a question.

Amaya's mouth went dry. "Seto," she said, "and Mokuba."

"Yes."

"What happened to them?"

"Life," Isis said. "A hard life, built by death and betrayal. With only each other to rely on for trust and loyalty. This is what your husband built, without your eye and hand to guide him."

"He's strong," Amaya said, "but hollow."

Isis walked, and Amaya followed. She watched the boy she was beginning to love—Noa's first friend, that brilliant boy who understood instinctively so much of what it meant to love family, to protect family—play a game of Magic & Wizards. But it was so much more than a game when he played. Amaya Kaiba watched a simple game turn into a war of attrition, with magic woven in and out of the players' blood and willpower; beasts, creatures, like Isis said.

Amaya had no idea what she was watching, but she knew what it meant.

"Is this what happens to my children?" Amaya asked. "Is this the future that awaits them?"

"No," Isis said. "The world where we live, the timeline unfolding in front of us, is not this one."

"The divergent act," Amaya said, "the moment which separates our world from this one, is that Noa . . . lived."

"I cannot agree with that confidently," Isis said, "but . . . if I were to try condensing the differences between worlds into a single moment . . . yes."

"This Dartz . . . his cult . . . it's all bent on killing Noa?"

"Not all. But Noa Kaiba's death is one of its missions. Yes."

"Paradius will see this future made manifest."

"If it is not stopped . . . yes."

"And that," Amaya pointed to her son's opponent, the red-haired soldier with ravenous hatred guiding his every movement, "is the boy in charge of this mission. That is Aleister Dòmhnallach."

"Yes."