The Bittersweet Fate Of A Duelist

Chapter 10

December arrived faster than Seto expected it, and with it the official launch of the new Kaiba Corporation videogame came closer and closer.
The demo version of the "Legendary Dragon", already out for the public for weeks, would soon be replaced by the complete and finished game, to the delight of children, teenagers and adults alike.
Because of that, in the company headquarter work had never been so hectic, aside from the crazy days before the opening of Duel Monsters Tournament.

With a stifled groan, Seto silenced the annoying alarm clock of his phone, as always set at 6 am, and sat up in the soft darkness of the room.
Seto yawned, stretching his arms before removing heavy blankets and sheets, and threw his legs on the floor, trying to find his slippers without looking down.
After finding and putting them on his feet, the CEO stood up and grabbed the phone, disconnecting it from its charger; in doing so, however, his hand lightly brushed against the Millennium Rod, abandoned on the bedside table like it was a common ornament more than a possibly murderous weapon.
Set suddenly withdrew his hand, as if the Millennium Rod had just struck it with electricity, and swallowed dry before grasping the Item; looking back at his, instead of his own distorted reflection, on the shiny golden surface he saw the face of the man whose soul he condemned to eternal agony, petrified in a scream, as if to mock him for having sentenced him to a non-life of pain and fear.

Shuddering, Seto put down the Millennium Rod and exchanged it with his cell phone, immediately starting to scroll through the apps in search of new messages, emails or missed calls. The Item, though, kept attracting his gaze like a magnet, impossible to repel or ignore, as if Seto himself was a corresponding magnetic pole to it.
The horrified screams of that man kept ringing in his years even weeks after, and although Seto was firmly convinced he had done the right thing, as cruel as it had been, the memory made his blood run cold in hid veins, and infested dreams and nightmares in the same way.
The disquieting and looming obscurity of the Shadow Realm returned to visit him night and day without distinction, with impeccable punctuality, every time he closed his eyes. It stretched in his way long fingers made of shadow, incorporeal but, at the same time, so real as to be perceptible.
Seto was always taken by it, always grasped by that touch, unable to fend it off, and each time the slim fingers dragged him down a little bit more, deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit he had duh with his own hands.

Seto wondered if Atem had felt the same fear, the same felling of incapacity and the same persuasion his instinct whispered in his ear, murmuring and praising him to surrender, submit to the darkness and be swallowed up by it.
The Pharaoh had suffered centuries of that same darkness, he sought it as a crazed spirit, used it for his Penalty Games. He had used that sinister power to win, over and over, to protect himself and his friends, to protect Yugi from all the dangers his vessel had to undergo.
The Pharaoh, after millennia, had won his war against the darkness, but he also lost battles on the road leading to victory.
He had lost Yugi more than once, first flung away from Pegasus' Shadow Game, then endangered by Yami Marik, and eventually taken away by the Orichalcos.
However, despite those defeats, despite all the doubts, Atem had recovered.
He had truly came back on his feet, despite the awareness of all the evil and pain he had inflicted on dozens of people, fighting the shadows threatening to take away his soul and heart.

Seto wasn't able to fight.
Fragment after fragment, he felt his soul getting closer and closer to the shadows' temptation, bewitched by its terrifying but inviting voice.
The CEO still remembered, clear and crystalline in his mind, the Mind Crush inflicted on him by Atem, which forced him to put his very being into reassembling the pieces of his shattered heart, even the smallest splinter of it, only using his determination to live and the kindest part of his soul as the glue.
He well recalled the seduction of the shadows, lulling whispers that tried to grab him and drag him into their recesses with tantalizing proposals and dangerous games.
Their greed was so great, Seto often gave in to the flattery, he listened to the faint words coming from the darkness. He tried to follow them, to direct his feet towards their direction. But he always came back to himself and resumed working on his broken heart.
Back then, Mokuba was his grip on reality, and Seto had taken hold of that anchor for dear life, resisting the craving of the shadows, refusing to become a subject of them, prisoner of a dark, endless realm of distress.