They had just left Chancellor Sheppard's office. Officially, they'd been dismissed with reassurances, extra Duel Points, and a carefully measured "this was all very unfortunate, but under review." Unofficially, nothing had been answered.
Julian's last word in their previous conversation didn't just echo, it hung there. Suspended in the air like a weight no one knew how to carry. Everything.
Alexis's shoulders were tense, but her chin was high. Jaden's usual grin had faded into something quieter, more serious. Syrus fiddled with his Duel Disk strap, knuckles white. Bastion's pen, he still hadn't put it away, was trapped uselessly between his fingers, ink tip pointed down as if he'd started to raise it to take notes and forgotten how.
Jasmine shifted her weight from one foot to the other, eyes flicking between Julian and the ruined arena behind him, restless energy crackling under her skin. Mindy had her arms folded, not clinging to anyone this time, but braced, steady, like she'd planted herself there on purpose and dared the world to move her.
Julian felt all of it. The tension. The expectation. The fear. The trust.
Alexis's voice finally broke the silence, soft and cracked. "…Everything?"
Julian didn't look away. "Yes." he confirmed.
His tone wasn't dramatic. It wasn't cryptic.It was a statement of the truth, and that sincerity made the air thicken around all of them.
Syrus was the first to shake himself out of paralysis.
"Uh… I-I don't mean to interrupt the… emotional intensity here, but who's Atticus? I mean, I've heard the name, but…"
"Yeah." Jaden chimed in, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm sorry, but we definitely missed a step somewhere."
Alexis closed her eyes. Not in annoyance, but in pain. Mindy stepped a little closer, not touching her, but anchoring her presence beside her best friend like a steadying force. Jasmine hovered at her other side, not mirroring Mindy but watching Julian carefully, weighing his words before he even spoke.
Julian inhaled.
"Atticus Rhodes," he began, "was an Obelisk Blue two years ago. A first-year, like us now. But even then, he wasn't just another student." Alexis's throat bobbed when he said that: was, not is.
"Atticus wasn't just good at dueling." Julian went on. "He was charismatic. Warm. The kind of guy who walked into a room and everyone relaxed without knowing why. He could banter with Obelisks, hang out with Ras, and pull Slifers into conversations without making anyone feel like they were being 'allowed' to be there."
Jaden gave a low whistle. "An Obelisk who didn't treat Slifers like background furniture? That's new."
Mindy's arms tightened fractionally. "Hey."
"Present company excluded." Jaden added quickly. "Obviously."
Julian nodded. "He had friends in all three dorms, from what I heard." he said. "He didn't care which color someone wore on their jacket. If you needed help, he helped. If you needed someone to study with, he studied. If you needed someone to drag you out of your room so you wouldn't fail a class you were too embarrassed to ask about, he did that, too."
Alexis swallowed. Her voice came out barely above a whisper. "That… sounds like him."
Julian met her gaze. "That's what I heard. A great guy, from what everything indicates."
He paused, letting the image settle over them: Atticus laughing in a Slifer common room, seated in a Ra study hall late at night, walking the Obelisk corridors with someone from every dorm trailing behind him. A constellation, not a tower.
"Because of all that, added to his remarkable skill…" Julian said, "People started talking about him as a future King."
Syrus blinked. "King as in… King King? That King?"
Bastion made a vaguely strangled sound. "You mean the symbolic institutional title, yes? The Duel Academy King?"
"Yeah." Julian confirmed. "Semi-official. No paycheck bonus, no special keycard, no secret access code to any secret deck or chamber." He shrugged. "But corporates look at it. Sponsors. Tournament organizers. It shows up on resumes and duel profiles. 'Former King of Duel Academy' carries weight. It says you weren't just good, you were the benchmark."
"Titles are still stupid." Jasmine muttered, but there wasn't much heat behind it.
"In theory…" Julian said, "The King is just the best duelist in the academy. Practically speaking, the best often has the kind of gravity we talked about. The presence." He looked at Alexis for a heartbeat. "Atticus had that. Zane has that, too. Just… in very different flavors."
Syrus frowned. "So… they were both candidates?"
"Prospects." Julian clarified. "They were only first-years. The expectation was: in a their second or third years, one of them, or maybe both, would end up with the title."
"And then the dorm incident happened." Alexis said quietly.
Julian nodded.
"The old Obelisk Boys' Dorm." he said, turning slightly so he could see the outline of the abandoned building in the distance, just barely visible past a line of trees and a hill. "The one they shut down two years ago. The official story was 'structural failure' and 'unsafe foundation.' They closed it, moved everyone out, and pretended that was the end of it."
Jasmine huffed. "Yeah. 'Temporarily closed.' For two years."
Mindy shifted her weight. "Nobody ever talks about it, and the entrance is forbidden with risk of expulsion."
"That's because of what happened there during the winter break. Most of the students had gone home. Only a small group stayed on campus. People who lived too far away, people who had things to resolve, people who had to redo exams."
Alexis's hands curled into fists.
"Atticus stayed." Julian said. "He could've gone home. But some of his friends… hadn't done so well. They needed to re-take their finals. Some of them were from other dorms. He didn't want them stuck here alone, struggling. So he stayed."
Jaden's eyes widened. "He stayed on break just to help them study?"
Julian nodded. "To help them study. To tutor. To sit with them when they wanted to give up." He paused. "And then the dorm collapsed."
Syrus's face drained of color. "Collapsed as in…?"
"Not structurally. More than a dozen students were inside." Julian said softly. "And none of them walked out."
The breeze seemed to die completely for a moment. Even the usual gull cries from the shoreline felt far away.
Alexis stared straight ahead, toward the distant shape of the building, but Julian could tell she wasn't seeing it. She was somewhere else: two years back, on a different winter afternoon, hearing the news for the first time.
He had to force himself not to reach for her hand.
"Because it happened during break…" he went on, "And because the administration clamped down fast, a lot of the world never got the full story. A mysterious accident at a prestigious school? That's bad press. They sanitized it, sealed the dorm, buried it under construction notices and 'ongoing investigation' statements. Dozens of investigations were already made, none rendered any answer."
"That's… so very on-brand." Jasmine muttered darkly.
Mindy nodded once. "Protect the academy's image first. Then the truth. Maybe."
Julian's mouth flattened, but he didn't argue.
"They are trying to protect students," he said. "But they're also protecting themselves. Those things aren't mutually exclusive."
"And Atticus?" Alexis asked. "Where does he fall in that neat little PR equation?"
Julian looked at her, and for a second his careful structure. His lies, his half-truths, his stitched-together narrative, all wobbled on the weight of what he couldn't say.
"He…" Julian began, then stopped, swallowed, and started again. "He was one of the ones who disappeared. Similar to the others, but also different in a few ways."
That much, he knew, was real in this world. Because it had been real in the one before.
Julian, in this life, had never set foot in that dorm before arriving here. He hadn't witnessed the collapse. No one had told him the full story.
But he remembered it anyway. He remembered a life where this had all been fiction: where Atticus Rhodes was a character in an anime, a missing brother swallowed by darkness connected to a force called Nightshroud. Where the dorm was more than a building; it was a wound. Where the boy that everyone liked had become a vessel for something else.
Those memories were not "spiritual impressions." They were simply that: memories, carried from another world. And when he'd finally worked up the nerve to walk near the ruins here, when Nightmare-Eyes had pressed against his awareness and tasted the scar in the air, he had felt something. Faint. Fragmented. A bruise in the fabric of the island. Too chaotic and thin to build a theory from scratch.
But enough to tell him one crucial thing: This world's history and the story he had once watched were not entirely separate in that regard. The duel with Jinzo had only confirmed that further, adding scraps of sensory evidence to something he already knew the shape of. Now he had to turn that into an explanation that made sense.
"For the others…" Julian said slowly, "The impression left behind is… uniform. Like a single event snuffed them out all at once. A collapse. A surge. A… removal."
He chose his words carefully.
"But for Atticus, that impression is… different."
Alexis's eyes snapped back to him. "Different how?"
Julian shook his head slightly. "I don't have the full picture. I'm not pretending I do. But whatever took those other students, whatever erased them, didn't do the same thing to him. The traces tied to Atticus aren't 'gone.' They're… displaced. Pulled. Rerouted."
"A different end state." Bastion murmured.
"Or no end state at all. It probably discarded the tools it deemed unworthy or unnecessary and kept the ones with the largest potential. I felt two of them, one much similar to your own, Alexis." Julian replied.
He could feel everyone holding that breath.
"So yes…" he said softly. "I don't know where Atticus is. I don't know how he's connected to the thing that hurt that dorm. But I know he's not gone in the same way they are. And I knew that even before today."
Alexis's throat worked. "Because of your 'lead.'"
Julian nodded once.
She had every right to ask the next question. She did.
"How?" Alexis demanded quietly. "You said you had a lead days ago. Before Jinzo. Before Nightmare-Eyes devoured anything. Before any of this. You didn't just wake up one day and decide my brother was different from the other missing students. So how?"
That was the knife edge. The line between what he knew he could say and what he couldn't.
Julian's mind flashed through two lifetimes' worth of context in an instant: a younger him, on a couch, watching GX unfold on a screen. This him, standing on an island inside that story, pretending he didn't already know the arcs and outcomes. But the Reject Well, Nightmare-Eyes' existence, the way Duel Spirits clustered around him… all of it had already proven one thing: this wasn't a perfect replay. It only rhymed with what he knew.
He couldn't tell them any of that. So he did what he'd done since day one here. He took the truth, stripped off the impossible parts, and dressed the remainder in something this world could accept.
"When I first got close to the old dorm..." he said. "I didn't have Nightmare-Eyes fully awakened the way he is now. But I still had… sensitivity. After all, Relinquished converted himself into my Ka due to an energy-type compatibility. The Reject Well spirits had already latched onto me. My Ba was already… overextended."
He saw Bastion's brow crease at the term, but the other boy let it slide for the moment.
"I felt something." Julian continued. "Not enough to make sense of. Just… echoes. The kind you feel standing in a place where something terrible happened. I couldn't tell what. But the more I thought about it, the more one piece stood out: the discrepancy."
"What discrepancy?" Bastion asked.
"First of all, it was a confirmation that whatever happened there had a spiritual nature. Most energy traces there were chaotic messes, totally unrecognizable. Even a scarred place like that would have healed after two years, but the place was abandoned, so the traces were not overwritten. I could grasp elements of energy that… felt familiar enough." Julian said simply. "Obviously, the only one that fitted the bill in any sort of way was your brother. It was like a voice that had been dragged mid-sentence and pinned somewhere else, but never fully cut off. His and one other, unknown to me."
The truth, of course, was that he'd thought that because he already knew the story. Atticus and Fujiwara, the only two victims of the incident that resurged in any point. The dorm's scar had only kept him from dismissing that knowledge as delusion.
"The duel with Jinzo, and what Nightmare-Eyes tasted when he devoured him, just gave me enough additional data to stop calling it a gut feeling and start calling it a lead."
He let them sit with that.
Jasmine exhaled slowly. "So you've been carrying this around for days?"
"Yes." Julian said. "I intended to take a look at it before presenting anything, but I told you I had a lead. However, until I could at least be sure I wasn't wrong in the most basic way, I didn't want to create false hope. Especially not when I didn't even knew how to explain those things in a manner you accepted as true."
Alexis stared at him. For a second, all he could see was anger there: at the academy, at the dorm, at the universe… but something else glinted underneath it.
Gratitude, raw and fragile. She didn't voice it. She just nodded. Sharp, once.
"Okay…" she said. "Then let's talk about what comes next."
"Right." Jasmine said quickly, stepping in. "Because if a missing King candidate is walking around somewhere with… whatever did this to that dorm still attached to him, that's not exactly a 'let's sit on it' situation."
"And if there are spirits like Jinzo lurking around," Mindy added, "Draining students and playing these kind of games in our arenas, we can't exactly pretend that 'just studying for exams' is going to cut it as a survival strategy."
Bastion tapped his pen against his thigh, thinking. "We need a framework. Defensive techniques. A way to perceive and quantify spiritual pressure. Baseline training to prevent collapse under strain."
Syrus swallowed, then forced himself to nod. "And I… I wanna be there for that. I'm tired of being the one who hides behind everyone else when stuff gets scary."
Julian looked at each of them in turn. At Alexis, whose grief had finally found the shape of a direction. At Jasmine and Mindy, flanking her not out of panic but loyalty. At Bastion, already trying to reverse-engineer the metaphysics of a world no one had ever bothered to teach him. At Syrus, trembling but choosing to stand anyway. At Jaden, whose aura seemed to hum with silent approval.
He felt the weight of what he was about to say settle on his shoulders.
"Then you need to understand what you're asking for." he said quietly. "Because learning about this… about spirituality, about dueling with more than just cards, comes with a cost."
He shifted his stance, letting the words line up in his mind before he released them.
"Spirituality isn't just about sensing cute Duel Spirits and hearing your partner whisper encouragement. Once you start consciously using your Ba, your spiritual reserves, your life force… You're entering a space humanity isn't trained for anymore. Not like we used to be."
"Used to be?" Bastion repeated.
Julian nodded. "Back in the age of the Pharaohs, people knew how to manipulate spirit energy directly. Not just through their Ka, their manifested spiritual avatar. but with their own hands. Their own will. Rituals. Techniques. Refined control. They could condense energy into their limbs, throw it, shield entire groups, rewrite the terms of a duel mid-battle without touching a card."
"That… is both fascinating and horrifying." Bastion muttered.
"Most of that knowledge was lost," Julian said. "Maybe it was burned, maybe it was sealed, maybe people just stopped passing it down. Either way, what survived into our time are… fragments. Instincts. Some basic protective techniques. Enough to keep a sensitive person from being overwhelmed if they know how to use it. But the more intricate, flexible stuff? Gone."
He glanced down at his hand, flexed his fingers as if feeling for something invisible.
"Ka, though…" he continued. "Ka doesn't forget what it is. A Blue-Eyes doesn't wake up one day and forget how to unleash destructive force. Jinzo doesn't forget how to twist electricity and magnetism. And Nightmare-Eyes doesn't forget how to absorb, break down, and understand."
Jaden's eyes flickered at that, comprehension clicking. "That's why he could read Torrey's memories."
"And why he sensed Atticus differently." Alexis murmured, putting the pieces together.
"Exactly. My Ka's nature is… digestion. Absorption and conversion. Not just of power, but of meaning. He takes in, disassembles, comprehends. That's one of the many reasons why the Reject Well spirits accepted me so easily. I'm not the warm embrace of our local hero prodigy here that makes spirits and people flock naturally to him, but I had good intentions and was similar to the one they called protector." Julian joked, looking at the Slifer student that served as his own mentor.
Jaden rubbed the back of his neck, grinning in the way he always did when someone pointed out something embarrassingly true. "Hey, I don't know about people flocking to me. Spirits maybe, but…"
"People too." Jasmine cut in, dry but not unkind. "Positive or negative, you have a gravity to you. Just… a chaotic one."
Mindy nodded. "The kind that makes you worry and trust you at the same time. That you're going to absolutely mess it up, but that somehow everything will eventually work out. It's confusing."
Jaden blinked. "Uh… thanks?"
Julian huffed a soft laugh, then turned back to the others.
"Anyway… the reason the Reject Well spirits bonded to me so quickly wasn't just because I had good intentions. It's because my Ka's nature aligns with the one they recognized."
Alexis frowned slightly. "Recognized from who?"
Julian hesitated, then answered quietly:
"From Relinquished."
That got everyone's attention.
"Relinquished?" Bastion repeated. "The Relinquished? Pegasus's archetype, that you're using now? Similar to your big guy?"
Julian nodded. "The spirits down there… they weren't just abandoned. They were shaped by association. The Well wasn't always spiritual. It used to be nothing, just a disposal pit behind the Obelisk dorms, where students tossed cards they didn't think were useful anymore. Thousands of them, over years. The accumulated presence of discarded spirits made the area… dense. Concentrated. A spiritual hotspot."
Mindy's eyes widened. "So the Well was born because duelists were jerks?"
"Correct." Julian confirmed. "Consistent human negligence creates extremely powerful metaphysical garbage."
Jaden pointed at him. "See? That's what I've been saying. Littering is evil."
Jasmine raised a brow. "I never heard you say that. If you did, it was for your red friends."
"Well… I was thinking it really hard." corrected Jaden, scratching his head.
Julian sighed. "Point is, with so many spirits crammed into one place, they eventually needed… something to organize around. Something to make sense of themselves and protect them from any predator in the island like Jinzo. And the most powerful lingering imprint among the cards tossed there wasn't some Blue-Eyes knockoff or a failed Hero card." He paused. "It was Relinquished."
A tremor of movement brushed at Julian's ankle. Watapon peeked out, trembling but hopeful, and nudged against his shoe. Petit Dragon hovered near Alexis's shoulder, tiny wings beating anxiously. Happy Lover tried to pat Mindy's wrist, Mindy nearly jumped at the unexpected contact. Mokey Mokey materialized beside Jasmine, blinking upward like a confused pillow.
They weren't fully visible, but present—reacting to their own story being told.
Syrus's voice softened to a whisper. "So they followed him, then you?"
Julian nodded. "Relinquished was the strongest of the cards there. The most mature as well. The imprint of its presence was strong. Its nature… absorption, consumption, reconfiguration, mirrored their own experience. They were unwanted. So they gravitated toward the idea of something that could take in what others threw away and still… become whole."
Alexis exhaled slowly. "And when you showed up…"
"They saw the same shape." Julian said. "Or rather, Nightmare-Eyes did. He was still Relinquished back then. They felt compatibility, recognition. Something between what they remembered and what they needed. It helped that both Jaden and I wanted to take they away from there and give them a new home, and a new purpose."
Bastion's eyes sharpened. "So that explains the six decks."
Mindy blinked. "What?"
"The practice match." Bastion said. "The day you had all four of us duel with prebuilt decks. Those cards came from the Reject Well, didn't they?"
Syrus's mouth dropped open. "Oh. Oh! That's why those decks felt… weird. Like they had personalities."
Julian exhaled through his nose, not surprised they'd finally put the pieces together. "Yeah. Those decks were built from cards that had been abandoned in the Well. Nightmare-Eyes helped me sort them, channel them, stabilize their energies. Letting you all duel with them… it gave the spirits a new purpose. Hope, and fun. Even if they weren't serious battles, it was like a fun summer camp activity to them."
Syrus snapped his fingers. "That's why the images were so creative. You told us it probably was a update in the duel disk software!"
"What would he say?" Jasmine muttered. "That it was spiritual shenanigans from the reject spirits finally having some fun?"
Mindy crossed her arms. "Okay, but that still doesn't explain the… creature. Nightmare-Eyes. How does Relinquished turn into that? They are similar, but not the same."
Julian hesitated, though not out of uncertainty. He was choosing the version of the truth he could tell. "Relinquished became my Ka."
The group froze.
"My… what now?" Syrus asked.
"Ka." Julian repeated. "It's the spiritual double. The part of you that manifests power and takes form into a supernatural being. A duel spirit, you might say. The inspiration behind most Duel Monsters. What you saw during the duel with Jinzo, that was my Ka."
Jasmine narrowed her eyes. "But Relinquished doesn't look like that."
Julian exhaled slowly. "Most Kas start the same way… as something formless. A pressure, a presence. A shadow of what you are on the inside before it ever becomes visible on the outside. For most people, a Ka manifests only after years of exposure to Duel Spirits, or after some defining awakening. It isn't… supposed to begin as a complete spirit."
Bastion leaned forward, analytical instinct already spinning. "So Relinquished was not your Ka. But it… became one?"
"Not by design." Julian rubbed his thumb against his palm, a grounding habit. "Relinquished wasn't born from me. It was already a Spirit with its own history. When it attached itself to me, it did so to stabilize something that was going wrong. Having so many spirits connected to someone can drain them. My energy output wasn't keeping up with the number of connections. I was burning faster than I could regenerate."
Jasmine's mouth tightened. "So Relinquished helped you?"
"It tried." Julian said. "But when it reached into my core to check the flow of energy, it touched more than it meant to. Think of it like… dipping a cup into a river, and the current pulling the whole cup under. My essence and his structure tangled. Not because either of us chose it, but because we were too compatible for the contact to stay shallow."
Alexis frowned, thoughtful. "And that forced the change?"
Julian nodded. "It didn't belong to me, not originally. But once the connection formed, Relinquished was dragged inward. My energy seeped into it, reshaped it. And while that happened, it consumed what it needed to survive the transition. That's why I collapsed. My body thought I was losing energy; in reality, my Ka was forming."
"So Nightmare-Eyes is… the fusion of the two?" Mindy asked.
"More like the result of the collision." Julian answered. "Relinquished as you knew it dissolved. What emerged wasn't a spirit borrowing my strength, it was a spirit built around my strength. My instincts. My nature. My limits and my potential. It became the shape my Ka would've taken if it had manifested on its own, except it kept the imprint of what Relinquished used to be."
Syrus's hand went up like he was in class. "So wait… Nightmare-Eyes looks the way it does because it's you, but also because it used to be Relinquished?"
"Yup." Julian said. "Relinquished's body was like scaffolding. My essence filled it, rewrote it, and when the process finished, the scaffolding broke away."
Jasmine blinked. "And that thing protects you?"
"It does more than that." Julian said, voice lowering with a mix of respect and something nearly paternal. "It balances me. It stabilizes my energy. It gives shape to what I project. Since he awakened, the reason I'm not collapsed every time a spirit tugged at me… is because Nightmare-Eyes handles the energy distribution. He was also the one handling your protection while I dueled Jinzo, so his spiritual pressure could not affect you all in the same way anymore."
Bastion's eyes widened slightly. The expression of someone realizing they were standing closer to the edge of the supernatural than they'd thought. "So when we saw it behind you…"
"You were seeing me, in a sense." Julian said. "The part of me that can fight. The part of me that can anchor spirits. The part that answered when Jinzo threatened you."
Mindy let out a low whistle. "Okay, yeah. That… actually makes sense. In a terrifying, I-need-to-sleep-with-a-night-light kind of way."
Julian huffed a laugh. "Believe me, it terrified me first."
Bastion was staring at him with an expression halfway between awe and horror. "Julian… how long have you been dealing with all of this?"
Julian opened his mouth, but Jaden beat him to it.
"A week."
The word detonated in the air.
Alexis blinked. "I'm sorry… What?"
Jaden shrugged, wincing apologetically. "Yeah. He only awakened last week. Right after that duel against Daigo. I've been giving him crash courses since."
Syrus reeled. "You mean… ONE week? All this stuff with the Well? Nightmare-Eyes? The Ka? The spiritual drain? You handled all that in a WEEK?!"
Julian's expression was painfully dry. "I never said I handled it well."
Jasmine looked utterly offended on his behalf. "Okay, what the hell… these are not beginner problems, Julian! These are 'ancient priests and unhinged pharaohs' problems!"
"Yeah." Mindy agreed, staring at him like he'd grown a second head. "You don't go from zero to 'my Ka ate Jinzo's soul' in six business days."
Bastion paced once, absorbing. "But then your collapse makes perfect sense…"
Mindy's brow furrowed. "That's why you fell. So that almost killed you."
"Yeah." Julian said wryly. "Because my Ba, the human part, wasn't ready to carry all of them at once."
He saw the moment realization passed through them like a shockwave.
"Wait..." Jasmine said. "You mean your whole 'I'm tired because of classes' thing…"
"Was a lie." Bastion finished bluntly.
Julian shrugged, a small, apologetic motion. "A half-truth. I was tired from studying. But that alone doesn't make you feel like your soul's being sandpapered from the inside. That was the Well, with Nightmare-Eyes transformation adding pressure. They latched on hard, all at once. It gave me sensitivity, but it also put me under constant strain."
Syrus stared. "And you didn't say anything?"
"I didn't knew everything. I learned most of what I do with Jaden and Nightmare-Eyes, and I didn't have access to him for a while. And what was I supposed to say?" Julian asked gently. "'Hey, guys, I can't keep up because a bunch of baby Duel Spirits decided I'm their emotional support partner' and I'm too attached to say no? I didn't even know how to describe it at first."
Jaden snorted. "Dude, that… actually tracks."
"And now?" Alexis asked quietly. "You're still carrying them. You're still connected. Is it still… hurting you?"
Julian shook his head.
"No." he said. "Not like before."
He hesitated, then decided they deserved this part, too.
"Nightmare-Eyes did not only defeat Jinzo." he explained. "You saw him, in the last attack. It devoured him. He didn't just take his power. He took his structure. Jinzo was… dense. Heavy. A spirit built to handle huge loads of energy. Nightmare-Eyes is… eating that, slowly, like a snake working through a very stupid, very dangerous meal."
"Boa constrictor." Bastion compared automatically.
Julian's mouth twitched. "Something like that. And while that happens, my system… My Ba, my link with Nightmare-Eyes, is being reinforced. Giving my soul time to grow into the power necessary to hold all of this weight on its own. I'm not suddenly invincible, but the weight of the Well doesn't crush me like it did before. It's lightweight. I'm overflowing with power with a full tank in my disposal."
For a long moment, nobody said anything.
"That's… a lot." Mindy said softly. "To be carrying. Alone."
"I'm not alone." Julian replied, deliberately meeting each of their eyes. "Never was, but especially not anymore."
That settled something in the air. Pulled a knot loose somewhere none of them had realized they'd been holding. And then he went back to the core point.
"So when I say this path is dangerous…" he said, "I'm not being poetic. Once you start opening yourself up, reaching out, connecting to things beyond the cards, you stop being just kids throwing monsters at each other. You start being… noticeable."
"Noticed by what?" Syrus asked, voice small.
"By anything out there strong enough to feel you." Julian answered. "Some things, like the Well spirits, just want comfort. Companionship. A home. Others want fuel. Or control. Or entertainment. They push. They probe. They take."
He paused, then added. "We're not the first ones in modern times to ever go through this."
That got Bastion's full attention. "You're referring to documented duels with apparently anomalous physical consequences."
"Exactly." Julian said. "Most elite duelists are on that list. Jaden learned it from a former World Champion, after all. Take Joey Wheeler versus Marik, in the Battle City finals. Officially, the broadcast says he collapsed from exhaustion, strain. But if you watch closely…" He cut himself off before he could say something crazy like as I did, from my couch in another world.
"If you study what happened, it becomes pretty clear it wasn't just physical. Every attack from Ra carried more than damage on the Life Point counter. Joey kept standing when he shouldn't have, pushed past the limit of what a normal body can endure, of what his own spirit could withhold. And then, right when he finally drew the card that could win him the duel…"
"He collapsed." Jaden finished softly. He'd seen that recording too.
"He had the win on the board." Julian said. "But he couldn't finish the sequence. His Ba gave out. Too much cumulative spiritual strain. The duel didn't kill him. But the spiritual pressure crippled his ability to act at the critical moment."
Syrus shivered. "So you're saying if we mess this up, that could be us."
"I'm saying that if you learn this stuff, you gain tools to avoid that. But the process of learning it also paints a bigger target on you. You become someone that kind of pressure can find." Julian replied.
He let that hang for a beat.
"Doors you open from your side…" he pointed quietly. "Can open from the other side too."
It slipped out more intense than he intended. A metaphor pulled from a lifetime of stories about staring into abysses and having them stare back.
And that, finally, made Jaden react.
"Man…" Jaden said, half laughing, half serious, "Sometimes you talk like you've been doing this for years. It's easy to forget you only started training a week ago."
Julian gave them a dry smile.
"Yeah. I'm good at pattern recognition, and Nightmare-Eyes does a lot of the heavy lifting on the spirit side. But I'm not some veteran exorcist with a decade of practice hidden under my jacket."
"That would be a weirdly specific thing to hide under a jacket." Jasmine muttered, but she was listening.
"What I do have…" Julian continued. "Is a Ka that specializes in taking in information and power and breaking it down into something I can understand. I have a… let's call it a very accelerated crash course courtesy of the Reject Well, Jinzo's stupid decisions, and a frankly irresponsible amount of luck. And I have Jaden."
They all turned slightly toward Jaden.
He scratched his cheek, a bit embarrassed. "I mean, yeah. I've been dealing with Duel Spirits since I was a kid. Koyo taught me some stuff. The rest I kinda…figured out on the fly. I'm not great at explaining it. Julian is. So we make it work."
Julian shrugged. "He's the one with the instinct. I just translate."
Bastion exhaled, some tension easing out of his shoulders. "That… actually lines up with everything I've observed so far."
"So…" Alexis said, voice steady, pulling them back to the heart of the matter. "If we agree to do this, if we agree to learn… What then?"
"Then we start with basics." Julian said. "Perception, shielding. How not to accidentally invite something into your Ba when you're just trying to sense the room. How to support each other if someone starts to crack under pressure."
"And eventually…" Jasmine added, eyes sharp. "How to walk into that dorm and not get eaten."
"Yes." Julian said. "Eventually. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not until we're ready."
Alexis opened her mouth. Ready, by reflex, to say 'I don't have time for eventually'. But then, she stopped. The image of Torrey convulsing under Jinzo's influence, of the arena floor crackling with energy, of Julian staggering but still standing at the end of it… it all rose up at once. She let out a breath.
"I don't like waiting, not now that I have a path to follow." she admitted. "But I like the idea of charging in blind and getting everyone killed even less."
Mindy relaxed a fraction at that. "Good. Because I was absolutely going to tackle you if you tried walking to the dorm tonight."
"You and me both." Jasmine added.
Syrus looked around at all of them. "So… we're really doing this?"
Bastion nodded, a determined light in his eyes. "This represents an entirely new field of study. Even the metaphysical should still be defined by rules. I'd be mad at myself for not exploring it."
"I'm not letting Alexis walk into this alone." Jasmine said again, firmer.
"Same." Mindy agreed. "If she's going, we're going."
Syrus took one more shaky breath. Then straightened. "I promised I'd get strong enough to stand across from you in a duel, Julian. I'm not backing down from that just because there's ghosts involved."
Julian felt something warm twist in his chest. He smiled. Real, if tired.
"Then…" he finally pointed. "We'll figure it out together."
"Not here, though." Jaden added a second later, glancing around. "This spot's way too exposed. Teachers come through here. Security cameras probably still work on this side. And I dunno about you, but I'd rather not give Crowler a heart attack the first time someone pops their Ba by accident."
Syrus visibly paled. "Please let's not."
"Yeah, no." Jasmine said. "Last thing we need is him thinking this is some elaborate Slifer conspiracy to tank the school's reputation or something."
Mindy rolled her eyes. "He already thinks that."
Jaden jerked a thumb toward one of the side paths. "There's a nice open area secluded from view near the red dorm. Near the sea, nice breeze, good feeling. Spirits like it. And it's tucked away enough that we can screw up without an audience."
Julian nodded. "That works."
"Lead the way," Alexis said.
Jaden flashed her a quick, sincere grin. "You got it."
They started walking. Not in a neat, organized procession, but clustered, close enough that arms brushed now and then as they navigated the path. Jaden and Syrus drifted ahead, arguing quietly about how would be the final duel between Yugi and Joey if he actually turned out to be successful and stayed conscious. The possibilities of his deck using the third god card. Julian broke the argument for a bit with his own thoughts.
"Even if he defeated Marik and took Ra by the Ante Rule in the tournament, he couldn't use it. You need to chant the hieratic text to the god card to be able to summon it, at least with Ra. He didn't knew the words, so…"
"And why in the Toon World Pegasus decided to make a card to need a password? One in ancient egyptian at that?" questioned Jasmine. Julian shrugged, and the conversation continued.
Stone paths gave way to packed dirt, lantern posts spaced wider apart, the murmur of other students fading until it was just the wind and the sea and the crunch of their own footsteps. Jaden walked ahead with the easy confidence of someone who barely believed in getting lost. The others spread out behind him in a loose cluster.
Jaden led the way, hands behind his head, humming something tuneless. "Trust me." he called back over his shoulder. "This spot's perfect. Open air, no cameras, no nosy professors, and absolutely nobody knows it exists except me and, like… two seagulls."
"Three." Syrus corrected. "There's a particularly aggressive one that's been stalking the dorm all week."
"Ah, Marvin." Jaden nodded. "He judges duelists on scent alone."
Jasmine raised a brow. "That's not real."
"It could be real." Jaden countered.
"You're not helping. I'm already shocked from all the spirit stuff. Don't make me believe in duelist seagulls." Mindy muttered.
"A duelist gorilla would be more likely, honestly." Julian pointed, remembering scenes from the anime.
They laughed for a bit and walked mostly in silence for a moment after that, the kind that wasn't awkward, just full. Alexis lingered near Julian, though not so close as to seem deliberate. Bastion walked with his arms folded, lost in thought. The breeze softened even Jasmine's shoulders, and Mindy breathed a little deeper as the sounds of the academy faded behind them.
But Syrus… Syrus kept glancing at Julian.
Not accusing or confused… just wanting.
Julian noticed on the third glance.
"You can ask." he said gently.
Syrus startled, then nodded, rubbing his arm. "Earlier, when you were talking about Atticus and Zane… I just…" He swallowed. "I didn't know my brother had someone like that. A friend. A rival. Someone he respected enough to… to change titles over."
Alexis slowed her pace, listening.
Julian breathed in the ocean air, choosing where to pick up the story. "From what I know, they were good friends." he said. "Not necessarily the closest ones, but they understood each other. Kindred spirits in a sense. Two duelists with insane potential, working through very different paths."
"Zane is the quiet one." Jaden added with a grin. "Still is. He doesn't talk unless it's important."
"Or unless food's involved back home." added Syrus, jokingly.
"That's… Quite a shattering from his cool persona." Jasmine murmured.
"I guess even the Kaiser is different in his home." added Mindy.
Julian continued, "Atticus was the opposite. Loud in all the ways Zane wasn't. Flirtatious, friendly. Warm in general. The type of guy who shows up to help anyone: Slifer, Ra, Obelisk. Someone that could make friends with the upper echelon of the academy and the lowest rated students and have them all accept it, even if they don't like each other, because that's who he is."
Alexis's jaw tightened, but she didn't look away.
"Atticus and Zane both had that intangible thing people look for in a leader, in different senses." Julian said. "Presence. Atticus drew people in with charisma. Zane did it with sheer force of competence. But both fit the mold."
Syrus tilted his head. "So… they really were equal?"
"In potential? Yes. Completely." Julian met his eyes. "And that's why the academy expected one of them to eventually become the King."
Jaden whistled low. "Man. Imagine those two going all out."
"They did," Julian said softly. "During training. Sparring. Pushing each other. There is a record, you know. 56 to 55 to Atticus, with 4 ties."
"And then…" Bastion's voice was reflective, like he was gathering intel for a theorem. "The dorm."
"When the dorm collapsed, it didn't just take people. It took momentum. Atticus wasn't just some promising Obelisk. He was a symbol in the making. Someone everybody could point to and say: that's where we're headed." Julian explained. He briefly shifted his gaze to Alexis. "When that happened overnight, it left a vacuum."
Alexis's lips pressed together, but she said nothing.
"On paper, the obvious answer was Zane. He was already winning everything worth winning. Top scores, undefeated streaks, calm, disciplined, technically brilliant. If you were looking for a King in the 'strongest duelist' sense, he fit."
Syrus nodded faintly, that part he knew.
"But the King title isn't something they throw at first-years." Julian went on. "It's usually reserved for upperclassmen. Faces the academy can present to the world. So after the incident, they didn't offer it immediately, as there was already a King. The administration… waited. Even if the norm was to already look into someone to fill the gap when the previous King graduated, people needed time to grieve, to pretend it was a tragic accident and not…" He let the sentence die.
"And then?" Bastion prompted softly.
"Nexe year, Zane kept winning." Julian said. "He was the closest thing the academy had to a human fortress. Other schools were already taking notes. Sponsors started circling. The seat was finally empty and somewhere in the middle of all of that finally said, 'We should name a new King.'"
He kicked a loose pebble off the path, watching it bounce once before dropping into the grass.
"They approached Zane." Julian said. "Quietly. Informally at first. Faculty, staff, people from the Duel Committee. 'You're the natural candidate. We can make it official next month.'"
Syrus glanced down. "And he said no."
"Every single time." Julian replied. "Politely. Firmly. He made it very clear: that crown wasn't his. Not in the way it had been meant to be."
Mindy tilted her head. "So what, he didn't think he deserved it?"
"He thought someone else had been meant to stand there first," Julian said. "If he took it, it would feel like accepting a promotion on a classmate's grave. And Zane… might be ruthless in a duel, but he's not that kind of ruthless."
The path dipped slightly, opening just enough for the sea to flash in full view—blue and relentless.
"People thought he'd give in eventually." Julian said. "They asked again and again. Every time, same answer: he'd be the academy's shield, their champion, their point man in every tournament… but he wouldn't wear that title."
Bastion's brows drew together. "From an institutional standpoint, that's… awkward."
"From a human standpoint, it's nice of him." Jasmine countered.
Julian nodded. "Chancellor Sheppard ended up in the middle. On the one hand, he had this ridiculously powerful student, his Cyber-Style Dojo student, who absolutely fit the image the academy wanted to project. On the other hand, he had a kid telling him, essentially, 'I'll carry your banner, but I won't take my friend's ghost's seat.'"
Syrus looked up sharply. "He said that? To Sheppard?"
"I have no idea, but probably not in those words." Julian said. "But close enough that the meaning was obvious. Zane's not a poet, but he's not vague when it counts."
The wind picked up, tugging at their jackets.
"So Sheppard did something very… Sheppard." Julian went on. "He split the difference. If Zane wouldn't take the King's seat, he'd give him another one. A title created with Kaiba's permission and using his influence as Cyber-Style master instead of the academy's student tradition."
Jaden, still leading, called back, "He loves his brand, that guy."
"Yes…" Julian said. "Hence: Kaiser. Not a replacement for King, just a different axis. If King was the academy's crown, Kaiser became its spear. Zane could represent the school at the top level without feeling like he'd stolen a throne."
Bastion hummed thoughtfully. "So institutionally, King remained… vacant."
"Publicly vacant." Julian corrected. "Officially, they just stopped talking about it. No new crowning ceremonies. No plaques. Just… silence. But students keep their own scorecards. They fill in the blanks the faculty leave empty."
Alexis's voice, when it came, was very quiet. "That's when they started calling him that, isn't it?"
Julian didn't have to ask who she meant.
"Yeah." he said. "It didn't happen overnight. At first, people just said things like, 'If Atticus were here…' or 'He would've been King by now.' Upperclassmen who remembered him kept the story alive. Zane refusing the title? That only reinforced it."
He glanced at Syrus.
"Your brother walking around with a brand-new title no one had ever used before, while the 'old' one stayed empty… People connected dots. They started talking about Atticus as the King who never got crowned."
Mindy breathed out, almost a sigh. "Crownless."
"Crownless." Julian agreed. "Crownless because he never had the ceremony. Never wore the mantle. But everyone knew the shape of where he should've stood."
Syrus's steps had slowed. "So when people look at Zane and call him Kaiser, they're also… remembering Atticus."
"In a way, yes." Julian said. "They're two sides of the same story now. The duelist who stayed and carried the academy forward, and the one who vanished before he could."
Alexis stared ahead, eyes fixed on nothing. "They made him a legend because they had no body to bury and no truth they were allowed to say out loud."
No one argued with that.
Jasmine kicked at a tuft of grass. "And you got all of that through Jinzo, huh? That's a lot of information for a single angry magnet-brain to be holding."
Julian gave a faint, humorless smile. "Jinzo remembered a lot of things, yes. But you don't think I got here without making the proper research about the top dogs at the academy, right? Especially after our lovely Alexis here asked for my help."
Syrus stared at the ground. "…I never knew."
Alexis looked toward the sea, hair catching the wind. "People don't talk about it much. Everyone wants to pretend the academy is perfect."
"And it is." Jaden said brightly. "Except for all the cursed buildings, haunted forests, rogue spirits, and flaming horsemen."
"Why do you say these things casually?" Jasmine demanded.
"Because if I say them seriously…" Jaden answered, "I'd have to accept how often they happen near me."
Julian snorted before he could stop himself.
The trail curved downward, and Jaden hopped over a fallen branch, motioning for them to follow. "We're close. The spirits like this place, don't know why. Probably the breeze."
As if on cue, Petit Dragon zipped past them, spiraling through the wind like a piece of colored glass caught in sunlight. Happy Lover floated lazily after it. Even Mokey Mokey materialized briefly to flop onto a patch of moss before dissipating with a contented squeak.
"They do seem calmer here." Mindy observed.
Jaden grinned. "Told you. Good vibes."
Julian stepped beside Alexis again, lowering his voice enough for only the closest to hear. "And that's the other reason I'm telling all of this now. Your brother mattered: to Zane, to the academy, to more people than just you. His story isn't forgotten. Even now people remember the Crownless King of Central Academy."
Alexis didn't look at him. But her hand brushed against his. Barely, unintentionally, but real.
"…Thank you." she whispered, vulnerable.
Before Julian could answer, Jaden pointed ahead dramatically. "BEHOLD! The super-secret Slifer Training Grounds!"
It was a clearing. A natural bowl of space framed by wind-worn cliffs and tall grass, half-hidden from sight unless you knew exactly where to look. The sea glittered behind it, sending mist through the air, cool and comforting. A lone, twisted tree leaned toward the ocean like it had been bowing for a century.
Bastion blinked. "This is actually… beautiful."
Jasmine admitted, "It's nicer than I expected for something Jaden 'found.'"
"Hey!" Jaden protested, "I find cool stuff."
"No one is disputing that." Mindy said. "We're disputing how you find it."
Jaden shrugged. "I don't question the process."
Julian stepped into the clearing, letting the breeze move through him. He could feel Nightmare-Eyes settle, almost purringly, beneath his skin. The spirits of the Well flickered in and out among the grasses, their shapes blurred by sunlight.
It was peaceful, private. Absolutely perfect. He turned back to the group.
"Alright," Julian said softly. "If we're really doing this… then this is where it starts."