The Age of Shadows

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Thanks to @ryoubandwagon on tumblr for the cover art! They're takkng commissions and I'd seriously recommend their artwork!
This is my first ever post-canon story that isn't an AU. I hope everyone enjoys!

Yugi's eyes filled with tears as he watched the spirit of Pharaoh Atem fade away, his body screaming and burning in a lake of fire which expands across the world, destroying the small towns of Egypt. Dying cries ring through the desert, the pyramids shaking and crumbling as Zorc crushes them underfoot. "D-Don't leave me alone..." Yūgi whimpers, falling to his knees as the unresponsive spirit becomes nothing more than a velvet black sky. And then a red beam shoots across this sky, the clouds billowing over scarlet lightning. Blood begins to rain down upon the world, Yugi lying down, curling up with nothing left to live for. "Y-Yami...I have to see you again..."

His hands ball into fists and he accepts his death, feeling the flames lick around his body, encroaching closer and closer.

On molten rock, black rock which overlooks the lake of fire, the shadows whip around Akefia's body, changing him morphing him into the creation of Zorc. Zorc has been trapped inside him until now, inside that scrawny 5 foot 6 teenager, what a waste of life. What a low point, that he had to cling to existence through the thoughts of Akefia.

But Akefia was worthy and to thank him, Zorc will leave his mind. Leave his body. Uncloud his judgement and personality and manifest him into Ryou's body.

Bakura opens his eyes, staring over the planes of Egypt as Zorc's terror begins to unfold. He was just in his own body again after 3,000 years in a ring. In that cold dimension of silence and suffering. And now he's back there, trapped now not in a ring but in a body that isn't his own, the one that belongs to Ryou Bakura. One that feels foreign, one his disassociates with. He notices his reflection in the blood, disconnecting it to what he knows it should be. Replacing pale skin with dark, white hair with grey, brown eyes with amethyst and adding the jagged scars but then the blood shifts and his reflection returns to what it actually is.

Not him.

Bakura begins to cry, sobbing loudly at the top of his voice, waiting as all his memories and fears and feelings Zorc repressed return all at once, waves of pain and complete melancholy crashing into his brain over and over, bruising it. "I'm all alone..." he whispers. He looks for Zorc's voice in his head but it's no longer there. He is completely alone, surrounded by the pandemonium of revelation.

4 Years Later.

Marik steps down from his bed, staring vacantly into his mirror. Hair sticking up and plastered against his face, blonde locks shimmering from morning light streaming into his bedroom he's lived in for two weeks. That tiny bedroom, dark and enclosed, felt safe after the wide deserts and exposed elements, buildings without windows, hanging over the street as wind whistled into his home. No, he isn't there anymore. No longer in the vast country of Egypt. Instead, he's in Domino City, the second largest city in England. Marik twirls hair between his fingers as he set up his battery-powered hair straighteners, straightening his hair in the mirror, watching the smoke arise from the coarse, straw-like strands. After returning to Egypt after Battle City he was studying theology at a secular private university in Egypt, a Religious School which was incredibly prestigious with an Azhar Education. He was so over-qualified and had ah a vast knowledge he was on track to obtain his degree a year early. But he couldn't stay there...

The shadows have consumed the country of Egypt. They flock to where the magic is strongest and Egypt, East Asia, the rural Middle East, Latin America and Domino City were the places they concentrated in. Nothing survived, everything nature sustained wiped out. He had to leave, felt like an ass abandoning his siblings for a quest to discover something more, to make an impact on a world he helped destroy.