Chapter 106: Alexis’s Classic Death Flag

"There's a small tatami guest room on this floor. You can rest there tonight if you'd like."

Rowan considered the situation and nodded, making the offer with what he privately felt was admirable restraint.

He wouldn't have minded offering half the bed instead.

But he had a reasonably good sense of how that suggestion would land, and the self-preservation instinct won out.

Alexis's self-defense reflexes were not something he wanted to test at this hour. Or any hour, really.

For the sake of his continued physical wellbeing, he kept that thought entirely to himself and directed her to the guest room instead.

He had originally intended it as a tea room of sorts, which was why it had been fitted with tatami mats.

The tea things hadn't been sorted yet, so the room was mostly empty.

Alexis showing up unannounced had simply accelerated its first practical use.

A spare futon and bedding were all it needed, and he happened to have a guest set on hand.

"...Thank you. Sorry for the intrusion."

Alexis dipped her head, a flicker of genuine awkwardness crossing her face.

Then, once the words were out, she quietly turned the situation over in her own mind.

Alexis.

What exactly are you doing?

If anyone saw her spending the night here alone with Rowan, the conclusions they'd jump to were obvious.

She hadn't quite thought that part through until just now.

She pressed the thought down firmly and set it aside.

It wasn't productive. She was here for a reason.

...

"There's a chance the Seven Stars people showing up might have some connection to your brother."

Rowan brought it up as they walked toward the upper floor, turning it over briefly before deciding she deserved the heads-up.

Better she had time to process it than be blindsided if things went sideways tonight.

"A connection to my brother?"

Alexis stopped for just a moment, something shifting in her expression.

She remembered.

Rowan had mentioned it before, that the next encounter with a shadow duel might turn up some kind of lead related to her brother's disappearance.

And when she thought about it more carefully, there weren't that many shadow duelists operating in this world.

If her brother's disappearance had a cause beyond ordinary explanation, the Seven Stars were exactly the kind of organization that might be involved.

There was also the dark dueling ritual space that had been discovered in the abandoned dormitory.

The setup there had come from records left behind by the Seven Stars.

Nobody had been able to determine who specifically arranged it, not officially anyway.

But the pieces were starting to form a shape.

"Understood."

Alexis gave a firm, composed nod.

Rowan passed her the spare futon and bedding, waited while she arranged them, then paused at the guest room doorway.

"Goodnight, then."

"Kriiiik."

The round Kuriboh materialized briefly beside him and waved a tiny round paw in Alexis's direction in what was clearly meant to be a farewell gesture.

She couldn't see it.

"You too. Stay alert in case they decide to show up in the middle of the night," Alexis said, nodding.

Then the air changed.

A deep violet light bloomed without warning inside the guest room, spreading outward like an expanding barrier.

Within seconds it had enveloped the entire room, then pushed further, sealing around both of them in a contained field of force.

The round Kuriboh, still perched on Rowan's shoulder, suddenly became fully solid.

"What is this?!"

Alexis reacted immediately, eyes fixed on the spreading light.

A spirit becoming physical. A contained dueling space manifesting around them.

It was similar to what had happened in the abandoned dormitory, unmistakably so.

"Well," Rowan said, his mouth pulling to one side. "Impeccable timing."

With the sensitivity that had come from acquiring the Dragon's Heart, he could perceive these kinds of energies more clearly now.

And what he was picking up told him that a second barrier, identical in origin, had simultaneously enclosed the Slifer Red dormitory next door.

Same source. Same moment.

...

The violet field blazed white, sudden and total.

Rowan and Alexis instinctively shut their eyes against it.

When they opened them again, the guest room was gone.

They were standing at the interior of a volcanic crater. Black ring-shaped rock walls rose around them on all sides.

Beneath their feet was a luminous white energy surface, hovering over a vast lake of red-hot magma.

Thin threads of dark smoke drifted upward from somewhere in the distance.

"Rowan! Alexis! Over here!"

A voice rang out from somewhere below, cracking with relief at the edge of tears.

"That sounds like..." Alexis said slowly. "Jaden? And Syrus?"

They both looked toward the source, out over the glowing magma lake.

There, resting on a claw-shaped rock formation above the lava, sat a sealed pale-blue sphere of light.

Pressed against the inside of it, barefoot and wide-eyed, were Jaden, Syrus, and Chumley, hands flat against the glowing surface, calling out to them.

Pulled out of bed in the middle of the night, by the look of it.

"Hm," Rowan said, his expression doing something complicated. "They even grabbed Jaden."

In the original story, only Syrus and Chumley had been taken. Hostages to pressure Jaden into a shadow duel.

But because Rowan was here, the situation had shifted. All three of them had been swept up, and from the way things were arranged, it was fairly clear that the primary target had changed as well.

They were here for him.