Chapter 52

The abandoned dorm.

By the time Rowan and Alexis retraced their steps and made it inside, they didn't have to look far.

Jaden, Syrus, and Chumley were already stacked on top of each other again, trembling in a huddle like startled animals.

"I have to ask," Rowan said flatly, sweeping the small flashlight over them.

"Are you three actually cut out for this?"

"Rowan! Alexis!"

Syrus, bristling like a spooked cat while he and Chumley were still half-draped over Jaden, was the first to speak, voice wobbling.

"We think we just saw something! This huge black shape, it just shot past out of nowhere!"

Both Syrus and Chumley's legs were still shaking as they said it.

Jaden, for his part, was bent nearly double under their combined weight, too compressed to say anything at all.

The color had drained from his face.

"Rowan."

Alexis caught it immediately.

She glanced at him, the question already in her eyes.

Rowan gave a small nod.

The huge dark shape the three of them had seen dart into the abandoned dorm was almost certainly Titan, still doggedly on the job despite the punishment he'd taken earlier.

"Kuriboh."

The round little spirit materialized beside him, tiny arms gesturing to point out the direction with a soft cry.

"That shadow you saw wasn't a ghost or anything like that," Rowan told the three of them.

"It's the same person who almost grabbed Alexis. He's here because he wants to duel me."

Jaden, Syrus, and Chumley all stared at him for a moment.

Then they untangled themselves and stood up properly.

"Someone who tried to grab Alexis just to get at you?" Chumley said, his expression hardening.

"No way we let that slide."

"Right! Absolutely not letting that slide!"

Syrus added, with considerably more outrage than was probably about the Alexis part.

Being caught clinging to Jaden twice in one night, in front of both Rowan and Alexis, meant he was ready to throw himself into any available distraction.

"That jerk dressed up like a ghost and scared us half to death!"

"If there's a duel happening, I say we go find him right now."

Jaden's reason was, characteristically, entirely different from the others'.

Of course it is.

Rowan kept that thought to himself.

But since everyone was in agreement, he nodded and summed it up simply.

"Then we move. Find the one who went deeper into the dorm."

Alexis nodded without hesitation.

The group moved out, flashlight cutting through the dark ahead of them.

With the Kuriboh guiding the way, Rowan wasn't worried about getting lost.

The dorm wasn't especially large, and there weren't many places to turn.

They passed through a short stretch of worn corridor, the walls old and close, and came out into a wide, open chamber.

Stone walls. Rough-hewn and stacked with an almost deliberate irregularity, like someone had built a cave inside a building.

"Why," Rowan said, "does a school dormitory have a room like this in it."

He filed that one away as a question that probably didn't have a satisfying answer.

What did catch his attention was what was already inside.

A thin layer of white mist curled low across the floor, drifting in slow, lazy coils as though it had been there waiting for them.

"What is that...?" Jaden murmured.

"Heh heh heh... so you've finally arrived."

The laugh came from somewhere ahead, low and muffled, rolling through the empty chamber.

Beneath the theatrical menace, there was also, if one listened carefully, the faintest undercurrent of a man who was trying very hard not to wince.

"Waaaah!!" Syrus and Chumley immediately plastered themselves against Jaden's sides again.

"Who's there?!"

Even Alexis instinctively moved a step closer to Rowan, her eyes fixed sharp on the drifting mist.

Her voice was firm, but there was an edge underneath it.

She already had a guess.

But the mist was strange enough to unsettle anyone, and she was quietly wondering if the person responsible for her brother's disappearance was somewhere inside it.

"You want a duel with me, you didn't have to go through all this trouble," Rowan said, looking at the mist with undisguised weariness.

"You could have just asked."

The fog machine theatrics. The dramatic entrance. The psychological buildup.

Was this man putting on a circus?

"Hmph. You clearly have no idea what a Shadow Game truly is, boy."

The voice came again, and with it, a tall figure in a black trench coat materialized slowly from within the mist, as though the fog itself were assembling him piece by piece.

A black bat mask. A dark wide-brimmed hat. Dueling equipment strapped across his chest and wrists, dense and deliberate.

"Welcome to the place where you will duel me. I am a duelist of darkness. A duel hunter."

He fixed his gaze on Rowan through the mask.

"Titan."

"And you, Rowan, are my mark tonight."

"A Shadow Game duelist?!"

The reaction rippled through the group instantly. Alexis. Jaden. Syrus. All of them staring.

"That can't be real," Syrus said, voice barely holding. "Shadow Games actually existing, that's..."

"You'd need a Millennium Item for that," Jaden said, something cold and wary crossing his face for once.

"Do you actually have one?"

"Hmph. Children are children. Standing before the truth and still refusing to accept it."

Titan reached into his coat and produced a small golden pyramid-shaped object, hung on a cord.

On its surface, a single eye-like emblem gleamed in pure gold.

The moment it was drawn out, it pulsed with a brief flash of light.

"This is my Millennium Item. The Millennium Puzzle Piece."

What Titan didn't notice was the look on Rowan's face as he held it up.

It had gotten very strange.