The corrugated zinc roof groaned every time the wind pulled across the Satellite's northern shoreline. Ryuki Sato pulled the frayed wool blanket tighter around his shoulders. The concrete floor beneath his thin foam mat seeped cold straight through his clothes, biting into his hips and spine. Across the cramped utility room, Leo was already snoring softly, his small head resting on an oil-stained duffel bag. Ryuki stared up at the rusted water pipes tracing the dark ceiling. His right forearm throbbed with a rhythmic, dull heat. He unbuttoned his cuff and pulled back the damp fabric of his sleeve. The arched crimson curve pressed into his flesh flickered like dying coals. It was not a tattoo. Tattoos did not hum against the pulse in a man's wrist. He clamped his left hand over it, squeezing until the dull ache turned sharp. Momentum. Synchro Summoning. Signers. The terms Leo had rattled off inside the dueling den circled in his head like vultures. In his past life, card games were played on tabletop mats or digital screens. Decks were built with exact ratios, hand traps, and carefully calculated win conditions. Here, a card game powered the city's grid. A card game made law enforcement carry shock-batons and magnetic binders. And whatever had happened hours ago—that unnatural tremor that turned the sky into bruised velvet—had nothing to do with card text. Ryuki closed his eyes, forcing his breathing into a steady, four-count rhythm. He was a grandmaster duelist. He did not bow to authority, and he did not panic over unexplained parlor tricks. Tomorrow, he would figure out how to reach the Tops. He would find his missing Blue-Eyes White Dragon deck. The iron roof groaned again above him, and darkness finally pulled him under. --- He was not lying on concrete anymore. The air in his lungs burned like inhaled glass. Ryuki stood in the middle of a shattered highway elevated three hundred feet above the city. Below him, Neo Domino was not a shimmering metropolis of glass and neon. It was a graveyard of twisted rebar, choked in black ash. The sky above bled crimson and violet, torn wide open by massive rift lines that hummed with sickening static. Then the ground shuddered—not from an earthquake, but from a weight falling from the heavens. A creature descended through the smoke. It was colossal, its scales shimmering with white-hot solar radiance, wings spanning across three city blocks. A dragon. But its eyes were hollow craters of golden light, and its roar rattled the marrow in Ryuki's bones. Across the burning skyline, another shadow rose to meet it. A monolithic shape pressed out of the earth itself, formed from dark energy and jagged obsidian plates, dragging a wave of liquid malice behind it. They collided. The shockwave tore the highway apart. Concrete slabs folded like paper. Ryuki was thrown backward, the wind ripped from his throat as the raw physical pressure crushed his chest. This was not a hologram. The heat blistered his cheeks. The stench of ozone and scorched steel filled his nose. The white dragon turned its terrifying head toward him. Its jaws opened, gathering a blinding sphere of pure white plasma. Ryuki tried to lift his arm. He tried to reach for his deck, to summon anything, to play a card, to yell a counter-strategy. His fingers were locked, heavy as lead. "This is not a game," a voice echoed through the fire—a voice that sounded like grinding tectonic plates. The dragon released the light. --- Ryuki sat bolt upright, his lungs violently tearing in air. His hand flew to his throat. Smooth skin. Intact pulse. He was in the utility room. The smell of wet rust and stale rain hit him first, sharp and grounding. Sweat slicked his forehead, running down the bridge of his nose to drip onto his knees. His heart battered his ribcage like an animal trapped in a crate. He checked his right arm. The crimson mark was burning. Not glowing softly—it was bright, hot enough beneath the skin that the flesh felt feverish to the touch. The light shone faintly through the weave of his cotton shirt before fading slowly back into a dull crimson stain. "A dream," Ryuki muttered, his voice raspy. He swiped a palm across his damp face. "Just a nightmare." He swung his legs off the mat and pressed his bare palms to the freezing floor, grounding himself in the physical sensation. He was a strategist. He lived in the realm of numbers, probabilities, and tactical decisions. Dreams were neurological static—his brain processing the shock of getting hit by a truck, dying, waking up in a teenager's body in the Satellite, and being hunted by armed officers. It was logical that his mind would construct catastrophic imagery. Except his hands were still trembling. The dread sitting in the pit of his stomach was not fading the way normal dream-fears did. It felt like a weight, solid and heavy, as if someone had dropped an iron anchor into his chest. He gripped his knees until his knuckles turned white. "I don't believe in prophecies," he whispered to the dark room. "I rely on my hands." He said it out loud to hear the words, but the quiet of the room offered no comfort. --- Gray morning light filtered through the cracked glass of the high window when Leo finally stirred. The boy sat up, yawning wide and rubbing his messy blue hair before noticing Ryuki standing by the rusted doorframe, leaning against the iron jamb. "Woah," Leo said, blinking. "You look like you got ran over by a Duel Runner. Did you sleep at all?" Ryuki did not move. His thumb stroked the cuff of his right sleeve where the mark rested dormant. "I slept." "You sure? You're paler than a ghost." Ryuki crossed his arms, looking out at the foggy alleyway. "What do the people in the Satellite say about dragons?" Leo paused, a half-eaten protein bar frozen halfway to his mouth. "Dragons? Like... Dragon-type monsters?" "No," Ryuki said, turning his head slightly. "Colossal things. Red flames. White light. Monsters so big their wings cast shadows over the entire sector." Leo slowly lowered the bar. The bright, hyperactive energy he usually carried drained out of his posture, replaced by a quiet, wide-eyed stillness. "Where did you hear about that?" Leo asked, his voice dropping an octave. "I saw something," Ryuki said smoothly, masking the edge in his tone. "A vision. Or a dream." Leo scrambled off his mat, walking over with uncharacteristically slow steps. "My sister told me stories once. Old scavengers who lived near the core before the big explosion forty years ago... they talked about the Crimson Dragon. They said when the mark wakes up, the sky bleeds, and the giant beasts beneath the earth start to stir." Leo looked up at Ryuki's arm, staring at the bandaged right forearm. "They say the Signers aren't just duelists," Leo whispered, his tone laced with hushed reverence. "They're pillars. If they fall, the whole city burns." Ryuki let out a dry, dismissive breath, though his jaw remained tight. "That's fairytale nonsense spun by people living in garbage." "Maybe," Leo said softly. "But you're the one wearing the mark, Ryuki." Ryuki looking over at Leo as if he knows enough people that has the same mark as he does. --- Leo went to fetch clean water from the community pump down the block, leaving Ryuki alone in the narrow alley beside the shelter. The morning air was damp and smelled of diesel fuel and brine from the ocean split. Ryuki sat down on an overturned oil drum, pulling his deck out of his inner jacket pocket. He flipped through the worn card stock. Sonic Duck. Jerry Beans Man. Wall of Illusion. Weak, useless cardboard meant for amateurs. A far cry from the towering beatsticks and tight engine cards he had spent years mastering in his former life. If he was going to survive Sector Security, he needed real power. He needed his Blue-Eyes. He adjusted his coat, leaning back against the corrugated wall. As he shifted, a strange stiffness in his inner lining caught his attention—a weight that had not been there when he stashed his deck. Ryuki frowned. He reached into the deep inner pocket of his dark jacket. His fingers brushed against a thick, textured border. He pulled his hand out. A tattered, ancient-looking card, not part of his current deck, slips from his pocket: a Synchro Monster he seen before, its artwork depicting one of the dragons from his dream, glowing faintly with an ominous light. A dragon he knows fully well from his past life. Blue-Eyes Ultimate Spirit Dragon.

Chapter 5: Prophecy's Shifting Sands