The Oracle of Eternity continued, its voice clear inside Atem's head like a bell struck in a long corridor.
<
A golden warmth spread through his chest and down into his limbs. It was gentle at first, then deep as it settled into his spirit. Atem inhaled and felt tiny echoes brush the edges of his mind—faint whispers that were not words but memories: the beat of wings, the hiss of a serpent, a last frightened breath. He tasted them as impressions. A cave that had been only stone a moment ago now felt full of lives.
He placed a hand over his sternum, where the warmth pooled, and spoke softly. "Explain it to me. Every part."
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Atem nodded, eyes fixed on the dripping crystal above. He listened as the Oracle spoke slowly, like a teacher describing a complicated machine.
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"Passive reception?" Atem asked.
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Atem closed his eyes. He could already feel it: a memory of wind, a flash of something small and quick. It was like reading under faint candlelight.
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Atem asked, "Will every spirit answer?"
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The Oracle's tone softened for the next part.
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Atem pictured the steps in his mind and felt the weight of each one. He wanted detail. He asked the Oracle to lay out the steps slowly, and the Oracle complied.
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<
Atem's expression hardened slightly. "And resistance?"
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He felt safer already, the warm iron of defense knitting around the new warmth in his chest. Then the Oracle turned to the part that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
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Atem did not hide his reaction. He swallowed and let the echo of his own heartbeat fill the cave. "So every beast I beat… I can make stronger—make myself stronger—and keep a part of them to call when needed."
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The Oracle spoke every rule clearly, step by step, and Atem listened like a student taking notes in his head.
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Atem's mind pictured each step: creature falls, motes, the warm click as the sigil writes itself in his chest. He felt small flickerings already there—voices like sparks.
"Give me an example," he asked. "A bat and a serpent. How are they different?"
Atem pictured both. He could feel the bat's quick nervous energy in his chest for a second like a memory of sprinting. He shivered and felt the flash of wind-scent the Oracle had described.
<
"What does a stabilization rite require?" Atem asked.
<>
He exhaled. The idea of honoring what he took struck a chord. He had been Pharaoh; he had seen people and things turned into tools. He did not want to become that. The warmth in his chest felt heavier when he thought of the cost.
<
Atem's hand tightened on the rock beside him. He thought of Yugi's hand in his, of farewells. He did not want to be reckless.
"I will not take what I do not need," he said quietly. "If a spirit wants release, I will listen."
<
Atem tested the process in a small trial. He summoned a small sigil in the air and called forth one of the cave's low predators with the King of Games' calculations guiding his timing. A giant bat dove from shadow. Atem did not flinch. He used a Binding Duel to limit variables—simple space, single opponent, absorption on defeat—so the test would be clean.
The bat collided with a summoned Dark Magician's ward and fell. Motes of light swirled from the body and moved like shy fish toward Atem's outstretched palm. He confirmed the absorption aloud, the knot-word coming from his lips in a low tone. The Oracle narrated as the motes passed through his chest.
<
Atem felt the small addition like a warmth under his ribs. A new sigil glowed faintly at the edge of his mind—a miniature card with a stylized bat painted on it. When he called the sigil, a small phantom form folded into being beside him, wings beating silently. It moved with the instincts of its kind—nervy, fast, alert.
He looked down at the bat and then inward to the place where its sigil rested. A connection had been made: not ownership, not slavery. A binding and a promise.
Over the hours that followed, Atem practiced. He fought black spiders that dropped from the ceiling, centipedes that slithered through the dark, and the occasional wyvern that beat storms of dust. Each time he followed the Oracle's procedure: limit the duel when possible, confirm consciously, transcribe carefully, then stabilize. Sometimes he would speak before taking a life—an honoring phrase the Oracle taught him—to soothe the spirit. The Oracle reminded him of small, practical rules in a voice that never tired.
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Atem asked the Oracle about the Spirit Deck itself, wanting the full picture.
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"Can they think?" Atem asked.
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Atem tested that too. He called Kuriboh—small, round, absurd—and it perched on his shoulder like a warm stone. He called a Celtic Guardian who moved with the soldier's discipline he remembered. After several days of joint missions, the Celtic Guardian suggested a feint Atem had not considered. It paused for a second, then spoke in a small, calm voice: "Master, consider an alternate angle." Atem permitted the tactic. It worked.
The Oracle was practical, not sentimental.
<
Atem listened and took notes in his head: limit duels, confirm, stabilize, honor, curate, rest. He felt his body changing bit by small bit. His reflexes sharpened. The cave's dark no longer swallowed him. He could feel a bat's echo like an additional sense. The Tempest Serpent's memory gave him a faint taste for lightning in his hands after he absorbed one later. The wyvern's sigil gave him a broader sense of wind and height when he called it.
At night—if that word applied in this underground place—he would sit and run his hand along his sternum where the sigils hummed. He talked to the Oracle about the moral weight of what he did.
"Is it wrong?" he asked once. "To take what is left of a life and make it useful?"
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Atem exhaled and looked into the dark where the sealed presence thrummed. He felt the Deck in him now: a small, constant heartbeat of potential. He had the power to absorb and to grow. He also had the choice to be careful.
"Then teach me the stabilization rite," he said, voice soft but steady. "Teach me the honoring phrases. Teach me how to keep myself whole."
<
When he slept—or rested—his dreams were full of wings and water and the memory of laughter that was not his. When he woke, he carried those pieces with him like small relics. He had been given a dangerous, precise tool: the ability to turn the fallen into guardians and to turn loss into power. He promised himself he would use that tool with a king's restraint.
<
Atem's hand went to his chest again. The golden warmth pulsed once, like an endorsement. He stood, squared his shoulders, and walked deeper into the cave—each step measured, each breath a contract between himself and the many voices now folded into his Spirit Deck of Eternity.