The afternoon sun at Silver Ridge High didn't feel warm; it felt heavy. It bled through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the cafeteria in long, oppressive streaks of amber, illuminating the dust motes that danced over the "Duel Tables." In this school, the cafeteria wasn't just a place to eat—it was a battlefield. It was a stock exchange. It was a courtroom where social standing was judged by the rarity of one's ink and the power of one's cardboard.
At the center table—the one positioned under the most dramatic light, reserved for those who held the school's highest "Duel Rank"—sat Vance Sterling.
Vance was the living embodiment of Silver Ridge's elite. His hair was perfectly styled, his uniform was tailored, and his deck was worth more than the car Rami's grandfather drove. With a sharp, practiced flick of his wrist, Vance snapped a holographic card onto the table. The projection system built into the table hummed, emitting a low-frequency vibration as a towering, obsidian-scaled dragon materialized in a swirl of digital smoke.
"Direct attack," Vance sneered. He didn't even look at the board. He was looking at Rami's trembling hands. "Obsidian Hell-Kite's special ability triggers. Since you have no face-down cards, its damage is doubled. That's 2400. That makes it... what, the tenth time this week, Rami?"
The digital life-point counter embedded in the table let out a shrill, mournful beep.
[Rami: 0 LP]
[Vance: 5000 LP]
The silence that followed was deafening. A circle of students had gathered to watch the execution. Some smirked, others whispered behind their hands, but no one moved to help. To be associated with "The Ghost" was to invite the same social haunting that Rami lived through every day.
"I... I didn't draw the right combo," Rami whispered. His voice was thin, cracked like dry parchment.
He began the ritual of the loser: gathering his cards. They were a pathetic sight compared to Vance's shimmering, textured Ultra-Rares. Rami's cards were battered commons. The edges were white and frayed from years of shuffling without sleeves, the art faded from being held too tightly in pockets during rainstorms. They were cards found in bargain bins and donated by sympathetic shopkeepers.
"It's not the draw, Ghost. It's the player," Vance said, leaning back and interlacing his fingers behind his head. He looked around at the crowd, basking in their silent approval. "You play like you're afraid of the cards. You play like you're waiting to lose."
Vance reached out, his hand moving like a striking snake. He didn't punch Rami; he did something worse. He shoved Rami's shoulder with just enough force to knock him off balance. Rami's deck—his only treasure—slipped from his fingers, scattering across the linoleum floor.
"You don't belong at the tables," Vance laughed, his voice rising for the benefit of the audience. "You belong in the trash with these cards. Honestly, why do you even carry that heavy gold box around? It's a paperweight for a loser who can't even solve a child's puzzle."
Rami didn't look up. He couldn't. If he looked up, they would see the stinging heat in his eyes. He dropped to his knees, his fingers grazing the cold floor as he scrambled to pick up his cards. His hand instinctively went to his satchel, clutching the heavy, wooden box tucked inside.
Within the box, the gold fragments of the Crest of Eternity shifted. Clink. Clink. It was a dull, metallic sound, like the dragging of chains in a deep well. Rami had found the artifact three years ago in the depths of his grandfather's shop, buried under a pile of moth-eaten tapestries. Since then, it had become his obsession. Every night for over a thousand days, he had sat under a single lamp, trying to make the jagged, gold-leafed edges fit together.
It was more than a puzzle to him. It was a promise. If he could solve something that the world deemed "unsolvable," then maybe he wasn't the "nothing" that Vance claimed he was.
"Leave him alone, Vance!"
The crowd parted as a girl with auburn hair and a defiant stride stepped into the light. Maya Vance didn't care about social ranks. She was the daughter of the city's most respected game shop owner, and she was the only person in Silver Ridge High who looked at Rami and saw a person instead of a shadow.
She stood between the two boys, her arms crossed, her eyes flashing with a protective fire that made even Vance's smile falter for a split second. Against her chest, she held a small bundle wrapped in deep purple velvet.
Vance rolled his eyes, the arrogance returning quickly. "Defending your charity case again, Maya? Careful, his bad luck might be contagious." He stood up, his designer jacket catching the light as he slung his high-end duel-disk over his shoulder. "Fine. He's boring anyway. No sport in beating someone who's already dead inside."
Vance stepped over one of Rami's cards—a simple Shield Guard—grinding his heel into the cardboard before walking away. The crowd followed him like a trail of pilot fish behind a shark.
Maya didn't offer Rami pity. She knew he hated pity. Instead, she knelt beside him, helping him gather the last of his bruised cards.
"My dad saw you looking at these in the shop last week," she said softly, her voice a calm harbor after the storm of Vance's mockery. She held out the velvet bundle. "He told me these shouldn't be for sale. He said they've been sitting in the back of the vault for decades, waiting for someone who understands that a deck isn't just about power—it's about the bond."
Rami looked at the bundle. He could feel a faint thrumming coming from the cloth, a rhythmic pulse that matched his own heartbeat. "Maya, I can't take these. Your dad's shop is struggling as it is. These look... expensive."
"They're not expensive, Rami. They're old," she insisted, pressing them into his palms. Her hands were warm, and for a moment, the coldness of the cafeteria receded. "They don't fit the modern 'Meta.' No one wants them because they're 'too slow' or 'too complex.' But Dad thinks you're the only one with the patience to learn their secrets."
She stood up and squeezed his hand. "And keep working on that puzzle, Rami. Don't listen to him. I have a feeling that when the last piece clicks, the whole world is going to have to look you in the eye."
Later that night, the city of Silver Ridge was a grid of cold neon and long shadows. Rami sat in his room, a cramped space located above The Dusty Relic, his grandfather's antique shop. The air smelled of old paper, cedarwood, and the faint, ozone scent of holographic projectors.
On his desk, the world was split in two.
On the left side lay the cards Maya had given him. He unwrapped the velvet to find a series of creatures he had never seen in any modern catalog. There was a warrior with armor that looked like it had been forged in a desert sandstorm, and a spellcaster whose robes seemed to shift even when the air was still. They weren't flashy like Vance's dragons, but they felt heavy.
On the right side lay the Crest of Eternity.
Rami reached into the wooden box and pulled out a triangular gold piece. Its surface was etched with tiny, microscopic hieroglyphics that seemed to writhe under the light of his desk lamp. He had tried this specific piece in the center slot at least five hundred times over the last year. It never fit.
No, Rami thought, his mind drifting back to Maya's words. Two years. He looked at the calendar on his wall. He was sixteen. He had been working on this since he was thirteen. He imagined himself at eighteen—still the "Ghost," still the boy who was pushed around. The thought sent a jolt of frustration through him.
He gripped the gold piece. His knuckles turned white. "Just fit," he whispered. "Just once, let something go right."
He pressed the piece toward the core of the puzzle. For a heartbeat, there was a resistance, a physical push-back as if two magnets were repelling each other. Then, a faint, golden spark jumped from the metal to his fingertip.
Rami gasped, pulling his hand back.
The piece hadn't fit. Not yet. But for the first time in three years, the gold felt warm. It wasn't the warmth of the sun; it was the warmth of a living thing.
Deep within the dark recesses of the puzzle's hollow core, something stirred. It was an ancient consciousness, a mind that had been drifting in a sea of nothingness for three millennia. It felt the boy's frustration. It tasted his desire for justice.
A pair of crimson eyes, sharp and regal, flickered open in the mental dark.
Not yet, little lion, a voice echoed, so faint that Rami mistook it for the wind rattling his window. The soul must be tempered before the gate can open. You are weak... but you have the spark.
Rami looked around the room, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Is someone there?"
Silence. Only the hum of the city outside and the ticking of his clock.
Rami looked back at the puzzle. There were exactly forty-one major fragments left to align. He didn't know why that number burned into his mind, but he felt a strange, terrifying certainty.
He wouldn't solve this tonight. He wouldn't solve it tomorrow. He had two years of fire to walk through first. He had to learn to use the cards Maya gave him. He had to learn to stand his ground without a Pharaoh's help.
He picked up the Rusted Warrior card from the new deck. The art was a man standing alone against a sunset, holding a broken blade.
"Okay," Rami whispered to the empty room, his eyes hardening. "If it takes two years, then I'll give it two years. I'm not going to be a Ghost forever."
He didn't see the shadow on his wall. For a split second, it didn't look like the shadow of a skinny sixteen-year-old boy. It looked like a man wearing a tall, flowing cape and a crown of gold, holding a hand out as if commanding the very stars.