Millennium Ring

The Millennium Ring

The sinister Millennium Ring possessed the power to transfer a soul from a living being into another object, such as a Duel Monsters card, or a lead miniature. Additionally, it can split the soul of its owner into numerous fragments, which can in turn be transferred to other objects. It is this that makes it the most dangerous of the Millennium Items, since the demon Zorc Necrophades used its power to seal a fragment of his own soul into the ring. When the ring came to be held by the priest and sorcerer Mahado, he had to focus the majority of his magical energy on holding the evil magic of the ring at bay, preventing Zorc's soul from overtaking him and turning him against the Pharaoh.

When the traps set by Mahado failed to prevent the tomb-robber, Thief King Bakura, from desecrating the crypt of the former Pharaoh Ahknamkhanen, he redoubled his efforts to protect the tomb by having himself sealed inside it. As predicted, Thief King Bakura attacked him within the tomb, and Mahado ultimately lost the Shadow Game that they played, and the ring fell into Bakura's hands. He was subsequently able to use it and the other Millennium Items to resurrect Zorc, but the Pharaoh stopped the demon at the cost of his own soul. The precise fate of Thief King Bakura was never divulged - when Yugi and his friends watched the events of the past play out in the form of an interactive Shadow Game, his body was shown to turn to sand, but this was a symbolic representation of his "playing piece" being removed from the "board" of the game, and unlikely what truly befell him. Although it was never explained precisely how, it is apparent that Thief King Bakura's soul, or a portion thereof, was also sealed within the Millennium Ring.

The Ring went on to wander throughout history, passing from owner to owner - Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monsters reveals that one of the past owners of the ring was Alexander the Great. The item brought him many victories, but began to twist and corrupt him, likely the influence of the spirit of the ring, although outright possession was never confirmed. Alexander's soul was also split by the Ring into two halves: one evil, one good. Alexander lost the Ring (to Shadi, it would seem) after failing a trial to prove he had earned the right to use the Ring, and it continued to wander throughout history until it eventually wound up in the hands of young Ryo Bakura, a gift from his father who acquired it on a trip to Egypt.

When Bakura crossed paths with Yugi and discovered that he possessed the Millennium Puzzle, the "Spirit of the Ring" - by all appearances, the soul of Thief King Bakura, having been taken over by the soul of Zorc - made Bakura his new permanent host and took over his body. He became the most constant foe of Yugi and his friends, regularly working behind the scenes in his attempts to acquire all the Millennium Items - a task made all the easier for him by the Ring's ability to detect other Items, its spikes independently moving to point out the direction of the Items.