Inside the burning, flickering lab, Damon finally stood tall—scars fresh, eyes bloodshot, chains shattered by the now-dead senator's mutilated hand as he commanded it to free him using his only two hands without any object until he lost bones and enough blood to be dead. As Damon slowly walked through the corridor lined with shattered glass and sirens blaring faintly in the distance, he saw him.
The scientist—the same smug man who once treated Damon like a experiment—was now crawling on the floor, screaming, clutching his own throat, as though something unseen was suffocating him. He begged and sobbed for help, cursing shadows in the corners, striking the floor to escape phantoms only he could see.
Blood dripped from the scientist's nostrils. His eyes widened in madness as he tried to tear off imaginary insects crawling under his skin. He was trapped inside a hallucination, unable to distinguish what was real.
Phoebe, weak and limping but finally freed, watched in horror.
"D-Damon... How... how is this happening?" she asked, catching her breath.
"This isn't your ability... is it?"
Damon didn't respond at first. He just looked at the crumpled scientist—once the master of this lab, now reduced to a shaking mess. Then, slowly, he turned to Phoebe with a calm, dangerous look.
-- Damon's Revelation --
"No, Phoebe. It's not my original ability… but it is mine now. Let me explain."
Damon stepped over shattered tools and bent steel, his voice steady.
"The Crow tried to trick me into a contract. Again. To sacrifice you, in exchange for a new card."
"But I tricked him first."
Phoebe blinked in confusion.
"You what?"
Damon nodded. There was no pride in his voice—just a strange calmness, as if he had finally come to terms with something centuries old.
"The crow… I think he already explained it to use before it isn't just a guide, or a messenger. It is a manifestation—a spiritual parasite born from our desire. It appears the moment someone cheats death or gains a will powerful enough to reshape fate itself. It did not choose me. I created it."
Phoebe looked stunned. Damon continued.
"I've seen this happen before. All of it. You. Kevin. Claire. This facility. These bastards."
"It's not déjà vu. It's not prophecy. I remembered everything the moment the crow appeared again.
Because I was the first Arcana, I was also just a manifestation from everyone's desire."
-- The Origin of the Crow --
Damon looked toward the ceiling—almost nostalgic.
"Decades ago—or at least, in a timeline long forgotten—I was created. By Humans despair, hunger to change the world, created the very first Tarot mark: The Fool. But that power split me in two."
"One part of me—the driven human—became Damon."
"The other—the hungry ego, the manipulator—became the Crow."
"The Crow exists to tempt every Arcana, just as it tempted me back then. I thought we were a pair who will cleanse the world but the crow got a bit ambitious. And the sacrificed wasn't meant to help me. It was meant to him to be born as a human so that he could rule this world. Holding the ability to control everything"
"But this time… I prepared."
"Before I traveled back, I was already defeated by him and he was about to born as a human. Until I learned that I could control time just by manifestation and in exchange it would erase my memory… before I erased everything to try again... I wrote a secret sigil into my blood—a memory lock. I told myself: 'If the Crow ever asks for sacrifice again, awaken the truth.' And it worked."
Phoebe's jaw dropped.
"Wait, you traveled back in time?!"
"Not my body—my soul." Damon said.
"I bound my existence to my own Arcana sigil… hid a layer of memory in my blood, knowing the Crow would never look there. He thought he had me again. But this time, the moment he spoke about sacrificing you… I remembered everything."
The Hallucinations and New Power
"That's how I knew how to rewrite my connection to the Tarot. Instead of binding a soul to power... I bound a concept—hallucination. Fear. Guilt. Madness. I didn't need to summon a card. I became the effect itself."
He looked back at the scientist screaming on the floor.
"I no longer need the Fool's card to play the game."
"I am the Fool."
Phoebe stood in stunned silence, heart pounding.
Damon walked past the scientist, who now wept like a child—begging forgiveness from ghosts of his victims.
"You once said you admired me," Damon whispered coldly, standing over him.
"Now you get to meet the version of me that remembers everything you ever did."
He turned to Phoebe.
"Let's burn this place to the ground."