Chapter 100: Truth II

"What happened on that roof?"

Damian’s voice was hoarse, broken in a way it had never been before.

Elizabeth wiped the tears from her face, her expression filled with something like pity and sorrow mixed together.

"You were sitting there alone, finishing your meal, staring out at the city you’d controlled from the shadows for years. The call had come and the police were minutes away. But you weren’t moving. You were just... waiting."

Her voice took on that distant quality again, as if she was seeing it all play out in front of her.

"And then the air in front of you shimmered and distorted. A figure materialized from nothing.

A man wearing a hooded cloak that obscured his face completely. You reached for your gun immediately, but before you could even draw it, he moved."

Damian stood frozen, his breathing shallow.

"His hand came up and pressed a single finger to your forehead. And I watched as your eyes went blank. Completely empty. Like someone had just erased everything that made you who you were."

Elizabeth’s voice was shaking now.

"He was removing your memories, Damian. Systematically deleting years of experiences, knowledge, understanding. I could see them being pulled from your mind like threads being ripped from fabric."

"That’s not possible. Memory manipulation at that level doesn’t exist. Even the strongest mental abilities can’t–"

"This wasn’t an Aura ability. This was something else entirely. Something beyond what we understand."

She stepped closer, her violet eyes boring into his.

"I watched him erase almost everything the old beggar had taught you. All those years of preparation, all that knowledge about this world, all the careful orchestration of your life. Gone...

Reduced to a single childhood memory of a kind stranger reading you a story."

Damian’s mind was reeling.

Fragments of memories that didn’t quite fit were surfacing. Moments where he’d known things he shouldn’t know. Places where his understanding of this world seemed too detailed for someone who’d only heard a story once.

"Even your memories of that world were altered. Your parents’ deaths became hazy. The journey through the underworld lost its detail. Everything was smoothed over, made distant and dreamlike."

"Why?"

The word came out as barely more than a breath.

"Why would anyone do that?"

"I don’t know. But I heard what he said after he finished. After you were standing there with your mind in tatters, your memories stolen, your identity erased."

Elizabeth’s voice dropped to a whisper.

"He told you to jump. And that you wouldn’t try to survive. You just nodded, your face completely blank, and he stepped back to watch."

Damian felt something cold spreading through his chest.

"Before he disappeared, I heard him muttering to himself. Complaining, really, like someone frustrated they couldn’t finish a job properly."

"What did he say?"

Elizabeth closed her eyes, reciting the words exactly as she’d heard them in her vision.

"’I wanted to remove even the memories he had left, but I couldn’t do it completely. That old bastard engraved them with some kind of seal I can’t break. But at least I managed to erase the memories of the human world and most of the important roles everyone played in that world.’"

Her eyes opened, tears streaming down her face again.

"’Now whoever this old man’s chosen one becomes in this world, he’ll never amount to much. He’s not even part of this world anymore. Just a stranger, an outsider, someone who doesn’t belong here.

He can’t change the future. He can’t go against us. Without his memories, without understanding who he really is or what he was meant to do, he’ll just stumble through life never knowing what was stolen from him.’"

Silence fell over the garden like a physical weight.

The wind had stopped. The clouds overhead hung motionless.

Even the world itself seemed to be holding its breath.

Damian stood there, his hands trembling, his mind fracturing under the weight of what he was hearing.

’So... I was really just an extra all along.’

The thought hit him like a physical blow.

’Not the protagonist of my own story. Not someone who clawed their way to power through their own strength and will.

Just a tool. A weapon being forged by that old beggar for some purpose I can’t even remember.

And when someone decided I was too dangerous, when they realized what I might become, they just... erased me.

Took everything that made me who I was and threw it away like garbage.’

"My entire first life was a lie."

Damian’s voice was hollow, emotionless.

"That old man killed my parents. Arranged for my brother to be tortured and murdered. Orchestrated every major event in my life to shape me into whatever he needed.

And I never knew. I thought I was in control. I thought my choices mattered. But I was just a puppet dancing on strings I couldn’t see."

He laughed, but the sound was broken, wrong.

"And then some other person decided I was a problem and just deleted most of my memories, made me kill myself, and sent me here as what? A broken remnant? A failed experiment? Someone who doesn’t even belong in this world?"

"Damian–"

"Don’t."

His voice was sharp, cutting.

"Don’t try to comfort me or tell me it’s okay. Nothing about this is okay. Everything I thought I knew about myself is wrong. My memories are fabricated or stolen. My death wasn’t even my own choice.

And apparently I’m supposed to be doing something important here but I can’t because someone ripped out the parts of my brain that would tell me what that is."

He ran his hands through his long hair, gripping it tightly.

"I’ve been walking around this world thinking I was adapting well, using my experience from my past life to navigate this new reality. But it was all bullshit. I wasn’t using experience. I was using scraps of stolen knowledge that I don’t even remember learning. Following instincts programmed into me by someone else for reasons I can’t understand."

’Everything I am is someone else’s design.

My personality. My skills. My knowledge. My goals.

How much of Damian Valcor is actually me, and how much is leftover programming from that old beggar’s manipulation?

How much of Alessio D’Rossi was ever real at all?’

"Do you understand what this means?"

Damian’s voice had gone quiet again, dangerously so.

"I don’t even know who I am. Not really. I can’t trust my own memories. I can’t trust my own thoughts.

For all I know, every decision I’ve made since arriving in this world is just me following patterns that were beaten into me during a life I can’t even properly remember."

Elizabeth reached out tentatively, her hand stopping just short of touching his shoulder.

"You’re still you. Whatever they took, whatever they tried to erase, you’re still standing here. Still fighting. Still protecting the people who matter to you.

That’s real. That’s not programming or manipulation. That’s who you chose to be."

"Did I choose it?"

He looked at her with eyes that had gone cold and empty.

"Or am I just doing what I was designed to do? How would I even know the difference?"

She had no answer to that.

How could she?

Damian turned away from her, looking up at the dark clouds overhead.

’A stranger in my own story.

That’s what that hooded figure called me.

And he was right.

I don’t belong here. This world, these people, this Academy, the Mafia I built, Ariana I protected, Edrin and the others who follow me.

None of it was supposed to involve me. I’m just a broken piece of someone else’s plan, stumbling around in the dark, pretending I know what I’m doing.’