Yin, the last dark hour before the rising light of dawn, doomed Clow to these thoughts. Called the tiger hour, it stalked him through late nights when the mania of creation kept him away from his bed. If Clow's work went well, he could greet the arriving day with satisfaction. More often, he stayed up late fighting frustration, balked by his errors. When the tiger came, it would find him vulnerable to dark thoughts and self doubt.

This night was such a night. The light of the fireplace had been dimming for some time, but he couldn't bring himself to invoke his elemental card to wake it back to life and heat. Clow was sure that everything he had done was a disaster. He already knew it would be bring a crisis in the future; he knew he would make a mess of things. And while his precognition also brought him visions of satisfactory resolution, at this moment he wondered if those visions had been merely dreams, nothing more true than wishful thinking.

The feeling crushed him. He could quote all the great minds to himself, repeat the wisdom of ages that inspired, but Aristotle's Excellence... is not an act, but a habit only served to make Clow see himself with greater doubt. "Mediocrity can also be a habit," he despaired. How could he ever think, he asked himself, that his great blended magic was anything other than a maelstrom of conflicting concepts? He assigned his Cards to Light and Dark, to Cerberus the Sun and Yue the Moon, and within those the divisions of Fire, Earth, Water, and Air, and yet now as he reviewed those assignments he had to question why he had sorted any one card under one jurisdiction and a different card under another. He prided himself on balance, and yet he had a surplus of Cards under water, no Lightning to balance Thunder, sprites bound into contract but rarely invoked, and overall an excess of Yang magic.

He could not simply start over. He ground his teeth, giving in to his sense of failure. It was a catastrophe. He could, perhaps, release his contracts with the sprites bound to him, and if he could convince them to return to their native realms, they might not cause havoc in this realm. He would have to do it: unmake everything, send all his creations back to the aether and hope that such an act would not equal death for them. For his pride, his arrogance in believing himself the great magician, Clow Reed, he would have to undo the experiment of his blended magic. He would be forced part from the only creatures in this world who loved him unconditionally. He would be alone again, without companions, without family. Bereft. An orphan.

He had never had any right to bind them to him from the beginning.

He groaned, feeling pain like a wound in his chest. Starting over again, from nothing - it would be unthinkable. To send all his work to nothing and then start again... how could he ever imagine that he could remake his Cards and Guardians without repeating his mistakes? Or that he could recreate anything like them at all? Magic had been indulgent with him, as one might be with a hound puppy until the untrained animal began to dig up the garden and worry the hens until they stopped laying. It might decide that it was not too late to beat lessons into Clow Reed, lessons all the harder for coming after a habit of running wild. Clow felt as if he could not breath, for the fear of what was to come. He felt the grip of magic already reaching into his soul, grasping and squeezing, pulling the feeling ever larger.

He gasped as the feeling snapped. Like the first drips of blood falling from a new, deep wound, unbidden magic fell and pooled in the shadows of the room. He lifted his head and saw, there in the low red light, floating in front of the exhausted fire, a being in the shape of a young girl with hair as long as she was tall.

Clow's breath hissed in the night's silence. "What have I done?" He rose from his chair, slowly so as not to frighten the newly created being. He did not create his Cards this way, out of raw essence. His Cards were works of his hands, primarily contracts waiting to be signed by beings that would empower their magic, though some of his simpler Cards were forces, rather than nature spirits.

This girl before him was something made unwittingly from his negative emotions. She was yin to counter the yang of his creations. She was the antithesis of all Clow had made before her. She was void, nothing.

He went to her. She rose up to bring her eyes level with his. He carefully removed his key from the folds of his collar. She did not flinch when, in one sudden burst of power, he brought his magic staff to full size. His luminous magic circle turned slow circles beneath him and the spirit girl.

He brought his staff to her chest, creating a blue gem. He placed a second gem on her forehead. Wings sprang out at the back of her head, like the ornament of a hair comb. A smaller pair formed at the jewel on her chest. He placed two more blue caboachons at the backs of her hands.

"Blue gems to seal magic," Clow murmured. "You will balance all my creations. You, alone. Therefore, I give you the power to seal. If I lose control, if I err beyond repair, draw all my creations to you and seal yang to yin."

"Now, take the form in which you were destined to be... Clow Card," he finished, his words sealing the nothingness into card form.

. . .