As The Vampire Diares Season 7 Episode 10 begins, Damon is back on the front lines of battle in 1863, trapped inside the Phoenix stone and reliving his worst nightmares. Lily shows up in his visions leaving him quite confused since everything seems and feels so real.

Damon receives a letter from Stefan bearing news of home and wishing Damon could return home. He wanders through their encampment to ask for a leave of absence. His request is denied until he offers to complete a mission for his Colonel. 

He and a fellow soldier go on the Colonel’s mission and invite themselves to dinner at a farmhouse. They end up killing everyone inside the house except themselves, innocent civilians included. Damon follows a sound into the cellar and encounters Lily who helps him realize he’s trapped inside the Phoenix Stone.

Damon imagines being shot by Lily and then wakes up on a table with Bonnie. Damon believes he’s been gone for a day but Bonnie tells him it’s been three months.

After the spell, Bonnie’s nose begins to bleed. No one is around when he awakes and he learns that Stefan’s spirit has been trapped inside the stone. He wants Bonnie to continue using magic to get Stefan out of the stone, but she doesn’t have enough left. They learn someone has taken Stefan’s body and call Matt and Caroline for help.

While Bonnie uses a locator spell to find Stefan, Caroline tells Damon that the reason he was pulled out of the stone first was because Damon had the least humanity of the two. They feared if he spent too much time in the stone, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill Bonnie upon coming out of it. Bonnie passes out after overexerting herself doing the locator spell.

Damon finds Stefan’s body in a bar with Julian, who plans to burn Stefan’s body if Damon won’t sit down for a chat. Julian wants to know about Damon’s time inside the stone and whether or not Damon was also forced to kill Lily to escape. When Julian lights Stefan’s body on fire, Damon realizes he’s still trapped inside the stone.

Damon begins living his day all over again. He tries to change his hell so that no one dies, but it doesn’t work. He once again imagines waking up in the boarding house, but this time Stefan is awake too, leading Damon to think this time is the real deal. But it isn’t.

Damon rips Stefan’s heart out to reset his hell.

In the real world, Stefan, Caroline, and Matt work with Bonnie to try and get Damon out of the stone. Stefan came out with no issue, but Damon isn’t ready to come out yet, which is why the stone won’t release him. 

Stefan was able to get free because he gave in to the suffering inside the stone. He fears Damon won’t do the same.

In 1863, Henry insists that Damon isn’t well, but Damon presses on in his quest to get things right and fix his Hell. Instead he’s blown up and sent right back to the start of the day. Again. And again. And again.

Finally, Damon decides to desert to Mystic Falls in hopes that finding Stefan will bring him out of hell, but instead of finding an exit, he finds the farmhouse and Lily. She tells him to go to the cellar if he wants to live and he finds Stefan down there already.

Stefan uncovers Elena’s coffin, but Damon believes it’s a ploy. Stefan wants Damon to come to terms with the fact that not having Elena around is making Damon dangerous and impulsive. In this alternate hell, Damon admits what he wanted in the moment when the innocent people died was Lily. He awakens to start the day over only this time it’s Lily he has to save.

Instead of saving her, he tells Lily he hates her for never coming back for them. Then he breaks down and apologizes to his mother right before she dies again.

This time, Bonnie is able to bring him out of the stone, and Damon comes out wanting to bring Lily back. Damon attacks his friends believing he’s still inside the stone.