Reincarnated as an Evil Harem God

His fingers clenched into fists, nails digging deep into his palm, not from pain but from the silent rage boiling beneath the surface, because even though no one here could see him, he felt the weight of every memory in motion, haunting the space like a ghost wandering the corridors of a past carved long before his mind could even grasp what it meant to be alive. He walked among them, his steps slow and measured, each one echoing across the quiet forest floor layered with blood, fear, and forgotten choices. The air shimmered faintly with illusion, thick with the fragrance of something half-remembered, but his eyes—his gaze—remained unwavering, sharp as a blade forged in truth.

At the very least, he could let them linger.

His younger stepmothers were all present, their youthful forms wrapped in silks, beautiful and unaware, speaking softly amongst themselves as if they weren't being observed by the specter of the very boy they once whispered about. But it wasn't lust that stirred inside his chest, not this time. That hunger had long been tamed, or at least redirected. What filled him now was something colder, deeper—a quiet weight pressing down on his soul.

And then his breath caught.

His eyes landed on a figure that made the world pause. Someone he once worshipped like a god.

His grandfather.

He stood at the edge of the gathering, unshaken by the scene, regal in posture, cloaked not in finery but in the kind of strength that didn't need to prove itself. The same strength that had once carried Sylvaris through storms of fear and fury, that had lifted him when he was too broken to move, that had spoken truths when the world fed him nothing but lies. And in that moment, a sharp ache twisted in his chest like a rusted blade dragged through scar tissue. That man had been everything—the warmth in a world that never gave enough, the only soul who had ever looked past the beast and seen the boy.

And now he stood there, still and unreachable.

A memory. Nothing more.

Sylvaris's throat tightened, the pressure rising not from sorrow but from the weight of something long buried. His body, honed and tempered to endure agony far beyond mortal comprehension, began to tremble—not from rage or wrath, but from a grief so ancient it had faded into silence. His eyes, untouched by tears for years, shimmered faintly. Just enough to sting. Just enough to remind him that he could still feel something.

He was the only one who ever made me feel like I wasn't cursed.

But there was no time to dwell. Not now.

He forced his breathing back into stillness, eyes shifting toward the flame-haired woman standing near the center of it all. Hatred burned in her eyes—not the quiet, controlled kind, but the raw, panicked hatred born from fear, the kind that screams louder than reason. She didn't even look like a villain here. She looked human.

"Aureve…" he murmured, stepping beside her, his voice quiet but heavy, layered with everything he never said. "Is being a demon really such a disappointment to you? Are you that afraid of something you can't understand…?"

He exhaled slowly, his gaze fixed on her jaw, on the way it tensed beneath the skin, the way her mouth tightened as if holding back words she wouldn't speak. She wouldn't answer. Not here. Not in this memory. But her silence said enough, and the expression carved into her face—a perfect split between terror and revulsion—told him what he needed to know. He didn't remember this day completely, but his body did. Somewhere, buried deep in the marrow of his bones, the echo of that power still stirred, sleeping, waiting.

And the memory kept playing.

"No… I can't kill my own son," Arathor said, and his voice cracked like splintering wood. "Even if he's… this…"

That pause. That hesitation. That carefully chosen lack of a word.

It carved a hollow inside Sylvaris.

He turned his gaze and truly looked at his father—not the myth, not the title, not the mask worn in courts and council rooms, but the man. A man whose eyes now brimmed with regret and terror. A man whose lips trembled under the weight of a decision too heavy for his cowardice. And Sylvaris, watching him now, didn't feel hate. Didn't feel pity.

Only clarity.

"So this is where it happened," he muttered. "This is where love died… and fear was born."

He watched as Arathor stepped away from the child version of him—as if the little boy, barely three years old, wasn't flesh and blood, wasn't his own son, but a weapon gone wrong. A mistake.

"I don't blame them," Sylvaris whispered under his breath. "Look at how scared they are."

His eyes lingered on Arathor's expression a moment longer. "And they should be."

He tilted his head slightly, his gaze drifting toward the mangled corpse of the beast behind them, a grotesque thing whose aura still pulsed faintly in the memory.

"That thing… it had to be at least level fifty. Maybe more. So how did I manage to kill it… at the age of three?"

His tone shifted, quiet and methodical, as his mind turned to analysis, dissecting the memory with the same precision he used to tear apart enemies.

"The power I held back then... was it the system? Some divine script unfolding without my consent? Or was it something older? Something buried in me before I even opened my eyes to this world? A fragment of what I used to be?"

His fingers twitched slightly at his sides, not out of anxiety but memory—some part of him still reaching for a power that once filled him.

"No… innate seems unlikely… I was too young. I need to find out what happened to me... I'll have to thank Aureve later for this... haha!"

The memory continued, but his focus no longer followed the dialogue. Instead, he watched the edges. The tension between glances. The unspoken dread bleeding through every adult posture.