Reincarnated as an Evil Harem God

It was there, in the stillness that followed the old man's roar, in the quiet space where no one dared to speak and even the trees seemed to hold their breath, that Sylvaris realized he still remembered what it felt like to admire someone without shame, to belong not to a lineage or a title, but to a single soul who had chosen him, who had stood for him without condition, without hesitation, without fear. That memory, buried so deep it had become almost myth, surged back into focus—not carved in monuments or etched into lineage scrolls, but burned into memory, into the fibers of his being, the kind of moment that doesn't fade with time but only grows sharper the more the world tries to bury it.

And as his gaze lowered to the boy in those arms—small horns nestled against a weathered shoulder, tiny claws drawn in as if to protect rather than harm, eyes wide and unreadable, silently scanning the forest as if even then he was aware of the dangers waiting beyond the trees—Sylvaris felt the echo of something he hadn't allowed himself to feel in decades. Gratitude. Not for having survived. Not for the strength he had gathered or the path he had carved through blood and shadow. But for this. For a single act of mercy, of love, of defiance. For the embrace that had saved him not from the blade or the ritual, but from the far crueler fate of becoming hollow.

The child, blood-stained and cracked, skin marked by what he had done and what had been done to him, sat there in his grandfather's arms and looked down at the severed head of the beast he had slain, and then—he laughed. Not with the madness of a monster, not with the joy of carnage, but with the unguarded glee of a boy who had been picked up and protected, whose world, for a single impossible moment, felt safe again.

His glowing eyes, so often filled with rage or sorrow or emptiness, shimmered now with something lighter, mischievous, playful, and his little fingers curled around the furred skull in his lap not like a trophy, but like a toy, kicking his feet into the blood-slick grass beneath him with the innocence of someone who didn't yet understand the horror surrounding him. He didn't know the words that had been spoken. Not truly. But he understood the tone. He understood the power behind that roar. He understood that someone had spoken for him, had chosen him, had stood up when no one else dared.

And he was pleased, because in that moment, he wasn't the monster they feared—he was just a boy, small and bloodstained and held in arms that had never let him fall. And that, Sylvaris understood now with a clarity that cut deeper than any blade, was the moment he stopped fearing the world. And started hating it.

And then the world began to twist.

The forest faded, not with a jolt, not in some theatrical flash of light, but with a slow and sickening pull that dragged across reality like flesh tearing from bone, as if the memory itself didn't want to let go of him, and yet was being peeled away layer by reluctant layer, like some ancient beast clawing its way out from beneath the world, pulling him through its throat, forcing him from one place to another with that sluggish, twisting pressure that made his skin crawl and his breath catch.

The wind exhaled around him in a low, guttural groan, not the sound of leaves dancing, but something deeper, something mournful, and the trees above creaked like old bones snapping under strain, their branches rustling as though they were weeping, as though they knew something sacred was being taken. The air grew colder, heavier, thick enough to choke on, and the birdsong—once distant and gentle—vanished without ceremony. The soil beneath his boots, once soft and alive with moss and blood and memory, turned stiff and hard, and even the scent of the place shifted, the earthen iron of spilled blood curdling into something flat and dead, something that smelled more like stone than soil, until even the silence no longer felt the same.

What the hell is happening now... the words barely escaped his lips as he staggered for a moment, his head spinning, vision narrowing to a tunnel of fractured light, and just as the cold began to rise over his body like a tide, it hit again—that sensation, that familiar rush of freezing water that wasn't real but felt like drowning, as if time itself had chosen to drag him deeper once more.

And then there was a snap, quiet and without drama, but it rang through the fabric of his being like a door slamming shut on everything that had come before, and when the noise died, the world was no longer green and wild and full of fading memories—it was something else entirely.

The warmth of the forest was gone, and in its place was a chamber built of cold, uncaring stone, where the only sounds were the slow, rhythmic droplets of water falling in the distance with the precision of a broken clock, each one echoing just long enough to remind him how deep underground he must have been, how far removed from anything living this place truly was.

The air was thick with damp, the kind that clung to the skin like mold and buried itself in the lungs, and the walls, lined with aged bricks the color of rotting ash, were cracked with time and veined with dark moss that clung to every crevice like old memories refusing to fade. Iron sconces lined the perimeter, their flames flickering dimly with a dull orange glow, barely alive, struggling to feed on air too heavy to nourish them, casting long and uneven shadows that dragged themselves across the floor like the silhouettes of dying things.

And somewhere deeper within the room, quiet but unmistakable, came the sound of chains rattling—not being used, not binding anything in this moment, but not forgotten, still present, still whispering of old rituals and darker purposes.

Sylvaris exhaled once, and his breath fogged the air.

And there—beneath a canopy of cold iron and flickering torchlight—he saw himself.

A small body, barely three years old, stripped bare and silent, laid out on a marble slab that was too polished, too pristine, as if the ritual they were about to commit required the illusion of sterility to mask the horror underneath. The boy's skin, pale and perfect, was marred only by the faint outline of his core's glow beneath his sternum, that black-gold light pulsing ever so gently like a forbidden star trying to stay hidden beneath flesh. His eyes were closed. His hands were still.

He looked peaceful.

Like a lamb before slaughter.

And Sylvaris, standing over that memory, jaw clenched and eyes burning, felt the rage stirring beneath the grief now, a storm waiting to be unshackled.