Reincarnated as an Evil Harem God

Aureve stood beside the child, her head bowed beneath the shadow of her hood, her presence quiet yet deeply rooted in the memory, and Sylvaris stood next to her, silent as well, because after all, these were her memories—unfolding by her will, drawn from the depths of her soul—and he could only follow what she allowed him to see.

The same people were present as before, gathered in a circle around the slab where the child lay: his mother, his father, his grandfather, and the other wives of Arathor, all of them dressed in black garments that seemed to drink the torchlight, their faces strained and pale, their eyes fixed on the small figure in the center. None of them spoke. None of them moved. The only sound in the chamber was the slow, steady drip of blood from the knife held in the surgeon's trembling hand.

He was a middle-aged man, his hair cut short and clean, brown with streaks of dull silver, but it was the beard that stood out—long enough to brush the floor if he bowed low—and yet, his eyes betrayed his age, not old, not weathered, still burning with the clear light of youth, too alive to be an elder, too shaken to be someone accustomed to this kind of horror.

"This child's core is... incredible. If we show it to the king, he—"

"Shut your mouth," Arathor hissed, voice low but lethal, and before the man could even finish the thought, the cold edge of Arathor's blade was already pressed to his neck. "And you better shut it forever. Do not ever, and I warn you—ever—leak a single breath of what happened here today, or you'll be dead before the next sunrise. Are we clear?"

The doctor's skin paled beneath the steel, sweat blooming along his brow as his loyalty to the crown withered beneath the weight of raw survival instinct. He had once called himself a devoted follower of the king, but now, under Arathor's shadow, under that blade's promise of a quiet death, he understood that today he had only two choices—die for loyalty, or live in silence. And he was no fool.

He chose silence.

"Quickly—stitch him up!" the grandfather barked, his voice cracking through the air like thunder, the only one who seemed to remember that a boy lay dying on the slab while the others simply watched in frozen horror. "Why the hell are you all standing there? Do you plan to let a child bleed out in front of you? Move, damn it!"

His words stirred no action from the others, only a flicker of shame in their eyes, but even that faded quickly. Not even his own mother stepped forward. She stood still, helpless, her hands trembling at her sides, reaching out more than once, but never finding the strength to close the distance between herself and the child—her child—who lay on the table with his chest split open, his ribs gleaming under the torchlight, and that core, that terrible, radiant core, pulsing with a light that bent the air around it, a power so immense that even the Demon Lord himself would have been humbled to witness it.

She could not touch him.

She could not accept what he had become.

Not even now.

Not even as the core devoured the light and rewrote the silence into something sacred and monstrous all at once.

Even though he was only a spectator within the memory, Sylvaris could feel the power radiating from the core was not dulled by time, not hidden by the veil of illusion; it throbbed in the air, deep and ancient, pressing against the edges of his senses like it still remembered him, like it still belonged to him and resented being torn away. But the vision was short-lived. The moment barely lasted before the familiar pull seized his consciousness again, his mind spinning violently as if ripped from one thread of fate and hurled into another, and then his vision blurred, warped, and dissolved into shadow.

When his sight returned, he found himself standing in a hall forged from black stone, walls smooth and jagged at once, a material not natural to this world, each slab humming with a suppressive pressure that curled around his lungs and clung to his skin like smoke-drenched chains. The atmosphere was suffocating, heavy in a way that even the most fortified dungeon could not replicate, and at the center of the room—alone, unguarded, untouched—hovered the core. It levitated in silence, suspended like a forbidden jewel, its dark-gold glow dimmed but not extinguished, its power still alive, pulsing softly with the rhythm of a heart that refused to die.

There were no guards.

No wards.

Only that heavy, unnatural silence and the overwhelming embrace of suppression, as if the hall itself was enough to contain a god.

But then, the silence broke.

A slow, deliberate creak spilled from the far end of the chamber, the ancient metal of the door groaning open, and the moment it happened, Sylvaris felt the weight in his chest shift—he turned his head, and his stomach dropped before the figure even stepped fully into view. He didn't need to guess. He didn't need more than a glimpse. He already knew.

This memory belongs to her.

And if he was seeing this, there had to be a reason.

His eyes followed every movement as Aureve stepped into the room, her footsteps cautious and quiet, her cloak brushing against the floor as she crept toward the core, her body tense, her intent clear even before her hands moved. She looked around, scanned the chamber once more, and then reached within her robe, pulling out a small bracelet, delicately carved and inlaid with faint runes that flickered in reaction to the core's presence. She raised it slowly, positioning it before the core, her voice barely audible beneath her breath.

"Sorry for betraying your trust, Arathor... but this treasure can't stay here forever. My family's life is more important to me than your twisted desires for power."

And with that quiet confession, in the blink of an eye, the core dissolved into light and vanished, absorbed cleanly into the bracelet as if it had always belonged there.