Transmigrated into Eroge as the Simp, but I Refuse This Fate

Capítulo 362: You are not the only one who can see the future

“You think your eyes are a window to truth. Fine. Maybe they are. But tell me, grandmother— —are you a god?”

Erin paused.

Not out of surprise—she had felt the weight of many insolences in her lifetime.

But because for a moment, as his words echoed through the hall, she realized she had never been spoken to that way.

Not by Damien. Not even by her greatest rivals.

The question—to call her a god—was no flattery. It was accusation. A torch held to her face.

She stood silent, the room suspended in that breath between speech and ruin.

His words cut deeper than her mana ever could. The shame of her own lineage, the years hidden in shadow and vision, the fractured threads of her own identity—they all echoed.

She did not raise her voice. She did not summon a wave of power. She simply… stopped.

Her eyes, pale and still, held his.

Then, softly, she spoke.

“And when you forget everything else—when every mask, every lie, every thread unwinds—what will you call me then?”

Her voice, though quiet, carried resonance. It was not threat. It was reckoning.

She stepped forward. The mana around her flickered like low embers, restrained.

“You presume I seek to know you. But if I must show you who I am—so be it.”

In the hush between worlds, she prepared to reveal something he could not deny.

Vivienne’s voice trembled as she stepped forward. “Mother, please—don’t—”

Damien scoffed, a harsh cut of amusement laced with pain. He coughed again, blood darking his fingers, then lifted his chin. “See?” he said. “Even your daughter knows what’s coming.”

Erin’s hand flickered, mana gathering at her fingertips. Her lips parted—

“Mother, no!”

“Mother, please—wait!” Dominic’s voice boomed suddenly, a raw plea crashing into her.

Damien coughed again—rough, cracking, wet. Blood dripped onto his sleeve as he steadied himself. But the smile didn’t leave his face.

“See?” he rasped, eyes on Erin. “Even they’re afraid of what you’ll do.”

He straightened slowly, his breathing jagged. Then, through the pain, he chuckled again. Not madly—just a quiet, grim sort of amusement.

“And here I thought you were the wise one.”

Dominic took a step forward too. “Please, wait—Mother. Just wait.”

But Erin didn’t answer. Her hand remained raised. Her will didn’t waver.

He saw it.

And yet—

“Your thread is yours, Damien. Let no one—no power, no curse—claim it from you.”

The words struck like a blade made of memory. Spoken not with challenge, but with eerie calm. His voice was rough from blood, but steady. Intimate. As if quoting something sacred.

Her breath caught.

She hadn’t thought of that day in years.

Damien wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his sleeve. His breath came shallow and hoarse, but his eyes—those cold, determined eyes—never left hers.

“Do you remember that day, grandmother?” he said, quieter now, but not weak. “The glade behind the eastern wing. The old ritual circle no one maintained anymore. You were teaching me how to feel the threads. To listen.”

Erin didn’t respond.

Not aloud.

But her hand—the one that had begun to gather spellwork—remained still.

Damien continued.

“I was what? Nine? Maybe ten. Already too heavy to run the course with the others. Hated the training. Hated the bloodlines. Hated you.”

A thin, bitter laugh escaped his throat.

“I remember what I said. Called you a witch. Said you were a monster for trying to ‘break’ me like the others. Told you I’d rather die than be like you.”

The words echoed in the space between them like a long-delayed confession. Shame. Not on his face, but in the air. A haunting truth finally dragged back into daylight.

“You didn’t say anything then. Just watched me throw my tantrum. Cry. Scream. And when I finally sat down and started choking on my own breath like the pathetic thing I was—you just… handed me that scroll. The thread-binding rite. The one no one teaches unless they’re serious.”

Erin’s lips pressed into a line. Still she said nothing. But her aura shifted—tightened inward. Listening.

Damien’s voice dropped lower, memory laced with fire.

“You told me, ‘Your thread is yours, Damien. Let no one—no power, no curse—claim it from you.’ And I didn’t even listen. I tore the scroll in half and ran back to my room. Hid for three days.”

He exhaled through his nose, shaking his head. “That night, I cursed you. Called you a tyrant to the walls. Told my reflection that one day, I’d get so strong, I’d kill you and never be scared again.”

A pause. A beat.

Damien scoffed again—quieter this time. The sound scraped at the edges of the silence like a shard of old metal. Then, through cracked lips and broken breath, he asked:

“You were listening back then, weren’t you? Even when I was alone in my room?”

The question lingered in the air like smoke—accusation woven with understanding.

Erin didn’t answer.

She didn’t flinch either.

But her mana stilled.

And that was enough.

Damien’s smile thinned, sharpened. “After that, I don’t recall seeing you for a long time.”

His eyes—dark with fatigue, bright with defiance—met hers.

“But I presume,” he said, voice dipping lower, “you never stopped keeping tabs on me.”

Of course she hadn’t. Of course not. Erin Valeheart didn’t leave loose ends, especially not ones tied to her blood. She knew every disciplinary report from the Elford tutors, every failed rite, every bitter incident of rebellion and retreat. Even when she never reached out, her eyes had remained fixed.

But Damien wasn’t finished.

He stepped forward—not with strength, but with clarity—and spat blood to the side, staining the marble in crimson streak.

Then he glared into her soul.

And the chamber turned cold again.

“Yet you never tried to teach me again,” he said, voice like cold iron. “Why was that, grandmother?”

Erin remained still.

Her robes did not shift.

Her eyes did not narrow.

But her silence was no longer judgment—it was defense.

Damien pressed on, each word sharper than the last.

“Was it because, in your eyes, I looked like a failure of your bloodline? A stain? A blemish on the record of your cultivated, perfect legacy?”

His breath rattled as he spoke. But the pain didn’t stop him. It emboldened him.

“Erin Valeheart—master of Mystery, the unshakable Seat Holder—couldn’t even get her grandson straight. Did that shame you, grandmother? Did it gnaw at you in the quiet moments? Is that why you told yourself, ‘He doesn’t want it’? So you could justify cutting me loose?”

The truth hit like a slap.

But Damien wasn’t cruel for the sake of cruelty.

He was uncovering.

Digging.

Unmasking.

He stepped even closer now, the blood on his sleeve soaked deep, but his presence unwavering.

“Wasn’t that why,” he said slowly, “you never truly thought of me as part of the Valeheart family?”

Then—softer, but no less damning:

“As if I didn’t have the power at all?”

Silence.

Stillness.

Damien coughed again—sharp and wet—but this time, when he straightened, his expression no longer held just defiance.

It held triumph.

“You can’t read me?” he rasped, his voice quiet but cutting. “Maybe that’s because we share the same powers, grandmother.”

For the first time, Erin scoffed.

Not out of mockery.

Not rage.

Just… something very close to amusement. Dry. Bone-deep. Weathered.

“You think it’s that simple?” she said, her voice brittle as parchment, but carrying the weight of centuries. “If someone of my bloodline could blind me simply by existing, Damien, then the world would be full of hidden Valehearts clawing at thrones.”

Her mana curled again—tighter this time. Focused, not uncontrolled.

She stepped forward slowly, her footsteps echoing like a slow metronome across the hall.

“Your shield from my sight isn’t innate,” she continued. “Nor is it familial. I have seen through emperors. Through phantoms. Through my own children’s lies. And none of them, not one, could veil their soul like this.”

She stopped just a few paces away, her eyes narrowing.

“Even your mother, for all her discipline, never mastered silence the way you wear it now. So don’t insult me by suggesting this is blood alone. This—” her hand swept vaguely toward him “—this radical shift, this… persona, this furnace in your chest? It doesn’t come from Valeheart lineage. It comes from something else. Something outside. That is what I see.”

Damien didn’t flinch.

Instead, he smiled.

Blood on his teeth. Pain in his posture.

But his voice?

Steady. Almost amused.

“Grandmother,” he said, “you are not the only one who can see the future.”

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