Transmigrated into Eroge as the Simp, but I Refuse This Fate - Chapter 353

Capítulo 353: Who are you ?

Vivienne’s voice slipped out before she even thought of the weight it carried.

“Mother.”

The word landed heavier than it should have, dragging silence behind it.

Damien felt her hand tense just slightly on his arm. That was all—the tiniest shift. But for Vivienne Elford, whose every breath and glance was calibrated into elegance, that slight tightening spoke louder than any gasp could have.

The woman sitting at the far end of the table tilted her head faintly, pale eyes catching the chandelier light and reflecting it like cold gemstones. She didn’t rise. She didn’t need to. Presence alone bent the room toward her.

“Daughter,” she said.

Her voice was low, smooth, and carried the kind of resonance that slipped past the ears and went straight to the bones. It was not commanding—not overtly. Yet it carried an intimacy that disarmed, an old familiarity that made Vivienne’s chest tighten even as her mind bristled.

It had been years since she’d last heard it. And still, the cadence struck the same—making her feel at once like a girl again, like she was still standing in the long shadow of this woman, and like she had never truly stepped out of it.

Vivienne’s lips parted, but no words came immediately. She hadn’t sensed her at all—not when she entered the mansion, not even as she approached the dining hall. That was impossible. Not even Dominic had caught it. He stood like stone at Vivienne’s side, gaze narrowed, measuring, though even he betrayed the faintest flicker of awareness: he had been caught unaware.

And that was not something Dominic Elford tolerated lightly.

For Vivienne, however… it was expected.

Of course.

Of course her mother would appear like this.

Unannounced. Uninformed. Entirely beyond any walls or wards that should have made such an intrusion impossible. The Elford mansion was not merely a house—it was a fortress veined with stabilizers and layered arrays, overseen by an intelligence system that left no entry unchecked. Guests had to be announced, escorted, cleared. Even allies were bound to procedure.

But she?

The Matriarch of the Valeheart family?

She was exception incarnate.

The unshakable center of the old bloodline from which Vivienne herself descended.

The woman who had once whispered prophecy with a voice as sharp as glass, who claimed to see threads where others only saw chaos. The woman who even the Elford lords had long since learned could not be barred by doors or politics.

Her mother.

Vivienne drew herself up, shoulders straight, chin high, though she knew the gesture meant little. If there was anyone in this world she could not fully mask herself from, it was this woman.

Still.

Her voice came out even, practiced. “You didn’t inform me you would be visiting.”

Her mother’s lips curved, but it wasn’t quite a smile. More like the shadow of one. A knowing thing. “If I had,” she said softly, “would you have slept last night?”

Vivienne’s jaw tightened, though her expression didn’t crack.

It was Dominic who broke the silence. His voice was level, measured as ever, but the undertone was sharper than usual—a blade wrapped in silk.

“If I had known,” he said, his eyes steady on the seated figure, “I would have arranged for proper hospitality. Your arrival deserved nothing less.”

At that, the woman’s smile curved wider—but not warmer. She tilted her head, blonde hair slipping like liquid gold across the raven-dark fabric of her attire.

“If you had done that,” she murmured, her voice smooth, edged with that strange intimacy that made the air itself feel thinner, “I would have missed this opportunity.”

Her words settled into the chamber with the weight of inevitability.

And then, deliberately, she rose.

The motion was unhurried, almost languid, yet it carried the unspoken grace of command. Her black garments whispered against themselves like wings, each step as precise as a clock’s pendulum. The jewelry adorning her caught the chandelier’s glow in fractured sparks—rings glinting, bracelets chiming faintly, the pendant at her throat swaying with the rhythm of her stride.

She crossed the length of the table, every movement quiet, inevitable, until she stopped directly in front of Damien.

For a moment, she simply looked at him.

“Oh, my…” she whispered, a hand rising to her lips, fingers delicate against her skin. Her smile softened, almost indulgent. “You…”

But then, as though a switch had been flipped, the shift came.

Her pale eyes narrowed, and the weight of her presence multiplied. Darkness seeped into the chamber—not the absence of light, but a pressure, a shadow that coiled around the edges of perception. The chandelier still burned, but its glow felt strangled, smothered beneath something older, heavier.

Every breath thickened.

Her hand fell back to her side. Her gaze drilled into Damien, sharp as a blade, and her voice no longer carried indulgence—only command, only the weight of judgment.

“Who,” she asked, the words slow, deliberate, echoing as though the walls themselves strained to hold them,

“are you?”

The air thickened until it clawed at Damien’s lungs. Each breath felt like pulling through tar, heavy and reluctant, the rhythm of his chest disrupted by the oppressive weight pressing down from above.

The woman—Vivienne’s mother, the Matriarch—did not move closer, but her presence did. It filled the space, coiling like smoke, seeping into every corner of the hall. Darkness pooled outward from her feet, not shadow, not mana in any form Damien had ever studied. It shifted, flickered—an energy that refused to stay constant. One moment sharp and electric, the next languid and heavy, as though reality itself had trouble deciding what shape it should take.

And threaded through it all were whispers. Faint, not quite words, not quite silence. The more Damien strained to hear them, the less sense they made—like the memory of a language he had never learned. They skated across his thoughts, alien and insistent, brushing against instincts he didn’t know he had.

His body tensed automatically. Every nerve screamed that this wasn’t a simple show of strength. This was a demand.

Beside him, Vivienne’s mask cracked at last. Her voice cut sharply, colder than Damien had ever heard it, even when directed at Dominic.

“Mother! What are you doing!”

Her mana surged to life, silver threads snapping into existence around her as she forced a barrier into the air. The polished glow of it wrapped the immediate space around Damien, intercepting the rolling darkness. For a moment, the oppressive weight lessened.

Dominic was already there beside her, his movements precise, silent, as another wall of mana flared into being. His barrier was thicker, ironclad, forged from a density that made the floor groan faintly beneath the strain.

But the Matriarch didn’t falter.

Her gaze never left Damien.

“Don’t intervene.”

The words weren’t shouted. They didn’t need to be. They carried like a command written into the marrow of the world itself.

And then her mana flared again.

The whispers rose in volume, twisting into layered echoes that made Damien’s skull ache. His knees wanted to bend, his chest wanted to collapse inward under the weight, but he held his ground, jaw tight, his pulse loud in his ears.

The chandeliers above rattled. Plates along the table cracked, glassware humming as if caught in the resonance of a storm. The maids outside the hall staggered, one of them dropping a tray with a clatter before retreating in fear.

The Matriarch raised her chin slightly, pale eyes narrowing further, her voice ringing like a verdict.

“Let me ask you again.”

The shadows surged, wrapping the chamber in something that was neither silence nor sound, a suffocating middle ground that made even Vivienne’s and Dominic’s barriers flicker under the strain.

Her gaze bored into Damien, sharper now, cutting through flesh and bone as though searching for something buried deeper.

“Who are you?” she demanded, every syllable vibrating in his chest.

“And what did you do to my grandson?”