My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 298: The Gaze of Chaos

Like it was tasting the shape of his soul through his pores like a sommelier sampling blood instead of wine, savoring the vintage of his fear.

The needles moved.

He felt them crawl—sliding across his skin in patterns that made no sense, spiraling around his throat like a noose of invisible silk, pressing harder at his pulse points until he could feel his own heartbeat stuttering against them, lingering over his heart like they were counting the beats to decide if it was worth letting it continue.

Testing for weakness. Searching for the soft places where a blade could slip in and twist without resistance.

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck—

His breath came back in a ragged gasp that sounded like tearing paper.

And that’s when he felt the eyes.

Not one pair.

Not ten.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

Tens of thousands.

Watching from every shadow, every stone, every blade of grass that suddenly looked too sharp, too still, too hungry.

They weren’t human eyes.

They weren’t even animal.

They were older.

Hungrier.

Ancient.

And they were not looking at him.

They were looking through him.

Past skin, past bone, past the fragile meat-suit he wore, straight into the dragon coiled at the center of his soul—and the dragon inside him answered with a low, vibrating growl that rattled his teeth and made the gravel under his feet tremble like it was trying to run away.

The air thickened.

They pressed against him from every direction—from the ancient walls that remembered blood older than his bloodline, from the manicured hedges clipped with surgical cruelty, from the dark windows of the distant manor staring like empty sockets, from the trees whose branches looked too much like reaching fingers—

From the shadows that moved when nothing should have moved, from the very air itself, which tasted like copper and old iron and the faint perfume of something that had died screaming centuries ago.

Watching. Waiting.

Some gazes felt curious—cold, clinical, like scientists observing a rat in a maze that had just realized the cheese was poisoned.

Others felt hungry—predatory attention that scraped across his skin like sandpaper dipped in salt and glass, leaving phantom burns that throbbed with every heartbeat.

But one gaze was different.

One gaze was worse.

It came from somewhere deep inside the estate—a single, focused point of attention that cut through the chorus of watching eyes like a scalpel through smoke. It didn’t just observe him. It pinned him.

Held him in place with the casual, absolute certainty of something that had killed before, would kill again, and found the whole process about as interesting as breathing.

The Consort.

The name surfaced in his mind without his permission like the system was giving him a hint of something he didn’t even know before today—ripped from the system notification, suddenly real in a way words on a screen could never be.

The Supreme Crimson Consort had noticed him.

And it was amused.

He could feel it—a faint, terrible humor bleeding through that crushing attention. Like a cat watching a mouse walk into its den and politely ask for directions.

Like a god watching a mortal crawl into a temple and demand an audience while still wearing his mortal shoes.

He could feel killing intent.

It didn’t creep. Didn’t build. It just arrived—a wave of pressure that slammed into his chest like a physical blow, driving the air from his lungs in a wet, choking gasp, making his knees buckle so hard gravel bit into them through his trousers.

His vision tunneled to black at the edges. His ears rang with the high, thin whine of something ancient waking up angry.

Every instinct evolution had spent millions of years perfecting screamed the same three words in perfect unison:

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.

Not a possibility. Not a threat. A certainty.

The absolute, bone-deep knowledge that something in this estate could end him with less effort than he’d spend swatting a fly.

That his life meant nothing here. That he was meat walking into a grinder and the only question was how long the grinding would take before the machine got bored and spat out the scraps.

His hands trembled so violently he almost dropped the bag.

His mouth went dry—tongue sticking to the roof like old glue, throat clicking uselessly when he tried to swallow.

Sweat broke out across his forehead, his back, his palms—cold sweat, fear sweat, the kind that came when your body knew something your mind was still trying to negotiate with.

The air itself felt wrong.

Heavier. Thicker.

Like the atmosphere had doubled its density just around him—pressing down on his shoulders until they ached, making each breath a conscious, expensive effort. Gravity seemed to lean on him personally.

The ground pulled harder at his feet, as if the gravel itself wanted to swallow him whole and be done with it.

And beneath all of it—beneath the needles and the eyes and the killing intent and the crushing weight of presence—something inside him stirred.

Something old. Something that had been sleeping even before the system bound to him. Something that felt the predator’s gaze and didn’t cower.

It growled.

Low. Subsonic. A vibration in his chest that had nothing to do with his heartbeat and everything to do with what he was becoming.

His blood ran hot—suddenly, violently hot—like someone had lit a furnace in his veins and thrown in gasoline for good measure. His pupils contracted to slits. His jaw set so hard he tasted enamel grinding.

The needles tightened in response—delighted, almost playful—like they’d finally found something worth playing with.

The dragon inside him answered with a snarl that rattled his teeth and made the gravel under his feet shiver like it was trying to flee.

And in that moment, pinned between the Supreme Crimson Consort’s amused hunger and the awakening thing in his own blood, Phei understood one crystal-clear truth:

He was already bleeding.

Not from cuts.

From the simple, unforgiving fact of existing in their presence.

He was going to die if he didn’t go back to where he came from!

*****

Here we fucking are

This is the real start of Volume 2: The Dragon’s Awakening Vs The Legacy Families The World of Powers

Everything up to now? That was the prologue in disguise. The charity-case backstory. The rooftop. The System latching onto a broken boy like a parasite with a redemption kink. The slow burn of harem-building, the petty high-school power plays, the stolen kisses and interrupted fucks in hidden rooms.

That was Phei learning how to walk with claws he didn’t know he had.

Now?

Now the dragon wakes up properly.

Now the Legacy families—who’ve spent centuries treating their bloodlines like monopoly money and their daughters like strategic assets—finally smell something that isn’t one of them. Something that doesn’t bow. Something that hungers the way they used to, before comfort made them soft.

Volume 2 is where the gloves come off.