Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Lucavion's voice faded into the air, soft as dust falling from old bookshelves.

"What a strange woman… yet somehow familiar…"

The words hung, suspended. More for himself than anyone else.

Then—

[Indeed… she feels familiar…]

Vitaliara's voice shimmered in the air beside him, low and steady. She hadn't moved from his shoulder, but her eyes—those glimmering slits of verdant gold—were fixed on the corridor where Elowyn had disappeared.

Lucavion didn't respond right away. He simply tilted his head the other way, thoughtful.

'Well, I don't make mistakes when it comes to things like this,' he thought, more defensive than he liked.

[Really? Your gut does never lapse or what?]

He blinked once.

'….'

No answer. Because that smirk, that certainty he wore like silk—it didn't feel quite so smooth now. The sensation was faint, but distinct. Like catching a glimpse of something in a mirror that shouldn't be there. Too fast. Too precise. Too heavy.

Vitaliara's tail flicked once, then coiled again gently behind his neck. Her tone softened—still curious, but laced with something more serious beneath.

[But I couldn't see through her.]

Lucavion's gaze flicked toward her, brows twitching just slightly.

Lucavion's brow furrowed—not sharply, but with the slow weight of thoughts pressing against the edge of certainty.

He didn't need Vitaliara's senses to tell him what he already knew.

He'd felt it too.

That moment in the garden… when he looked at her—tried to look through her—something pushed back. Not with hostility, but with… depth. Like trying to peer through a lake that mirrored the sky too perfectly. There was reflection. Stillness. Precision.

But no bottom.

No origin.

He exhaled, quietly.

"…You're right," he murmured, the words for Vitaliara, but more for himself. "I couldn't see her either."

Not her mana. Not her center. Nothing to track. Nothing to grasp.

And it wasn't the first time.

Rare, yes. But he'd felt it before—once during a desert raid, another time in the northern courts. People whose presence was curiously absent. There were always reasons. Either—

They were absurdly powerful, their Vitality wrapped so tightly it didn't leak.

Or—

They bore a condition, a shattered core, a fractured binding that muddied all sensory readings.

Or…

They had something.

An artifact. A relic old enough or precise enough to bury the truth of them under layers of silence.

He ran a hand through his hair, gaze distant now.

'Is it her?'

He didn't mean it as a dramatic question. Just a possibility that had lived at the back of his thoughts for weeks now—quiet, patient, waiting for the world to catch up.

Elara.

He had already considered it.

The name had haunted the narrative of Shattered Innocence, that bastard of a novel he'd been dumped into—its plot as fragmented as its title, full of ruined paths and rewritten identities.

And Elara… she was meant to come here. That much, he was sure of. Whether by the commoner exam, or some other means—she would attend the Academy. She had to. It was too central. Too linked to everything she wanted.

Revenge didn't wait on logic. It waited on opportunity.

And Isolde—that woman—was here.

Elara would not miss this.

Which meant if she wasn't attending as the commoner he'd expected—then she was hiding in plain sight.

Under a different name.

Under a different face.

He narrowed his eyes.

"...Elowyn Caerlin."

And frowned.

That wasn't a name he recognized from the novel.

Not a single mention. Not even as a footnote. Not among the list of nobles, side characters, or political pieces used to bolster the setting. He had read everything the Author had allowed him access to before his sudden transposition—everything before the blackout hit the middle acts.

This girl? She didn't exist in those pages.

Not as Elowyn.

Not as anything he could place.

'Which means… either she's new, or she's someone old with a new face.'

His gaze returned to the dark corridor, though it gave him nothing now—just smooth walls and the gentle flicker of lanterns dancing like breathless stars.

He rubbed the back of his neck slowly.

'It could be nothing.'

But even he didn't believe that.

Too many variables. Too many coincidences. And this academy—this mess of court politics and bloodlines and half-buried vendettas—it was a magnet for hidden identities.

The Author had confirmed it once.

A casual note in the margins of a serialized update: "Several students in the Academy arc are not who they appear to be. Some are hiding lineage. Some, intent. Others, far more dangerous secrets."

Lucavion never got far enough to read the reveals.

But he hadn't forgotten that line.

Which meant… he couldn't rule this girl out. Not yet.

Even if it felt unlikely.

He exhaled softly.

'Unlikely… but not impossible.'

Because that look she gave him in the garden—cold, but restrained. Personal, but measured. It wasn't just unfamiliarity.

It was tension.

Recognition. Suppressed recognition.

And then there was her energy. No, he couldn't see her origin—no color, no signature, nothing that rooted her Vitality to a clear source. But that didn't mean she was opaque.

In hindsight… it was like staring at liquid through frosted glass.

He couldn't identify what was inside—but he could see the movement. The shape. The flow.

And that mattered more.

Because while he couldn't directly compare her to past encounters… he could watch how that vitality behaved.

And when someone lies, when someone pretends—their vitality stutters. Warps. Breaks rhythm.

It was an ability that he had recently acquired.

Hers?

When she first looked at him, her vitality immediately moved quite a lot.

It gave a reaction, a reaction that is so violent that he didn't expect something like that at all.

Lucavion's fingers stilled against the edge of the marble, his eyes distant—but not unfocused.

He was remembering.

Not in idle recollection, but in reverse dissection. A sequence played backward in his mind, not just of what was said, but what moved beneath the surface.

That moment.

When she first looked at him.

There was no mistaking it now. Not with the lens he'd refined over the past year. Not with the cursed clarity his attunement to Vitality had sharpened into something far more precise than most would ever be allowed to touch.

The way Elowyn Caerlin—if that was even her name—glared at him.

She hadn't just looked. She stabbed with her eyes. Like she'd already decided he was something she couldn't forgive. Like standing in his presence was a punishment unto itself.

And he'd felt it.

Her Vitality, usually unreadable, moved all at once—chaotic, thrashing, thrumming through every inch of her body. No color. No origin. But unmistakable motion. Like blood surging beneath a too-still surface. Like rage trapped in a glass cage.

Unstable.

Uncontrolled.

On the brink of eruption.

'I thought she was about to collapse,' he admitted silently. 'Or snap.'

And so—he stepped in. No grand gesture. Just contact.

A hand on her shoulder.

A tether to pull her back from whatever hell her mind had slipped into.

But what came next…

The slap.

It hadn't surprised him because of the force.

It surprised him because of the Vitality spike that came with it.

Sharp. Focused. Immediate.

Not instinctive.

Intentional.

And that made all the difference.

Even before her hand met his wrist, her body had already decided to strike. No hesitation. No stutter. As if the action was waiting for an excuse to escape.

And then came the lie.

"Ah… sorry. I didn't mean to react like that."

He didn't need to interrogate the words.

Her Vitality had already told the truth.

She meant every fraction of that slap. Not as an accident. Not as panic.

As judgment.

As something she had held back, and let slip for just a heartbeat too long.