Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Crystal-clear. Framed by strands of ink-black hair that curled slightly at the ends. Like still water over a deep, endless well.

And just beneath the image, the broadcaster’s magic traced his name into the lower edge of the illusion.

Lucavion Thorne.

Her breath caught—not in surprise, not quite—but in something deeper. Slower. As if her body had registered the recognition before her mind caught up.

At first… she didn’t recognize him.

Time had carved new lines, refined the boyishness into edge. He was taller now. Broader. The smirk he used to wear like a shield was gone, replaced by something far more dangerous: stillness. Precision.

But the name.

The name made it real.

A name etched in her memory like a blade to the ribs.

Lucavion.

The silence of her breath was followed by the faintest tremor in her gloved fingers. The tea cup in her hand tilted slightly, steam long dead. Her other hand moved to her coat pocket, almost unconsciously—where a silver pin remained, untouched, unpolished, and very, very sharp.

A whisper slid past her lips, not meant for anyone but the winter-chilled wind.

“So you were here.”

The silence of her breath was followed by the faintest tremor in her gloved fingers. The tea cup in her hand tilted slightly, steam long dead. Her other hand moved to her coat pocket, almost unconsciously—where a silver pin remained, untouched, unpolished, and very, very sharp.

A whisper slid past her lips, not meant for anyone but the winter-chilled wind.

“So you were here.”

And then her face changed.

The slight curve of her mouth vanished. The softness in her features drained away like heat from an open wound.

Her beauty—previously admired from afar by a few lingering passersby—twisted. No longer beautiful. No longer luminous.

What remained was raw. Empty. Awful.

Her lavender eyes dimmed, as if something ancient had awakened behind them, something cold and endless and terribly patient. The kind of cold that didn’t speak in screams or curses, but in silence. In waiting.

In watching.

The crowd below roared again as Lucavion landed a finishing blow, but she didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Only the wind responded to her presence, curling against her coat and whispering her name where none could hear it.

She stayed there.

Still.

Until the screen faded to black and only his name remained glowing in ghostlight.

Lucavion Thorne.

The cup cracked in her grip.

She didn’t notice.

Just like his surname.

Thorne.

A name that always felt wrong in the mouth. Too soft on the tongue for something that sharp.

Because that’s what he had been.

A thorn. Not the kind that warns you away with visible barbs, no. Lucavion had been the hidden kind—the kind that nestled beneath the skin without notice, festering in silence until blood welled from nowhere and you couldn’t remember when you’d started bleeding.

She had eliminated him.

That much she remembered with precision.

He had served his purpose. Every whisper. Every manipulation. Every calculated accident. She had woven his threads into her tapestry, and when the design no longer needed him, she had pulled the knot.

Tight. Clean.

Discarded like any other broken tool.

He was finished.

That was how it was supposed to end.

But he had disappeared.

No body. No echo. No trace. Just absence.

At first, it had irritated her in the way loose ends always did—mildly, in the background. But over time, the silence stretched too far. It wasn’t a disappearance. It was defiance. A refusal to stay gone.

And she loathed it.

Because if there was one thing she hated more than betrayal, it was inefficiency. Unfinished business.

And Lucavion Thorne was supposed to be finished.

So why now?

Why here?

Her gaze fell again on the screen, now dim, but the ghost of his presence still hung in the air like static. The afterimage of that final strike. The way he had moved—not just like a fighter, but like someone who had waited for the moment.

Who had practiced.

Who had survived.

A chill traced her spine, slow and intimate.

“Was it coincidence?” she murmured, more to herself than the wind now. Her voice held none of the breathy softness from before—only calculation, the syllables as crisp as frost snapping underfoot. “Or were you waiting, too?”

The thought coiled in her chest like smoke.

Lucavion, rising from obscurity… here, of all places.

The Academy.

Her teeth sank into the inside of her cheek, slow and deliberate. She tasted blood, welcomed it.

If he had come here as part of some naive attempt at rebirth—seeking power, redemption, or revenge—then he was already walking into her mouth like a deer into the den of wolves.

And if he wasn’t?

If he remembered everything?

If he’d never stopped playing?

Her smile returned—but it was not the smile of a girl. Not anymore.

It was thin. Surgical. A smile made of bone and broken promises.

Then fine.

Let him crawl back into the game.

Let him try.

This time, she would not eliminate him quietly.

This time, she would bury him loudly.

And make sure he stayed buried.

Just then, a voice—soft, velvety with carefully practiced affection—slipped in from her side.

“Isolde. What are you looking at?”

She didn’t turn right away. Not until the scent of bergamot and burnt cinnamon wrapped around her senses—his cologne, subtle but deliberate. Then came the sound of footsteps, calm and measured, stopping just beside her as if summoned by the very tension she wore like perfume.

Adrian.

The man who appeared was dressed as all noble sons were taught to be—elegant, but not vain. His coat bore the sigil of the Royal family of the Lorian Empire stitched in gold, his blond hair loosely tied back, framing a face sculpted by fortune and influence. In his hands were two drinks, each delicately steaming in the chilled air.

He offered one to her with a warm, lopsided smile, then leaned down with the ease of routine to press a kiss to her gloved hand.

The frost from her fingers didn’t reach his lips.

But he pretended not to notice.

“Adrian, my dear,” she said, her voice softening like silk across stone.

And just like that—as if it had never existed—the storm vanished from her features. The glint of cold recognition. The tightness in her mouth. The predator’s stillness. All gone.

In its place bloomed a smile. Radiant. Serene.

“I was just watching the broadcast,” Isolde murmured, bringing the cup to her lips without sipping. The tea had long since gone cold, but the ritual mattered. A play was a play, after all. “The academy trials are quite… entertaining.”

Adrian smiled beside her, his expression effortlessly gracious—though not entirely kind. It was the smile of a man who had practiced diplomacy with a sword in his hand and a crown at his back. A smile that didn’t quite reach the eyes. That never did.

“Peculiar magic, isn’t it?” he said, his gaze drifting toward the screen as if it might still offer some final flicker of interest. “The way they weave those artificial battlefields. Simulations, layered atop real mana fields. Their methods are flashy. Theatrics for the commoners.”

Even as he said it, the slight stiffening of his jaw betrayed him. The pride was there—unbent, unwilling to admit that the Empire’s techniques, archaic and grand, might now be outpaced by their enemies’ adaptation.

And Isolde, of course, saw it all.

She always did.

Her smile grew faintly, elegantly.

Like silk drawn over a knife.

****

The room glittered with opulence, but it was the wrong kind of gold—the loud, garish shine of conquest rather than inheritance.

Tapestries woven with arcane thread hung from walls engraved with the sigils of victory, and above them, polished masks of long-dead High Mages stared down in silent judgment.

At the center of it all, beneath a floating crystal sphere humming with broadcast resonance, a young man reclined in a throne carved from obsidian and starlight.

His face was beautiful in that cruel, pointed way—the kind of beauty that knew it held weight. Hair black as void magic, eyes the color of tarnished gold. His lips, soft and full, moved.

“Useless.”

The word dropped like a blade.

On the display above him, the final moments of a battle flickered—frost spreading across a ruptured field, a boy’s silhouette dashing through the chaos with impossible grace, his blade striking down a magic-forged behemoth as though it were paper. The boy wasn’t noble. He wasn’t bred. He wasn’t even documented.

He was just… there.

And worse—he had won.

The young noble’s fingers tightened on the armrest, obsidian cracking beneath pale knuckles.

“Losing,” he said, voice colder now, quieter, “to a mere commoner.”

The resonance crystal pulsed, casting flickers of blue light over his face. On the display, the crowd was roaring. The commentators—a chorus of bought tongues—were already spinning tales of the underdog, the rising star, the untamed prodigy.

“Lucavion,” he breathed.

His eyes—once lidded with disinterest—sharpened. Pride curled in the edges like smoke catching fire. Not the kind of pride that admired, but the kind that could not bear to be eclipsed.

‘A worm crawling where it was never meant to rise.’

————A/N———-

Sorry for not posting, I had an exam yesterday so I couldn’t write. I will write more chapters if I can.

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