Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 739: You were correct

”But you were indeed correct.”

He didn’t raise his voice.

He didn’t try to stop her with force.

Just those five words.

She froze.

Her posture didn’t shift, but her breath did. Slight. Caught. Like she’d just stepped from a warm room into sudden cold.

Slowly, she turned her head.

Lucavion wasn’t smiling anymore.

His gaze—silver-flecked, unblinking—met hers with perfect stillness.

”I don’t play games when it comes to illusions that can hurt people,” he said, the air around his words oddly clear. ”And Reynald Vale was never meant to be a name. He was meant to be a lens. Something people would see through—until they didn’t.”

He folded his hands calmly on the table.

”They weren’t expecting anyone to challenge the lens. Just reflect it.”

A pause.

Then—

”I shattered it.”

Priscilla studied him—closely now. That calm again, but not performative. No embellishment. Just truth.

Lucavion’s fingers tapped once—just once—against the edge of the table before he resumed speaking. Calm, steady.

”Just as you said... Reynald Vale was not a commoner.”

The words landed with quiet weight. Not revelation—confirmation.

Priscilla didn’t speak.

Not yet.

She didn’t need to.

Because she could feel it now—the current underneath the surface of this entire meeting finally breaching.

”He was a knight,” Lucavion continued, ”raised under the direct training of that man.”

He didn’t say the name.

He didn’t have to.

Priscilla’s expression didn’t flicker, but her fingers curled slightly against her lap.

Lucien.

The Crown Prince.

Her half-brother.

Her enemy in everything but name.

And the moment Lucavion said it, so much clicked into place—the polish, the posture, the carefully scripted rise of Reynald Vale. Not a free soul, not a self-made warrior.

But a forged weapon.

”He was taught to be exact,” Lucavion went on, voice low. ”Precise. Everything from the way he bowed to the rhythm of his footwork. His entire life was filtered through Lucien’s lens. Loyalty wasn’t expected. It was conditioned.”

Priscilla listened.

Every word locked into her memory like iron catching in frost.

And then Lucavion leaned forward, his next words slower. Weighted.

”Princess,” he said, ”do you know of House Velcross?”

Her breath caught—not from surprise, but memory.

”Of course,” she replied, the words sliding forth with practiced clarity. ”House Velcross was accused of treason and exterminated when I was six. Their estate burned to the foundation. Every name struck from the imperial registry.”

Lucavion said nothing, so she continued—mind sharpened, already tracing the old facts.

”They were a family of swordsmen. Famous for their longsword tradition. Granted viscountcy after the Northern Purge, about a century and a half ago. They served the empire faithfully... until they didn’t.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, head tilting. ”But I don’t see how this relates to—”

She stopped.

Something in Lucavion’s expression had shifted. Not dramatically. Just enough to silence her.

”You said it yourself,” he murmured. ”They were erased.”

A beat.

”Everything... but one.”

Silence cracked between them.

No wind.

No sound.

Just the subtle hum of mana-light flickering along the sanctum walls.

Priscilla’s lips parted slightly.

”...Reynald Vale?” she asked, though her voice had already dropped in tone—lower, colder.

Lucavion gave a single nod.

”Reynald Vale,” he confirmed.

Lucavion exhaled once, slow and deliberate, as if giving shape to a name long kept buried.

”Seran Idric Velcross.”

The name settled into the air like dust over an unmarked grave—weighty, forgotten, forbidden.

”Lucien took him the night their estate fell. Not to imprison. Not to execute. To claim.”

Lucavion’s gaze sharpened, voice now cold as marble.

”He was barely five. Carried out through the secret tunnels before the imperial fire caught the east wing. No records. No witnesses. Just a child with a bloodline, stolen and hidden—then reshaped to wear another name.”

Across the table, Priscilla sat motionless.

But her breath—

It hitched.

Seran Velcross.

She remembered.

No, not the boy—she had never seen his face.

But the sword.

The style.

That grip.

Her mind flew back to the Trials, the way Reynald—Seran—had held his longsword. The narrow stances, precise deflections, the momentum drawn from hip to shoulder—never overly flashy, always geometrically clean.

That was northern formwork.

Not the formalized academy drills taught across imperial provinces. No—it was older. Hungrier. Passed from hand to hand within ancient families that didn’t teach outsiders.

And Velcross... they were famous for it.

She hadn’t placed it then—because Reynald masked it under newer layers. Smoothed it out, streamlined it into something palatable for the public eye.

But it had been there.

Hidden.

Now—it fit.

The silence that followed was not idle.

It was assessment.

Her fingers tightened slightly around her cloak as she spoke, voice measured, but laced with something colder now.

”Then that means...” she began, slowly, ”everything—his rise, his status, his ’commoner’s tale’—was manufactured by Lucien. He created a narrative. Took a child of treason and wrapped him in the story of redemption.”

Lucavion nodded once, quiet and slow.

”Exactly. He crafted a mirror.”

”And placed it in front of the world,” she finished. ”To reflect what he needed them to see.”

But even as the conclusion settled in, her eyes narrowed.

Because one question—

The only question that now mattered—

Pressed to the surface like heat under ice.

”How,” she said, voice taut, ”do you know all of this?”

Her gaze locked on his, sharp and burning, cutting past all the smirks and smoke he’d conjured in their earlier dance.

She leaned forward, just enough to close the space between them.

”Who are you really, Lucavion?”

Because this...

This wasn’t just guesswork. This wasn’t deduction or coincidence.

This was knowledge.

Intimate. Unrecorded. Impossible to acquire—

Unless he’d been there. Or worse...

Lucavion didn’t answer right away.

No smirk.

No flippant shrug.

Just silence.

That kind of silence that wasn’t absence—but calculation.

And that alone was answer enough.

Priscilla felt it—the unmistakable sense that a veil had almost lifted... only for another to slide into place just behind it.

Her eyes narrowed.

”If you’re not working alone...” she said quietly, ”then who’s feeding you this?”

The air grew denser. Not colder—heavier.

Lucavion leaned back slowly, arms folding over his chest, as though weighing the limits of what could be spoken aloud.

”Let’s just say,” he murmured, ”I’m not the only one who’s tired of illusions.”

But it wasn’t enough.

Not for her.

Because everything inside Priscilla, everything honed from years of political feints and veiled daggers, recoiled at the half-truth. It wasn’t just that someone might be helping him—it was the implications of who that might be.

And then—

A memory stirred.

Not a sound.

Not a face.

But a look.

Selienne.

The memory snapped sharp—too sharp for something that had only passed moments ago.

Priscilla could still see it: the poise, the smile, the gown stitched with ceremonial arrogance. But beneath all that—beneath the performance—Selienne had been off.

It was the eyes.

Selienne’s gaze, always so elegantly weaponized, had been too still. Her composure, which normally walked the knife-edge of condescension and grace, had held... strain.

Not outwardly. Not in ways most would notice.

But Priscilla had learned to see the seams.

And today, one of them had slipped.

’She was shaken.’

She hadn’t wanted to be, but Lucavion had done something. Something deliberate.

He refused her.

It was the only thing that made sense.

Because Selienne didn’t stumble. She didn’t approach someone like him without knowing her odds. And she didn’t walk away from negotiation unless she’d been handed something she couldn’t control.

Priscilla’s throat tightened.

That meant...

Lucavion had denied her.

Not just her offer—but her position.

And that—

That was what threw everything into question.

She’d assumed—rationally—that if Lucavion was standing against Lucien, then of course he would ally with Selienne. They were opposites on the imperial scale. Rivals. Two suns in collision.

And Selienne needed someone like him.

She was strong, yes—but without a blade like Lucavion beside her, she lacked the spectacle Lucien wielded with precision. She lacked fire.

Lucavion was supposed to be the counterweight.

It would’ve been the smart play.

But he had refused her.

So then—

’If he rejected both Lucien and Selienne... who is he listening to?’