Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1015: What is it ?

”Something like that.”

At the answer like that...

Priscilla’s fist rose before she fully thought it through—a motion half-born of anger, half of the absurd little rebellion that kept ringing in her ribs. For an instant she surprised herself: Why not? What was stopping her? Pride? Habit? The careful training of a thousand ceremonies? None of it mattered in the breath between thought and action.

She struck his shoulder with the flat of her hand. Light, more a slap than a blow—there wasn’t the weight for anything more. She’d never been strong in muscle; magic had always been the easier language. The impact was small, ridiculous almost, but it felt like a punctuation mark. An answer to everything he’d said and everything he’d implied.

Lucavion blinked. He turned toward her, brows lifting in that lazy, infuriating way of his. ”What was that for?” he asked, genuinely curious, not even pretending to be offended.

Priscilla’s chest heaved. Heat flared across her face. ”For being smug,” she snapped, though the sound of it surprised her—sharper than she’d intended. ”And for saying things as if you’ve already won.”

He rubbed his shoulder with exaggerated care, as if the world’s bother had finally reached him. ”Does that help?” he murmured, amusement in the tilt of his voice. ”Fighting with the common touch?”

Priscilla’s hand lifted again, that same impulse speeding the muscles before thought could catch up. She imagined the slap—another punctuation, sharper this time—and felt the ridiculous thrill of it.

Lucavion’s laugh cut across the terrace, soft and surprised, as if she’d handed him an unexpected note in the middle of a practiced speech. There was no scorn in it; more like bright amusement, the sort that made the corners of her mouth betray her and twitch into something she almost didn’t recognize as a smile.

They fell into step, walking toward the dormitory blocks. The lamps along the path threw pools of warm light; her torn sleeve fluttered against her wrist. For a few strides the world narrowed to the soft sound of his boots and the small, steady beat at her ribs.

They were nearly at her corridor when she stopped. It felt sudden—and no.

”Thank you,” she said. Plain. Quiet. Not the clumsy, grateful thing she’d imagined in her head, but exact.

For a fraction of a second he looked taken aback, the expression folding into something almost like consideration. Then the smirk eased back into place, careful and lighter now. ”You’re welcome,” he answered, but his voice didn’t hold the usual edge. It was only a small concession—no sermon, no conditions.

She let the silence settle between them for a breath. The ember beneath her ribs still glowed; it hadn’t cooled. But under that heat lay something steadier—an acknowledgment that didn’t need a treaty.

”Don’t make a habit of hitting me,” he added, with the same half-joke he used for everything that mattered.

Priscilla allowed herself the tiniest, private smile. ”Noted.”

She turned then, pulling her cloak tighter against the night, and walked back toward the dormitory—bruised, stubborn, uncertain, and a little less alone than before.

*****

The corridor had long emptied.

The echoes of mana and footsteps had faded, leaving only the faint hum of the rune lines along the walls.

Elara stood there for a while, still half-hidden behind the column, the cold of the stone bleeding into her palms.

Her heartbeat hadn’t slowed.

Lucavion’s voice still hung in the air—quiet, sharp, terrifyingly calm. The image of the black flame, the way it had swallowed the corridor’s light, lingered like an afterimage behind her eyelids.

He hadn’t shouted. He hadn’t raged. He’d spoken—and the world had simply obeyed.

Elara finally exhaled, realizing she’d been holding her breath since the moment he’d appeared.

She pushed herself off the wall and began to walk, her steps light, deliberate, carrying her toward the open terrace again. The air there was cooler, freer.

She didn’t look back.

When she reached the balustrade overlooking the central gardens, she stopped. The sun was lower now, bleeding orange through the glass spires of the upper towers. The wind tugged gently at her hair, carrying the faint scent of mana oil and distant incense from the chapel quarter.

It should have been peaceful.

But her mind was still back in that corridor.

Lucavion—of all people—walking into that mess like he’d been waiting for it.

Calm. Effortless.

Not to protect, exactly. Not even to punish. Just to reveal.

He’d played with them like a scholar turning over specimens—no emotion, no hesitation, just deliberate control.

That wasn’t arrogance. It was precision. The kind born from someone who understood fear.

Elara’s fingers brushed the edge of the stone rail.

’Who would have thought?’ she murmured under her breath.

That same man who sat through exams with that half-bored smirk, who made a mockery of the Academy’s hierarchy, who seemed to take nothing seriously—

That man could walk into a corridor full of nobles and make them break.

And the way he’d looked at the princess...

Her pulse stuttered at the memory. It hadn’t been pity. Nor warmth.

Something stranger. As though he’d recognized something in her—something painful, something that didn’t need words.

Elara closed her eyes for a moment.

Priscilla.

The image of her kneeling there wouldn’t leave. White hair dulled by dust, uniform torn, bruises blooming under the light.

The proud princess of the Empire reduced to silence under the hands of her own kind.

This was what it looked like—humiliation, cruelty, a noble girl torn down by those who were supposed to be her equals. Yet something about it didn’t sit right.

Priscilla Lysandra didn’t feel like the kind of person to stand there, taking hits in silence. Not the way she had moved, or the way she’d looked at them. Even broken, she had held herself as if there was more strength left in her bones than any of them could see.

But... proud? No. That wasn’t quite it.

Elara could still recall the banquet vividly—the music, the silk, the heavy perfume of politics thick in the air. She remembered when the Crown Prince had turned on Lucavion, the crowd parting around them like the sea around a storm. And then her.

Priscilla had stepped forward when no one else dared. Her voice had been calm, almost soft, but every syllable had struck like glass. She hadn’t raised it, hadn’t begged for attention. She had simply spoken, and for a moment, the entire hall had frozen.

It was impossible not to take notice. Even Elara had.

But after that—after the uproar that followed, after the Crown Prince’s fury and the nobles’ whispers—Priscilla hadn’t basked in what she’d done. She hadn’t even seemed proud. When Elara had looked for her later, the princess had been standing at the edge of the ballroom, quiet, untouched food on her plate, eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the chandeliers.

She had looked... alone.

Elara frowned, resting her hands lightly against the stone railing. The light was fading now, gold giving way to the first shades of blue. The memory of that night bled into the present too easily—the contrast between the composed girl at the banquet and the bloodied one in the corridor felt wrong.

”Was I mistaken?” she whispered.

She’d thought Priscilla’s silence that night had been arrogance—the lofty distance of a noble too pure to mingle with the crowd. But what if it hadn’t been pride at all? What if it had been the same thing Elara herself had worn for years?

Isolation disguised as dignity.

Her chest tightened at the thought. The realization unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. Because if Priscilla Lysandra—the Emperor’s half-blood daughter, the princess who had stood against the Crown Prince himself—was living like that... then maybe this place was not that different compared to....the past.

The look in those girls’ eyes earlier—their contempt, their entitlement—had told another story. A story Elara knew all too well.

And somewhere in that tangled mess of politics and pride stood Lucavion—doing what no one else dared, again.

’What is it with Princess Lucavion?’