Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1073: A Familiar Reflex

[Stop.]

The command had come together with two warm paws pressed firmly over Lucavion’s eyes, cutting away the moonlight, the distant stars, and everything else his gaze had been using as a pathway into memories that seemed determined to drag him farther from the room.

For a few seconds, the darkness remained.

Gerald’s fading silhouette still lingered somewhere behind it. Alexander’s broken farewell followed close behind, along with lavender eyes, rain against glass, and the uncomfortable shape of a question Lucavion had somehow spent years without asking.

Then his own voice broke through them.

”Why?”

The sound surprised him.

He had grown so accustomed to speaking with Vitaliara through thought that hearing his own voice in the quiet room felt strangely foreign, roughened slightly by exhaustion and carrying more weight than the single word deserved. Yet the moment it left his lips, something inside him shifted.

His voice belonged here.

To this room.

To the Academy.

To the faint humming of the ward-lamp beside the wall and the winter air slipping through the narrow opening of the window.

The memories receded by a fraction.

A single thread had stretched between where his mind had wandered and where his body actually remained, and without meaning to, Lucavion had caught hold of it.

Vitaliara’s paws stayed across his eyes.

[What do you mean, why?]

Lucavion leaned his head back slightly, though the movement only pressed his face more firmly against the soft pads covering his sight.

”Exactly what it sounded like.”

[You were getting lost inside your head again.]

There was a small pause.

Lucavion considered the accusation with considerably less urgency than she seemed to believe it deserved.

”Is that such a bad thing?”

Both paws disappeared from his face at once.

Lucavion opened his eyes to find Vitaliara staring at him from far too close, her front paws now planted against his chest while her golden eyes narrowed into something dangerously unimpressed.

[Why would that be a good thing?]

”...”

Lucavion looked at her.

Vitaliara looked back.

The question should have been easy enough to answer. He had certainly answered far more complicated questions today, though admittedly most of those answers had ranged somewhere between incomplete and academically disastrous.

Still, this one remained strangely difficult.

Why would losing himself in those memories feel preferable?

’Indeed.’

His gaze moved past Vitaliara toward the edge of the bed.

’Why?’

When he looked at it from outside the moment, the answer refused to arrange itself into anything sensible.

Perhaps he wanted to remember.

Perhaps some part of him believed that if he followed every fragment far enough, eventually the missing pieces would arrange themselves and reveal what had actually happened all those years ago.

Or perhaps he wanted the opposite.

There was an odd comfort in sinking deeply enough into the past that the present became distant. Questions were easier when they belonged to people who had already spoken their answers years ago. Memories could wound him, certainly, but memories also stayed where he placed them. The living were considerably less cooperative.

Except even that explanation felt incomplete.

Lucavion rubbed his thumb slowly against the side of his hand, tracing the place where an old quill had existed only moments earlier in memory.

Sometimes he understood himself quite well.

Other times, he suspected he had simply become very good at producing explanations quickly enough that nobody, himself included, questioned what rested beneath them.

Isolde had always been particularly troublesome in that regard.

His expression changed by so little that most people would have missed it.

Vitaliara did not.

She settled back upon her haunches, and the irritation in her gaze softened into something much more deliberate.

[Perhaps I should ask her.]

Lucavion’s eyes shifted toward her.

”Ask whom?”

[Isolde.]

The response arrived with such casual certainty that his attention sharpened immediately.

”About what?”

[You.]

Lucavion stared at her for a moment.

Then one eyebrow rose.

”That sounds like an excellent idea.”

[Does it?]

”Certainly. You should approach the daughter of a Lorian duke, whom you have met properly perhaps twice, and ask her to explain the emotional condition of a man she currently knows as a suspicious commoner from another empire.”

Vitaliara’s tail moved once behind her.

[You make it sound complicated.]

”Because you appear determined to make it complicated.”

[I could simply ask whether she knows why you become strange whenever she is nearby.]

”Even better.”

[Then I will.]

”You would first need to explain why a small white creature has begun speaking directly into her mind.”

[I am capable of introductions.]

”I have witnessed your introductions.”

[And?]

”They generally involve invading personal space and demanding food.”

[You are not that in this regard.]

”.....”

[You also invade other people’s personal spaces.]

”.....’

[That is how I met you.]

”Well, you are right about that.”

A faint huff came from Vitaliara, though Lucavion had already leaned back against the wall, his earlier stillness loosening little by little. The response had come automatically. One question became another, then an absurd possibility turned into something he could pick apart until the conversation belonged to him again.

His voice still carried less energy than usual.

The smile at the corner of his mouth was lazy rather than mischievous.

But it was there.

Vitaliara watched the change unfold without interrupting it.

[Perhaps I should tell her about the quill instead.]

Lucavion’s smile paused.

[As expected, the thing you do with your hand is about a quill, isn’t it?]

”You really have become troublesome.”

[I noticed your hand. And since I noticed it, she probably did too.]

”And half the room noticed her noticing it.”

[I don’t think so.]

”Really?”

[Yep.] Vitaliara’s eyes fluttered a little.

[In this case....Perhaps I should ask why.]

”You may find yourself frozen before finishing the sentence.”

[I am a Mythical Beast of Life.]

”That would make the frozen statue considerably more valuable.”

Vitaliara’s eyes narrowed.

[Gerald would never have allowed someone to speak about freezing me so casually.]

”You said that master once threatened to roast you.”

[He was joking.]

”So am I.”

[He apologized afterward.]

Lucavion tilted his head.

”That sounds unlike him.”

[Because you knew him for a handful of years.]

”And there it is.”

[There what is?]

”The ancient-being argument. Very difficult to defeat. Any disagreement can simply be answered with, ’I watched your ancestors discover fire.’”

Vitaliara lifted her chin.

[I have never said that.]

”You were thinking it.”

[I was not.]

Lucavion looked at her with exaggerated suspicion.

”Can you prove it?”

Her tail struck his leg.

A small laugh escaped him before he could suppress it.

The sound carried through the room, quieter than his usual laughter but real enough to alter the atmosphere that had gathered there. His shoulders settled farther against the wall, and the tension that had held his body around those memories began easing from his hands.

Vitaliara said nothing for a moment.

She merely looked at him.

Lucavion caught the look almost immediately.

His eyes narrowed.

”...You did that intentionally.”

[Did what?]

The innocence in her tone was terrible.

”Do not.”

[I have no idea what you mean.]

”You brought up Isolde because you knew I would start arguing.”

[You seem rather confident.]

”Vitaliara.”

[Lucavion.]

Their gazes remained locked.

Then her ears twitched.

That was enough.

Lucavion released a slow breath through his nose and looked toward the window again, although this time his eyes stopped at the glass rather than travelling through it toward the stars beyond.

”Manipulative creature.”

[You sound proud.]

”I am evaluating your declining moral character.”

[It is the first time I have heard of this.]

”Really?”

[Yes. Gerald never complained about any of this.]

”Your moral character?”

[My methods.]

Lucavion gave her a sideways glance.

”That explains quite a lot.”

[And yet they worked on him too.]

Something warmer entered her voice with the mention of Gerald, though she allowed the thought to pass before it could gather enough weight to pull the conversation backward again.

Lucavion noticed that as well.

It was natural that he did.

His hand rose and came to rest between her ears, fingers moving slowly through the soft white fur.

”You know I wouldn’t have answered.”

[I know.]

The immediate response made his fingers pause.

Vitaliara leaned her head slightly into his palm.

[If I had asked you directly about Isolde, you would have given me half an answer.]

”Generous.”

[Then you would have questioned the wording of my question.]

”It matters.”

[After that, you would have smiled until I became irritated.]

”A natural consequence of conversation.”

[And eventually you would have changed the subject.]

Lucavion considered defending himself.

The effort seemed excessive.

”So you skipped ahead.”

[I reminded you how.]

His hand became still.

For several breaths, neither of them spoke.

There was something almost annoyingly precise about the statement.

Vitaliara had never expected him to suddenly sit there and unravel everything he carried regarding Isolde. She knew him far too well for that. If anything, pressing seriously would have driven him deeper into silence, especially tonight, while his thoughts were already unstable enough to blur memories together.

So she had given him something easier.

A threat to interfere.

A ridiculous argument.

A reason to redirect.

She had placed the familiar shape of himself directly in front of him and waited for instinct to take over.

Lucavion looked down at her.

’Clever.’

The thought came with reluctant appreciation.

Vitaliara’s golden eyes narrowed slightly.

[Do not look at me like that.]

”Like what?”

[Like you have just discovered something.]

”Perhaps I have.”

[Keep it to yourself.]

”Now who is avoiding questions?”

[You are exhausting.]

”Apparently.”

The word came more quietly than the others.

Lucavion’s hand slipped away from her head and fell onto the blanket beside him. He stared at it for a moment before rolling one shoulder, then the other. Only now that his thoughts had slowed could he properly feel the heaviness sitting behind his eyes, the lingering strain of the examination, the headache left by the memory fragment, and the deeper fatigue that had accumulated beneath both.

He exhaled.

”I’m tired.”

Vitaliara looked him over once.

His hair had fallen slightly across his forehead, his eyes carried the dullness that appeared whenever he had pushed himself too long, and whatever energy he had recovered during their argument seemed to have been borrowed rather than restored.

[You clearly are.]

Lucavion gave her a flat look.

”Your concern is touching.”

[I am deeply concerned.]

”I can tell.”

He pushed himself away from the wall and stood. The mattress rose beneath the loss of his weight while Vitaliara stepped aside, watching him cross the short distance toward the head of the bed. His movements remained steady, though the usual precision had softened around the edges, each action carrying the slight delay of someone whose body had begun insisting upon rest before his mind agreed.

Lucavion pulled back the blanket.

”I’ll sleep. Or, rather, I—”

[You will try.]

His hand stopped against the fabric.

”...”

Vitaliara stared at him.

Lucavion stared back.

Then he lowered himself onto the bed without attempting to finish the sentence.

”Good night, Vitaliara.”

[We shall see.]

”That is a terrible response to good night.”

[Sleep, Lucavion.]

He shifted onto his back and pulled the blanket loosely across himself. For a moment, his gaze threatened to wander toward the window again, where the stars still waited beyond the glass.

Instead, he closed his eyes.

Whether sleep intended to cooperate was another matter entirely.