Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1076: The Null-Read

Selenne placed her palm against the ward plate beside the door.

The stone beneath her fingers warmed first, followed by a brief shimmer of pale script that travelled around the frame. There was a pause while the chamber recognized her authority, then something heavy shifted beyond the wall.

The door opened inward.

Warm air met her immediately.

Cultivation Chamber 3C was less impressive than the grander facilities students tended to hear about before arriving at the Academy, though Selenne had always considered that a virtue. There were no towering crystal pillars or elaborate displays intended to impress visiting nobles. The chamber had been built generations ago and renovated often enough that several periods of magical craft remained visible at once.

Old gray stone formed the walls, each block fitted so tightly that the seams had nearly disappeared beneath age. Broad reinforcement arches crossed the ceiling, their surfaces carved with faded geometric runes whose original inscriptions had been supplemented over the years by thinner silver lines. Some of those additions followed the old patterns cleanly. Others curved around them in ways that made it obvious later artificers had preferred adaptation over tearing apart perfectly functional stonework.

The result was inelegant.

Selenne rather liked it.

A circular platform occupied the center of the chamber, raised by two shallow steps and large enough for several people to sit comfortably during group cultivation. Today, a single woven mat had been placed at its center. Around it, six waist-high stone posts formed a loose ring, each holding a cloudy crystal roughly the size of a clenched fist. Narrow channels had been cut through the floor between them, their grooves filled with silver and dark mineral powder that carried mana from the reservoirs beneath the chamber.

Along the walls stood wooden tables reinforced with brass corners, shelves containing spare formation stones, bundles of chalk, sealing wax, replacement crystals, and several leather-bound ledgers whose spines had darkened from years of handling. A broad slate occupied one side of the room, covered in half-erased diagrams from whatever cultivation exercise had taken place there last.

There were newer additions as well.

Three vertical crystal gauges had been mounted beside the observation alcove, each held inside a brass frame engraved with numerical markings. A shallow basin beneath them collected excess mana when the chamber released pressure too quickly. Beside it rested a slanted lectern carrying several recording slates and a cluster of smaller tuning crystals.

Magic had improved.

People still preferred tables.

Selenne stepped inside, and the door closed behind her with a deep scrape before the wards resealed.

”You’re early.”

The voice came from beside the central formation.

Professor Elir Varnen stood near the central platform with a folded sheet of parchment in one hand and the other resting against one of the formation posts. A faint indigo glow moved beneath his fingertips as he checked the carved lines running around its base, pausing every few seconds to compare whatever he felt against the figures written on the page.

He looked up when the door sealed behind her.

For a moment, surprise crossed his face before professional familiarity replaced it.

”Magister Selenne. Good morning.”

”Professor Varnen.”

Selenne stepped farther into the chamber, loosening the clasp of her cloak now that she was away from the cold outside.

Elir glanced briefly toward one of the narrow vents near the ceiling, where darkness still pressed against the glass.

”Morning may be generous.”

”Technically accurate, I believe.”

”Barely.”

”That is usually enough for administration.”

Elir gave a quiet huff that might have been laughter, then lowered the parchment in his hand.

”How is the examination week treating the Magicians’ Block?”

Selenne considered the question while she approached the observation table.

”Poorly.”

”That well?”

”We have survived.”

”Ah. Better than Runes, then.”

That earned him a glance.

Elir lifted the parchment slightly as evidence. Several smaller sheets had been pinned behind it, each bearing different seals and annotations in at least three colors of ink.

”I finished yesterday with six equipment reports, two recalibration requests, one student petition arguing that his affinity result should be reconsidered because his family astrologer predicted lightning, and...” He paused, looking down through the pages. ”Apparently I have also been assigned an essay explaining why the east Crystal Hall needs another resonance sphere.”

Selenne removed her gloves one finger at a time.

”Does it?”

”No.”

”Then that should be a short essay.”

”You would think so.”

He placed the papers on the nearby table, although the care with which he aligned them suggested that the complaint had become personal sometime during the night.

”The difficult part,” he continued, ”is explaining why we do not require one without offending the committee that requested it.”

”Tell them the current spheres function.”

”I did.”

”And?”

”They requested supporting documentation.”

Selenne paused.

Elir looked at her.

”They want documentation proving that functioning equipment is functioning?”

”Four copies.”

There was a brief silence.

Selenne set her gloves beside one of the recording slates.

”That seems excessive.”

”Thank you.”

”I meant the copies.”

His expression flattened.

Selenne’s mouth shifted by the smallest degree before she turned toward the central formation.

The exchange was ordinary enough that, for a few moments, the reason they had both come here remained comfortably outside it. Faculty examination weeks produced this sort of conversation everywhere in the Academy: complaints about schedules, students, committees, broken apparatus, perfectly functional apparatus being declared broken by disappointed students, and the inevitable mountain of reports generated by each.

Elir returned to the formation post.

”And you?” he asked. ”I heard the oral examinations were reinstated with almost no warning.”

”They were.”

”That must have pleased you.”

”It created seventeen additional evaluation records for my office yesterday.”

”So, deeply.”

Selenne gave him a level look.

”I have considered resigning twice.”

Elir’s hand stopped against the rune.

He turned toward her, eyebrows rising.

Selenne allowed the silence to remain for just long enough.

”From the examination committee.”

”Ah.”

”Temporarily.”

”Of course.”

He resumed checking the formation, though the faint movement at the corner of his mouth betrayed him.

Selenne glanced toward the stack of recording sheets prepared for the coming trial.

”The first-years are exhausted.”

”So are the instructors.”

”They recover faster.”

”I dispute that.”

”You may file a report.”

Elir looked over his shoulder.

”That was cruel.”

”Accurate.”

”Worse.”

The chamber settled around them again, filled by the low hum of circulating mana and the soft scrape of Elir’s thumb across the carved stone. Their conversation might have continued along the same harmless path if his eyes had not eventually returned to Selenne’s cloak, then to the additional examiner seal attached near her shoulder.

He frowned slightly.

”Actually...”

Selenne waited.

”I knew another examiner had been assigned this morning, but I expected someone from Cultivation Theory.” He straightened and looked at her properly. ”I did not expect the Magister Primus herself.”

There it was.

Selenne rested one hand against the edge of the observation table.

”I was available.”

Elir stared at her.

She let him do so for a moment before adding,

”And I have some experience with anomalies.”

His expression changed.

Slowly.

His gaze moved from her face to the faint starlight threading the edge of her cloak, then back again.

Selenne said nothing.

Elir eventually nodded.

”Right.”

A pause.

”That was deliberate, wasn’t it?”

”Mostly.”

”I see.”

He looked back toward the formation, though his expression now carried the reluctant amusement of a man who had understood the joke several seconds later than he would have preferred.

Selenne herself had spent years being treated as a problem of classification before institutions finally surrendered and changed the classification instead. Seven-Star Archmage. Starlight affinity. An attribute that behaved badly whenever scholars tried to fit it inside older elemental structures. The Magic Tower had eventually invoked an exceptional clause simply because conventional language had become more troublesome than admitting the exception.

Elir knew that history.

Most serious magical scholars did.

He adjusted one of the crystals and said, ”Fair enough. Though I suspect this anomaly will prove less cooperative.”

”That is what I wanted to ask you about.”

His hand slowed.

The harmless portion of the conversation ended almost naturally.

Selenne moved closer to the platform, though she remained outside the circular formation.

”I read your Crystal Hall report.”

Elir sighed.

”That sentence rarely precedes anything pleasant.”

”It was concise.”

He turned toward her.

”Now I know something is wrong.”

Selenne ignored that.

”You used the term negation.”

”I did.”

”Do you still agree with it?”

Elir’s expression shifted from dry fatigue into concentration almost immediately. He looked toward the nearest crystal as though Lucavion’s affinity sphere had somehow followed him into the room.

”I agree that it described what I observed.” He paused, then corrected himself. ”No, that is... imprecise. It described the artifact’s response. I am less comfortable claiming it describes the boy.”

Selenne’s attention sharpened.

”What is the distinction?”

”The sphere worked.”

”You verified that personally.”

”Before and after.”

”And during?”

Elir drew in a breath.

”That is the problem.”

He set the parchment aside and folded his arms, though after a second he unfolded them again and placed one hand against the stone post instead.

”When Lucavion touched it, the reading sequence began normally. The sphere recognized contact, opened its lattice, attempted to establish correspondence with his mana...” Elir’s fingers tapped once against the stone. ”Then the process simply ceased producing anything usable.”

”Nothing?”

”Nothing that belonged to any framework the sphere was built to recognize.”

Selenne tilted her head slightly.

”That sounds different from saying there was nothing there.”

”Yes.” Elir nodded at once. ”Exactly. That was why I disliked the initial result.”

He stopped, searching for the next wording.

”The first instructor called it a null-read. That is procedurally correct. The artifact returned no affinity result, so on paper, null-read. But when I examined the sphere...” He frowned. ”It did not behave like it had encountered an empty channel.”

Selenne waited rather than filling the pause for him.

Elir’s eyes narrowed slightly as the memory returned.

”It was more like...”

He raised one hand, made a vague motion, then seemed dissatisfied with it.

”No. Give me a moment.”

Selenne did.

”When an ordinary student has a weak affinity, the sphere still finds something to follow. The response may be faint, fragmented, badly aligned, but the lattice catches a thread eventually.” He looked at her. ”With Lucavion, it opened the same way, reached the same way, and then every method it possessed for defining what it touched became useless.”

”And that was why you wrote negation.”

”Because I needed to write something.”

Selenne’s eyebrow lifted.

Elir sighed.

”Yes, I am aware of how scholarly that sounds.”

”It sounds honest.”

”That is kinder than I expected.”

”I can withdraw it.”

”Please don’t.”

The reply came quickly enough that Selenne almost smiled.

Almost.

She turned her gaze toward the empty cultivation mat.

”And the flame?”

Elir became quieter.

”That made it worse.”

”How?”

”Well...” He rubbed lightly at his brow. ”If the sphere had returned nothing and the boy had produced nothing, I could have spent the evening arguing with myself over an unusual core structure.”

”But he produced black fire in front of you.”

”In front of half the hall.”

”With no visible array.”

”None.”

”Incantation?”

”None.”

”External conduit?”

Elir hesitated.

”I did not detect one.”

Selenne caught the phrasing.

”Did not detect?”

”I had several hundred students in the hall, multiple active affinity stations, instructors channeling into artifacts, ward matrices overhead, and a crowd beginning to accuse the boy of cheating before I had finished deciding what I was looking at.” Elir exhaled through his nose. ”I am reasonably confident there was no external conduit. I would prefer another observation before upgrading that to certainty.”

”Reasonable.”

”Thank you.”

”And the flame itself?”

His eyes narrowed again.

”Stable.”

”How stable?”

”Annoyingly.”

Selenne looked at him.

Elir gestured toward her as though she should understand why this mattered.

”A student whose affinity cannot be read should not casually produce a manifestation with that degree of cohesion. The flame held its shape without a visible correction cycle. It did not waver when the hall became loud. His attention moved away from it, and it remained stable.”

Selenne remembered Lucavion sitting in Hall C.

”You let it move where it wants, then you shape the edges.”

Her gaze lowered slightly.

”Did he appear strained?”

”No.”

”Did he appear surprised?”

Elir thought about that longer.

”By the sphere?”

”Yes.”

”Curious,” he said finally. ”More than surprised.”

Selenne’s fingers moved once against the edge of the table.

That sounded like Lucavion.

Elir seemed to remember something else.

”Although...”

She looked at him.

He started to speak, stopped, then tried again.

”When I told him he had no affinity, he barely reacted. At the time I assumed he was maintaining composure because everyone was watching.” Elir glanced toward the central platform. ”Now I am less certain.”

”Why?”

”Because when they reminded me about the black flame, he offered to demonstrate it as though he were helping me solve the problem.”

A faint silence settled.

Selenne could picture that too easily.

”I see.”

”Yes.” Elir exhaled. ”That was approximately my response afterward.”

Before Selenne could ask her next question, the outer ward gave a low chime.

Both of them turned.

The authorization marks around the door changed.

Pale blue shifted into silver, and several older regulatory sigils appeared between the Academy runes as the chamber examined credentials belonging to someone outside its ordinary faculty hierarchy.

Elir stopped mid-motion.

Selenne’s gaze remained on the door.

A moment later, the heavy stone panel opened.

And a woman stepped through.