Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 1095: A Larger Table

Sometimes the consequences had names.

Sometimes they were people whose names he could no longer remember.

Lucavion remained with that thought for several breaths, his thumb still resting against the edge of the table while the argument around him continued without requiring his participation. Toven had somehow moved from defending his abandoned northern fortification to claiming that military doctrine suffered from an unhealthy attachment to buildings, which Caeden was answering with the exhausted patience of someone who regretted taking the original question seriously. Mireilla had stopped trying to mediate and now appeared content to watch the disaster develop, while Elayne had withdrawn slightly into her chair with the distant expression of a woman observing people make avoidable mistakes.

The ordinary noise helped.

Five absent students remained a consequence worth remembering, even if he could currently remember little about the people themselves. He could neither return opportunities that had disappeared through a decision already made nor pretend the result carried no weight simply because he had never intended it.

That was the troublesome part of changing a story.

The world continued beyond whichever character happened to occupy the page.

Lucavion’s fingers finally left the table.

’Something to keep in mind.’

Voices approached from the gallery entrance before he could follow the thought farther.

He sensed Elara first.

Recognition had become almost annoyingly effortless now that he knew what lay beneath Elowyn’s altered mana signature, though the disguise itself remained excellent. Beside her moved the quieter presence of Reilan, which Lucavion was certain was Cedric, followed by several others whose mana signatures Lucavion had encountered often enough over the past week to place before they rounded the final column.

Aurelian appeared first, one hand tucked into his coat pocket while Marian walked beside him, talking about something with enough animation that he had apparently surrendered any hope of responding. Selphine followed a step behind, composed as ever, with Elowyn and Reilan occupying the quieter side of the group.

The twins were absent.

So was Dellen.

Lucavion looked beyond them as though the missing three might emerge afterward.

Aurelian caught the glance.

”Don’t ask.”

”I hadn’t.”

”You were about to.”

Lucavion smiled. ”Then I appreciate your foresight.”

”The twins decided they needed to settle something at the registrar’s office,” Marian explained. ”Dellen made the mistake of asking what.”

”And now he is gone too,” Aurelian finished.

”A cautionary tale.”

”Precisely.”

The newcomers slowed around the table, and what had begun as five commoner students occupying one corner of the gallery expanded rather naturally as chairs were pulled over from nearby tables. Lucavion watched the rearrangement with faint amusement. A week ago, enough students had treated the commoner intake as though proximity itself might prove politically contagious. Now several nobles were stealing furniture to sit with them without giving the matter much thought.

Selphine claimed the chair diagonally across from him.

Of course she did.

Her eyes found Lucavion almost immediately.

He sighed.

”You haven’t even sat down.”

”And you’ve already become defensive.”

”Experienced.”

Selphine adjusted the chair before taking her seat. ”How did Tier II treat you?”

There was something about the wording.

Lucavion narrowed his eyes.

”Suspiciously ordinary question.”

”Answer it anyway.”

”Poorly in places. Better in others.”

Marian dropped into the chair beside Mireilla. ”That describes everyone’s exam.”

”Elowyn would disagree,” Aurelian said.

Elowyn raised one brow.

”I said it was manageable.”

”You finished with enough time to review.”

”That is usually advisable.”

Marian looked toward Lucavion as though seeking solidarity.

He offered none.

”That sounds like a personal problem.”

”Traitor.”

Elowyn’s mouth curved faintly while Reilan took the seat beside her and remained content to listen.

Selphine, meanwhile, had yet to move her attention from Lucavion.

”What troubled you?”

”History.”

”That quickly?”

”I have very little loyalty to dead scholars.”

Her fingers rested lightly against the tabletop.

”What about the structural section?”

Lucavion paused.

Though he was awating something like this.

She had been asking toward something rather than asking about the exam itself.

”Better.”

”How much better?”

”Enough to become suspicious of your curiosity.”

Selphine’s lips moved by the smallest degree.

”You told me before that formal magical terminology was one of your weaker areas.”

”I did?”

”You complained about it for most of dinner.”

”That sounds like me.”

”And you were born in Loria.”

Several people at the table glanced between them.

That information itself was hardly new anymore, though Selphine possessed a talent for placing familiar facts beside one another until they began sounding suspicious again.

Lucavion rested his cheek against one hand.

”You’ve been thinking about my name again.”

”I never stopped.”

”Disturbing.”

Selphine ignored that.

”The doctrine section included several principles with western Lorian roots. One of the older circulation questions used terminology close to the frontier traditions where your name survived longest.” Her gaze sharpened slightly. ”I wondered whether anything felt familiar.”

Lucavion looked at her for a moment.

That was Selphine.

Ask how the examination went, then quietly place birth, language, magical tradition, and an archaic name around the answer until a simple academic question became an investigation into someone’s childhood.

’Persistent little noble lady.’

”Some things did.”

Selphine waited.

Lucavion smiled.

She waited longer.

”You’ve learned patience.”

”I had to.”

”Because of me?”

”Unfortunately.”

Aurelian gave a quiet laugh.

Selphine continued, ”Was it terminology you remembered, or the method itself?”

Lucavion’s smile thinned.

A younger hand around a training spear surfaced briefly in his mind, accompanied by the pressure of an instructor’s finger against his shoulder.

Give it somewhere to go before you call it back.

”The method.”

Selphine’s eyes sharpened immediately.

”And whoever taught you—”

”Selphine.”

Elowyn’s voice entered softly.

Selphine glanced toward her.

Elowyn had barely changed expression, though something in her eyes suggested that curiosity had reached far enough for the moment.

Selphine considered that, then leaned back.

”For now.”

Lucavion stared at her.

”You say that like a threat.”

”It is a schedule.”

He laughed.

’Troublesome.’

Yet there was a distinction in how Selphine approached him that he had gradually come to appreciate. She rarely asked questions merely to fill silence. Each answer became material, and whatever she learned today might return three conversations later attached to something he had forgotten saying.

It made speaking with her dangerous.

It also made it considerably less dull.

Marian, apparently deciding Selphine had extracted enough information from Lucavion for one sitting, leaned forward and looked around the table.

”Are we planning to stay here until dinner, or can we discuss everyone’s academic suffering somewhere with food?”

Lucavion turned toward her immediately.

”Finally. Someone with priorities.”

Mireilla gave him a tired look. ”I know. You woke up early.”

”Cruelly early.”

Marian waved a hand as she started gathering her things. ”We’re all waking up early this week.”

”Five.”

Her hand stopped halfway toward the clasp of her bag.

Aurelian looked over.

Marian blinked. ”Five?”

”Mana Control.”

For a moment, she simply stared at him. Then recognition crossed her face, followed almost immediately by irritation.

”Right.” She dragged a hand down her face. ”Your schedule.”

The others had heard about it before. Lucavion’s Weaponship Evaluation at three in the morning had already become one of those ridiculous Academy facts which sounded exaggerated until someone checked the actual schedule, and the irregularities surrounding the commoner students had hardly remained secret within their circle. Examination week had simply buried the matter beneath everyone’s own preparation, sleeplessness, and increasingly desperate attempts to remember material professors had apparently expected them to absorb months ago.

Mireilla gestured toward Elayne.

”She had Weaponship at five-thirty today.”

Marian looked toward her.

Elayne gave a small nod.

”And mine is tomorrow,” Mireilla added.

Aurelian’s expression tightened. ”They’re still doing it, then.”

The sentence carried less surprise than annoyance.

Selphine leaned back slightly, her earlier curiosity giving way to something colder. ”Apparently subtlety remains optional.”

Lucavion smiled. ”I feel mine have been rather affectionate.”

Elowyn’s gaze shifted toward him. ”Three for Weaponship. Five for Mana Control.”

”See? They remember me.”

”That isn’t funny,” Marian said.

”It was a little funny.”

”It really wasn’t.”

Lucavion looked at her for a moment.

There was little calculation behind Marian’s irritation. She came from a noble house and understood perfectly well how deeply status shaped Academy life, yet she lacked the habit some nobles possessed of turning every unfairness into an abstract political question before deciding whether they were permitted to dislike it. If something seemed cruel, she usually began from the simpler conclusion that it was cruel.

Lucavion found that quality rather pleasant.

Caeden lifted his cup.

”At least the evaluations themselves have remained valid so far.”

”For us,” Mireilla corrected.

Her eyes moved briefly toward Lucavion.

Everyone at the table understood the distinction.

The strange schedules were merely the easiest interference to prove. Lucavion’s week had included considerably more than missing sleep, and several people here had already seen enough pieces of it that another rehearsal of the entire matter would have accomplished little.

Aurelian exhaled through his nose. ”I understand faction politics. I even understand why some houses dislike the reform.”

”Very generous,” Toven said.

Aurelian ignored him.

”But if someone wants to defeat the commoner intake, they should outperform you. Twisting examination conditions proves very little.”

”Except that they dislike losing,” Selphine said.

”That too.”

Elowyn had remained quiet, though her attention lingered on Lucavion slightly longer than necessary.

”You recovered?”

Her voice was soft.

The question sounded ordinary enough that most of the table paid it little attention.

Lucavion knew what she was actually asking.

He flexed one hand beneath the table, remembering the remaining soreness around his meridians.

”Yes.”

Her gaze lowered briefly, as though she could somehow confirm the answer from the movement alone.

Then she nodded.

”Good.”

Lucavion’s mouth curved faintly.

He left it there.

Toven pushed his chair back.

”I propose we continue condemning institutional corruption after breakfast.”

”Lunch,” Caeden corrected.

”Whatever meal this is.”

”That,” Lucavion said as he stood, ”may be the wisest thing you’ve said today.”

”My northern retreat was wise.”

”Never mind.”

The table dissolved into movement.

Marian immediately began listing possible dining halls while Mireilla rejected the nearest one on the grounds that every student leaving Tier II would have reached the same conclusion. Aurelian suggested another route, Caeden started calculating which one would actually be faster, and Toven declared that anyone applying logistics to lunch had learned the wrong lesson from the examination.

Lucavion followed them toward the gallery exit, listening with only half his attention.

Then movement across the adjoining corridor caught his eye.

White hair.

Princess Priscilla.

She was already halfway through the intersection when he recognized her, several sealed documents tucked beneath one arm while her other hand held the edge of her mantle away from her stride.

She was moving quickly.

For Priscilla, anyway.

Her posture remained immaculate and her pace measured, yet there was purpose behind every step, enough that two students ahead of her shifted aside before she reached them. She barely seemed to notice.

Lucavion slowed.

The last time he had seen her properly, she had possessed a very different kind of stillness.

She had stood beneath other people’s judgment and endured it because endurance was what she had been taught to do. Even after everything changed, hesitation had clung to her decisions as though every step required permission from someone who was no longer there to give it.

The woman crossing the corridor now looked busy.

That was all.

Busy.

Heading somewhere because there was something she had decided to do.

Priscilla passed without seeing him.

Lucavion watched until the white of her hair disappeared around the next corner.

Earlier, he had been thinking about five people who had lost opportunities because he changed the story.

The thought still carried weight.

It should.

Yet causality had never promised to move exclusively toward tragedy.

Sometimes removing one piece closed a door elsewhere.

Sometimes pushing at the right moment caused someone who had spent years standing still to finally choose a direction of her own.

His lips curved.

’Well.’

Changing things like that...

’Indeed, not so bad.’

”Lucavion.”

He looked ahead.

Mireilla had stopped several paces away with the others.

”If you’re hungry enough to complain about it, walk.”

Lucavion slipped his hands into his pockets and caught up.

”Yes, mother.”

Her expression darkened.

He smiled.

Food suddenly seemed very important.