Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

“I’m pretty resistant to fire.”

The attendant actually took a step back, hearing that and seeing the black flames moving.

Kaleran’s face tightened. Just slightly. But in the forge’s flickering light, it looked like steel hardening under pressure.

“You will not go in there,” he said, voice low, sharp, final. “That would be a violation of rank, of order, and of basic respect. Harlan may be a relic, but he is still the Empire’s highest-standing forge authority. You do not walk uninvited into his crucible.”

Lucavion didn’t even look at him.

He just let the Flame of Equinox twist once more around his fingers—faint tendrils of unmaking licking the air, distorting the heat already present with something older, colder.

Kaleran stepped forward, voice rising just slightly. “Lucavion—”

“Don’t bother,” Lucavion said, already moving.

He didn’t raise his voice.

Didn’t need to.

The sheer casualness of it hit harder than defiance. Like he wasn’t arguing. Just done waiting.

And with a single flex of motion, he vaulted the low arcane boundary before anyone could finish a ward or warning. His coat trailed behind him, catching light like midnight silk, and the moment his boots touched the platform just before the sealed crucible path—

The moment Lucavion’s boots landed on the obsidian platform before the sealed crucible path, the forge shifted.

Not violently. Not with alarm.

But like something immense had just turned to watch.

The heat in the air didn’t rise—it concentrated. Dense. Intent. The distant runes above the crucible door flickered, then held steady in a muted gold. Waiting.

Kaleran moved forward at once, cloak flaring behind him like a wing of shadow. “Lucavion!” His voice cracked like a whip this time, unmistakably commanding. “You are breaching protocol. You have no clearance to enter that corridor. This is a direct violation of imperial structure—”

“Master Harlan will not like this,” the attendant stammered from behind, wide-eyed. “He will be offended. If you walk into that space uninvited—”

Lucavion lifted one hand.

Waved it absently. “Blah, blah. Fire, offense, imperial tragedy, breach of something.” He didn’t even slow his stride. “If he doesn’t want to see me, he won’t let me through. I know him well enough to trust that.”

His voice dropped slightly, just enough for the words to hit with weight.

“But I’d rather speak to him face to face than keep playing this pathetic back-and-forth through middlemen who leave covered in soot and excuses.”

He stepped again.

The edge of the crucible corridor shimmered ahead, runes etched into mirrored steel walls glowing like heat through breathless stone. The barrier of divine resonance rippled in his wake—testing him, touching at the edges of his presence.

The Flame of Equinox, still flickering low and controlled, pulsed once. The fire around him parted.

Lucavion didn’t look back.

Didn’t need to.

Kaleran’s voice was behind him, sharp and brittle. “Lucavion, if you walk through that door—”

“Then maybe,” Lucavion said without turning, “he’ll finally answer properly.”

And with that, he crossed into the crucible.

Into the real forge.

Where the old man waited—whether to burn or to listen.

As Lucavion stepped deeper into the crucible corridor, the air shifted—again.

It didn’t burn.

Not yet.

But it compressed.

Like he was walking through the chest of a slumbering giant, each breath tighter, each step heavier, the atmosphere humming with unseen weight.

[It’s hot,] Vitaliara murmured from his shoulder, the usual lilting edge of her voice dulled by the sheer pressure around them. [Like—actually hot. Not annoying bathwater hot. Molten god-metal hot.]

Lucavion didn’t speak.

He didn’t need to.

The sweat didn’t bead. His skin didn’t sting. Not yet. His resistance was holding, even if he could feel the difference—this wasn’t mortal flame. Not anymore.

He’d known heat.

When he forged his core, when the [Flame of Equinox] first rose from the depths of his broken channels, his body had scorched from the inside out for hours. He’d sat in a pool of flame with nothing but breath and will holding him together. Fire had become part of him—obedient, familiar, instinctive.

But this fire wasn’t familiar.

It didn’t want to be.

The heat here was not alive.

It was bound. Angry, dense, a thing that had once been free and had since been hammered into shape over centuries. It radiated purpose—not wrath. And it did not yield.

Not even to him.

Lucavion kept walking.

The corridor opened ahead into a great forge hall walled in blacksteel and mirrored aetherglass. The floor glowed faintly from underneath, runes whispering in slow cycles. The central anvil was massive, carved into volcanic stone veined with living silver, and behind it—

Bang.

The first hammer fell.

The sound echoed like a thunderclap trapped in chains.

Then again.

Bang.

Another blow—steady, exact. Like a judge delivering the same verdict it had delivered a thousand times before.

Lucavion stepped into view.

And—

“…Noble kids…” came a voice—rough, low, like someone chewing gravel and spitting judgment. It came not from the heat, not from the walls, but from behind the anvil, hunched over iron that glowed white with inner heat.

The old man didn’t look up.

He didn’t need to.

“Tch,” the voice muttered. “No discipline. No timing. No damn respect. Always interruptin’. Always thinking they’re entitled to forge-time like it’s a bathhouse ticket.”

Another bang.

“Would’ve sent ‘im home if the damned directorate didn’t stamp the request with six signatures and a damn seal. I know a waste of ore when I see one.”

Bang.

“First-rank my ass. Probably another pampered brat with a bloodline he couldn’t even explain and a fancy title to shove down my throat.”

Lucavion exhaled—slow, through his nose.

The hammer struck again—bang—but the steel beneath it was no longer the only thing resonating with heat.

The forge pulsed. Not violently, but rhythmically. Like a second heartbeat had entered the room.

Harlan didn’t stop.

Not for breath.

Not for presence.

Not even for the wrongness in the way the fire bent slightly around the boy who stood just past the threshold.

“Tch. Probably came here to ask for some sword with wings and glowing runes. Godsdamn peacocks, the lot of you,” he muttered, wiping a thick forearm across his brow without even glancing up. “Bet he wants it blessed by a dragon’s last breath or some other steaming nonsense.”

Lucavion cleared his throat.

Just once.

A sharp, quiet cough.

Not a request. Not an apology.

A note. Played into the room.

The hammer paused.

Just briefly.

Then dropped again—bang—but slower this time. A beat behind the rhythm.

And then—

“…Who the hell said you were allowed to enter this place?” the old man barked, finally looking up from his work. His eyes, pale and scarred with mana-burn around the edges, narrowed at the silhouette standing inside his crucible.

He squinted slightly, then muttered again.

“Hmph. You’re still standing. I’ll give you that.” His gaze sharpened, jaw twitching. “You shouldn’t be able to. Not here. Not that close to—”

He stopped.

Because now he saw the fire.

Not his.

Lucavion’s.

The [Flame of Equinox] curled subtly around his wrist, silver-blue veins of void-light flickering like whispers in the forge’s heat. It didn’t challenge the room.

But it didn’t yield either.

Harlan’s posture shifted. Almost imperceptibly.

Not softening.

Just… adjusting.

Like a predator realizing it had misjudged the weight of something in the brush.

Lucavion’s mouth tilted into a smile that wasn’t quite friendly.

“Old man,” he said evenly, “your senses are getting duller, it seems.”

The hammer stopped mid-air.

Harlan froze.

Completely.

No breath. No sound. No shift of flame.

Just a sudden, absolute stillness.

“…You…”