Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 725: Sponsor (3)

“Stand.”

The word echoed—not loud, but deep. Like the strike of a gavel in a silent court. Not backed by mana. Not shaped by spellcraft.

And yet—

The walls seemed to listen.

The light stilled in place.

Even the steam from Lucavion’s tea slowed, its delicate curl halting in the still air.

It was not sorcery. Not magic.

It was will.

Refined. Sharpened. Delivered through tone and breath and absolute certainty.

Speaking with Intent.

A technique older than any duel. Cultivated not in arenas, but in council chambers. Where empires rose or died by a single phrase. A practiced art passed down through bloodlines that had never known hunger, never known defeat. It crushed lesser men. Bent ambitious ones. And taught the proud the shape of their place.

Khaedren let the weight of that word spread through the room like ink in water.

A command.

An expectation.

A law, uttered as though it had always been so.

And Lucavion?

He felt it.

The pressure coiled at the base of his spine. A stillness that tried to climb up his ribs. His shoulders tightened—an instinct. A body trained in countless battles preparing to react, to shift, to obey.

The air grew denser.

The silence sharpened.

And Khaedren watched.

He watched because he had done this before. A hundred times. A thousand. He had spoken men to their knees. Had watched generals stand straighter, kings second-guess themselves.

He expected the same.

He always got the same.

But—

Lucavion didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t stand.

He merely tilted his head.

One hand lifted—slow, deliberate—and gently turned the teacup in place by its handle, the porcelain clicking softly against the saucer.

The teacup clicked once more as it settled back into the saucer.

Lucavion didn’t look away from Khaedren.

Didn’t rise.

Didn’t flinch beneath the sharpened silence.

Instead, his voice came—quiet, smooth, and undeniably clear.

“Is this,” Lucavion asked, “how you treat someone you came into the presence of?”

The question was simple. But in it was a precision that sliced past formality and reached something deeper.

“You walk into my chambers without knocking. You speak of etiquette while refusing to show even a fragment of it yourself.”

His gaze lingered on Khaedren’s posture—not with deference, but the same way one might examine a chessboard with a piece slightly out of place.

“And I have allowed you,” he continued, tone still calm, “to speak. Freely. Without interruption. Without reproach.”

Lucavion’s fingers came together loosely beneath his chin, his eyes half-lidded, his voice steady.

“Are all the things you’ve come here to say… simply this?”

He let the question hang for half a breath before continuing.

“Is this how House Varenth operates? That you come with no offer, no clarity, no courtesy—just… the expectation of reverence?”

His head tilted slightly, like someone studying a flaw in a finely crafted blade.

“If that’s the case,” Lucavion said, a flicker of something sharper entering his voice, “then House Varenth has grown more arrogant than I thought.”

The words hung in the air like the aftermath of a blade drawn in a temple.

And for a moment—

Khaedren didn’t speak.

Not because he was searching for words.

But because the words in his mind were no longer suitable for civil rooms.

Lucavion’s tone, his posture, his utter lack of submission—it was not just disrespectful.

It was sacrilege.

The boy hadn’t just failed to show humility. He had inverted the dynamic. Reversed the current of nobility itself and dared to speak as if he were the one weighing the House of Varenth on a scale.

“You don’t know your place,” Khaedren said at last, his voice low, clipped.

And then—

Lucavion waved a single hand.

Casual.

Precise.

“No,” he said flatly. “I know my place.”

He stood.

Fluid.

Unhurried.

A single motion—not reactive, but chosen.

“And that’s the part you still don’t understand.”

His eyes, black and still, met Khaedren’s fully now.

The tea was forgotten.

The walls seemed closer.

Even the filtered sunlight felt colder.

Khaedren’s expression remained composed, but there was a shift—too subtle for most to see. A tightening of the shoulders. A readiness born not of fear, but of insult unforgotten.

Lucavion’s smirk curved, faint and sharp.

He stepped forward once—not in challenge, but with the kind of precision that made distance irrelevant.

“Let me ask you something,” he said, voice still calm, but colder now—cut glass in velvet.

“Do you think you’re untouchable?”

Khaedren blinked.

“…Huh?”

The word had slipped out before he could stop it.

Lucavion’s smirk deepened, not in mockery—but in confirmation.

He repeated, slowly.

“Again. Do you think you’re untouchable?”

The question didn’t echo like Khaedren’s command had. It didn’t fill the room with pressure or intent.

But it cut.

Because it wasn’t spoken like a challenge.

It was spoken like a warning.

Khaedren’s jaw shifted, just slightly.

“Is that a threat?” he asked, his voice like chilled iron.

Lucavion’s smirk remained, undisturbed.

“No,” he replied. “It’s a simple question.”

His tone was calm—disarmingly so. He stepped forward again, a fraction closer. Not invading space, just occupying it.

“Because the way you act,” Lucavion said, his voice still soft, still surgical, “it’s as if you think you’re untouchable.”

He gestured lightly, a flick of his hand as though dismissing smoke.

“You walk into my chambers without respect. You speak like I should be grateful for the mere scent of your house’s banner. You wield etiquette like a blade, but you forget something very simple.”

He raised his fingers.

And flicked.

A crisp, clean snap of sound in the silent air.

“Your presence,” he said, voice dropping, “is not a gift.”

His gaze turned sharper, colder, voice like frost crawling across iron.

“It’s the noise a lapdog makes when his master sends him scratching at another man’s door.”

And then—

Khaedren moved.

Not in calculation.

Not in intent.

But in reaction.

A flash of fury cracked through the chamber, and the carefully restrained aura of the nobleman snapped—not mana, but posture. The chill iron of his restraint shattered beneath the insult, the word lapdog searing through centuries of blood-borne pride.

“You insolent bastard—!”

His hand surged forward—grabbing for Lucavion’s collar, or perhaps just needing something to crush.

But Lucavion?

Lucavion didn’t retreat.

Didn’t flinch.

His smirk deepened, slow and cruel.

As if he’d been waiting for exactly this.

And as Khaedren’s hand lashed forward—swift, trained, deliberate, it simply closed on empty hair.

Lucavion had already stepped back, one smooth motion, precise as breath. Not hurried. Not startled.

Just absent from where he’d been.

He stood now a pace further—out of reach, untouched, untouched by design.

And then—

He smiled.

“See?” Lucavion said, voice low, almost amused. “A lapdog.”

His fingers lifted again—not to flick, not to taunt, but to gesture in quiet confirmation.

“All talk.”

A beat.

“And barking when angered.”

———–A/N———-

More Chapters are on the way.