Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 820: Discarding one

The ballroom glittered like a polished lie.

Gilded chandeliers dripped with mana-light, refracting soft hues of opalescent blue and gold across the marble floor. Laughter floated on the air like perfume—calculated, effortless, weightless. Nobles swept past in layers of silks and velvets, their movements precise, their smiles sharpened into elegance. The string quartet at the far end played a dulcet arrangement designed to soothe rather than stir.

And in the center of it all stood Isolde Valoria.

Or perhaps—Isolde Valoria Lorian. The name had not yet been inked into law, but it hung around her like a crown already fitted, waiting for ceremony to catch up with truth.

She was draped in silver, her gown sleek and understated, chosen to whisper wealth rather than shout it. Her pale hair, pinned in an intricate braid, shimmered like starlight under the chandeliers. Her posture was impeccable. Her smile—perfect.

The very image of a woman who had won.

She had everything.

The title. The bloodline. The betrothal to the future emperor of the Lorian Empire. Her enemies—dead or forgotten. Her rivals—bought, exiled, or made irrelevant.

And yet.

Her fingers curled tighter around the stem of her glass, the chilled wine inside untouched.

There was something in her chest. Not pain. Not anger. Not even dread.

But something.

A hollowness. A murmur.

It had been years since she’d felt anything she couldn’t predict, couldn’t weaponize. Years since a single glance, a name, a face had triggered something as fragile and stupid as—

Emotion.

Not power. Not calculation. But something softer. Unbidden.

It curled around her ribs like smoke, whispering things she didn’t have time to entertain.

Why was that the case?

Why, when everything glittered—when every smile bent for her, every door opened before she asked—did her heart carry this strange, insistent disquiet?

It didn’t make sense.

Not for her.

Not for Isolde Valoria Lorian, future empress of the Empire, duchess of the Valoria line, architect of silence, mistress of consequence.

And yet…

She hadn’t been sleeping well.

Not since Arcania.

That cursed city of masks.

It had started the moment they arrived in the capital, weeks before the official term of the Academy began. A matter of protocol, of course—they had brought gifts, delivered speeches, kissed the hands of influential instructors, let their presence be known like good nobles do.

They had been greeted with fanfare.

They had been settled in private estate quarters reserved only for royal bloodlines.

And for a while, everything had unfolded just as she had calculated.

Until the news came.

A change in the roster. A shift in policy. Something called “an opening of the gates.”

She’d skimmed the report the first time. Then read it again.

Then read it slowly.

This year, for the first time in its blood-drenched, lineage-locked history, the Arcanis Imperial Academy had allowed a new category of entrants.

Commoners.

Non-nobles. Mage-borns and bastards, orphans and prodigies. People who had clawed their way into the candidate pool not through birthright, but through merit.

By decree of the Headmaster and the Magic Council.

As a symbol of progress. Of peace.

Of unity.

This in itself wasn’t what unsettled her.

Let the Empire pretend at unity. Let the Academy throw open its gilded gates to commoners and martyrs alike. Let the poor believe they had a seat at the table, so long as she held the knife beside the plates.

She hadn’t cared.

Not until the name.

It was late evening when the preliminary rankings were posted. A simple parchment, enchanted to hover in the air outside the central hall. Most nobles hadn’t even bothered to look. Isolde had, out of habit—out of hunger.

And there it was.

First-ranked among the Commoner Entrance Examination: Lucavion.

That name.

Her breath had caught—not with surprise, not at first. She had stared at it like one stares at a ghost with a familiar face and a knife already in hand.

A name she had erased long ago.

A name she had discarded.

She had removed him with precision. Had watched the fire, heard the silence. Had stitched his absence into her narrative like a wound she refused to acknowledge.

He was gone.

He was supposed to be gone.

And yet—

There it was.

Lucavion.

She had tried, briefly, to reason. To rationalize. It could be another. A coincidence. A child named after a martyr, perhaps. A false name taken to impress. A mimic.

But the portraits arrived a few days later—standard orientation files distributed to the faculty, leaked to her by a loyal curator with trembling fingers and eyes that never met hers.

She had studied them in the privacy of her receiving room, the mana lanterns dimmed to dusk-light.

It had been more than five years.

He had changed.

The boy she remembered—infuriating in a rather timid way, too soft for his own good—had been forged into something else. Something quieter. Sharper. The young man that stared back at her from the portrait had a stillness to him, a precision she didn’t remember ever seeing.

He wore a plain uniform, his posture correct but not stiff. His hair was darker than she recalled, falling in rough, swept-back waves. His features had matured—no longer soft with youth, but defined by something far less forgiving than time.

She stared at the image, searching for cracks. For some sign that this was not him. That this was some strange fluke of fate—a second Lucavion, birthed from coincidence.

Maybe the portraits didn’t do him justice, she had thought. The angles were wrong. The light too flat. The eyes distant.

Even Adrian, when shown the file in passing, had scoffed.

“There’s no way,” he had said, with the dismissive certainty of royalty. “That guy didn’t even Awaken even after 4-years passed, remember? Barely made it through the standard rites. You know him the best, don’t you, Isolde?”

He had waved a hand, elegant and final. “And now he’s a peak 4-star Awakener? Please. It must be someone else.”

And for a moment—a single moment—she had almost believed it.

Until the banquet.

Until the double doors opened to welcome the commoner students—an orchestrated gesture of tolerance, all eyes upon them as they stepped into the gilded lion’s den.

Silks turned. Whispers passed like thin wind through glass.

Isolde’s wine glass was already forgotten on the edge of the table, untouched.

She didn’t hear the music anymore.

She didn’t register the blur of muted conversation around her.

Because her eyes had found him.

And his had already found her.

Black. Still. Watching.

There were many different emotions in those eyes.

She could tell. She could tell that, those eyes contained emotions that she knew very well, yet it didn’t contain an emotion that they should have had.

His eyes were not surprised.

Just present.

Like he’d never left.

Like he’d known she would be here.

And in that frozen breath between recognition and the storm, she knew.

It was him.

Lucavion.

In a split second, she remembered many things of the past.

The memories of someone that she had discarded as a piece.

The face had changed. The name had been doubted. But those eyes…

One thing about him was them….

Those eyes wouldn’t lie.

Not to her.

Not now.

Not ever.