Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 977: Crystal Hall (2)

“Fourteen-thirty, huh? Mine is at three.”

There was a long pause.

Then—

“…Wait,” Mireilla said slowly, brow knitting. “You just said three.”

Toven narrowed his eyes. “As in, again? Another three A.M. exam?”

Even Caeden looked faintly alarmed, water glass halfway to his lips.

Lucavion blinked. Then laughed, a soft, startled sound. “What? No. No—three P.M. This time it’s civilized.”

Mireilla groaned, slumping forward with theatrical exasperation. “Clarify your horrors next time.”

“I was about to have a moment of mourning for your soul,” Marian added, gesturing dramatically. “Even I have limits to how much injustice I’m willing to accept before breakfast.”

Lucavion set down his knife with a soft clink and leaned slightly toward Elara—Elowyn—across the table. His tone lost a touch of its usual lilt, gentling like silk drawn across rough stone.

“Well,” he said, and the flicker in his gaze became something warmer, almost unreadable, “since we’re headed the same way at nearly the same time…”

A pause, just long enough to mean something.

“If you’d like,” he continued, voice lower now, “we could walk there together.”

His words didn’t carry expectation, only offer. A branch extended—not the kind you forced into someone’s hand, but the kind you let hang there, still and steady, waiting.

Across from him, Elara stilled.

The faintest tilt of her head, the way a blade shifts light when it angles slightly—not enough to strike, only to show that it could.

It was somehow strange; it was as if there was something in her mind, when she was looking into Lucavion’s eyes.

A beat passed.

Then her gaze softened, just enough to thaw the cold that had settled earlier.

“That would be… fine,” she said simply.

But her voice—her voice—sounded different now. Quiet, yes, but laced with the kind of calm that came not from comfort, but from choice.

A usage of words that was hard to define.

’Interesting.’

At least it was like that from the perspective of Selphine.

“Good,” Lucavion murmured, and though his grin returned, it was softer at the edges. “I’d hate to let you get ambushed by the Crystal Hall’s questionable architecture alone.”

Elara’s mouth tugged, not quite a smile—closer to that wry tension that lived at the corner of truths too sharp to laugh at.

She lifted her gaze, meeting his with something drier now.

“Not everyone makes enemies out of architecture, Lucavion,” she said, her voice low, deceptively smooth. “Some of us walk through hallways without declaring war.”

Lucavion leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing with amusement. “Ah. But where’s the fun in that?”

Selphine, who had been observing with her usual precision, barely moved her quill. “She has a point, you know. Those trees still has scorch marks from your last ’exploration.’”

“I was testing the perimeter,” he said mildly. “For science.”

“For drama.”

“For attention.”

“Bold of you to assume those are different,” Lucavion said, unbothered. Then he turned back to Elara with a smile a shade too serene. “But I must admit, you’re a rare one.”

She arched a brow. “Rare?”

He lifted his cup, tapped it lightly against the air as though to toast her. “Yep, rare.”

Elara tilted her head, eyes narrowing just slightly. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

Lucavion took a slow sip from his cup, as if buying time he didn’t need. Then he set it down with deliberate care.

“It means what it does,” he said simply.

Her gaze sharpened. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Who knows.”

That earned a real pause. Not confusion—calculation. Elara’s eyes stayed on him, unblinking, the weight of her stare like pressure building behind glass.

“Did you think of something rude?” she asked flatly.

Lucavion blinked once. Then smiled. Slowly.

“…Who knows.”

There was a beat—faint as a heartbeat, full of exactly what wasn’t said—

And then Marian broke first. A snort that turned into a helpless laugh, hand covering her mouth like she could shove it back in.

Toven followed, muttering, “Spirits, he’s actually broken the concept of answering questions.”

*****

<Afternoon, Crystal Hall – Fifteen Minutes Before the Test>

The Crystal Hall pulsed with refracted light and still air—so clear, so meticulously maintained, it felt like stepping into the inside of a gemstone.

Above, hundreds of crystalline spires bent sunlight into sheets of blue, violet, and rose gold that painted the black-veined floor in broken color. Lanterns hung suspended with no visible chain or magic circle—pale white orbs that drifted lazily, glowing brighter or dimmer based on how close one stood. Beneath the grandeur, the faint glyph-etched stone throbbed once every few seconds in quiet rhythm, like the floor itself breathed with the Academy’s pulse.

At the far end, three identical spheres rose from polished pedestals—each one about the size of a human torso, flawlessly smooth, giving off an almost imperceptible hum. They weren’t relics. They were tools—modern, recent, impossibly rare.

Lucavion exhaled slowly beside her. “Not something you see in most city halls,” he murmured, half to himself.

Elara didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. The air was already speaking.

Each sphere had a student standing before it, palms flat against the surface. Each was overseen by an instructor clad in the deep blue of the Academy’s official assessors, holding thin slate-like tablets etched with living script.

The line stretched forward with quiet tension, students rotating one by one. Elara and Lucavion stood side by side, maybe halfway down the row. They didn’t talk. They listened.

“…I heard it scans your core directly,” someone ahead whispered, hushed and nervous. “Like… it doesn’t just tell you what your affinity is—it tells you how your mana is shaped.”

“That’s why it stings sometimes,” another muttered. “You’re not supposed to resist it. But it feels invasive.”

“Not painful,” a third voice chimed in—older, calmer, maybe already tested. “Just… strange. Like you’re full of cold wind. Then hot. Then like your bones are vibrating.”

From one of the spheres, a thin coil of smoke unfurled, rising slow and deliberate.

White, tinged with pale gold. Then, sharply, a flare of deep crimson at its edge.

A nearby instructor spoke without looking up. “Primary: Fire. Trace bleed: Water. Instability between layers—training required.”

A cough from the student. “Yeah,” they muttered, rubbing their arms. “Felt like it didn’t want to let go.”

The instructor glanced up briefly. “That means it likes you.”

Quiet laughter rippled through the line—nervous, thin.

Lucavion tilted his head. “Friendly machine,” he murmured.

Elara said nothing, eyes fixed on the leftmost sphere. It had just lit beneath another student’s touch—thin pulses of mana flashing across its surface like light under ice.

Another student muttered ahead, low and wary: “They only started using these about a decade ago, right?”

“Less,” someone else replied. “Empire only got access through the Tower after the old treaty revisions. Even the capital doesn’t have more than two.”

“Elites use them for advanced tuning,” another voice added. “If your affinity is unstable or layered wrong, this thing will catch it before it breaks you in the next stage.”

Lucavion made a soft sound in his throat. “Useful.”

“It’s efficient,” Elara said quietly. “But also unforgiving.”

Ahead, another student stepped forward. The instructor gestured with a slow nod.

“Hands flat. Don’t tense. Let the sphere draw first—it reads best when you don’t interfere.”

The student hesitated, then placed their palms carefully against the surface.

A faint sound followed—like wind being sucked through stone. Then nothing.

Then: a pulse.

Soft light spread from the sphere into the student’s arms—barely visible, except for how it shimmered across their uniform seams. A moment later, smoke began to rise—blue, then green, then a flicker of silver curling around the edges like thin wire.

“Water and wind,” someone whispered.

The instructor called out: “Dual-affinity. Balanced. High compatibility. Fluid resonance.”

The smoke curling from the sphere began to fade, dissolving into the air like breath on cold glass.

The student—young, wiry, with sleeves still faintly shimmering from the mana interaction—stepped back a pace, blinking as if regaining full sensation in their hands.

The instructor, still watching the tablet, spoke without glancing up. “What’s your current practiced discipline?”

The student hesitated for only a moment, then raised their right hand. A smooth ripple of water coalesced from the air around it, forming into a suspended ribbon that curled once in the air before settling like a bracelet.

“Water.”

————-A/N———–

The previous Chapter is fixed.