Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

[Mirellia Dane]

The illusion confirmed it as the overlay script shimmered briefly at the corner of the feed.

Aurelian snapped his fingers. “That’s her. She’s a vine-element specialist—didn’t just bind monsters, she harvested spells. Wrapped one caster up in his own attack and knocked him out cold. It was genius.”

“She’s not brute-forcing it,” Selphine said, almost approvingly. “She’s commanding a field.”

The group following Kaela moved like trained scouts under her direction—spells cast where she pointed, positions shifted at a gesture. She ducked under a blade, sent a vine spiking up through the cracked earth, and impaled the construct clean through its fractured core.

It howled, then collapsed.

The others didn’t cheer.

They just moved forward.

“She’s leading them through the convergence,” Aurelian noted. “Straight into contested ground. Smart.”

“She was already impressive early on,” Aurelian said, his tone shifting into analytical admiration. “Even before the relics activated, she was laying traps like she’d memorized the terrain. Half the candidates didn’t even realize they’d been led into her ambush until the vines were already choking their casting arms.”

Selphine nodded once. “Field control. Strategic foresight. And subtle restraint.”

Onscreen, Mirellia Dane surged forward, her vines wrapping around a fallen stone arch and slingshotting her onto higher ground. The others followed without question, covering flanks as though they’d drilled it a dozen times. They hadn’t, of course. But she made it look like they had.

“She became a Zone Lord early,” Selphine continued, “not because she out-fought everyone—but because she out-thought them.”

“She didn’t kill all her challengers either,” Aurelian added. “She left a few standing. Some of those same people are the ones moving with her now.”

“Temporary alliances,” Selphine said. “Calculated tolerance. She planned for escalation.”

Aurelian grinned. “She knew something like the Breach Protocol would happen. Maybe not exactly, but she played for long-term stability from the start. That’s real leadership.”

The image blurred—then fractured briefly into a shimmering sphere of glyphs before switching feeds again.

A new set of candidates now appeared, scrambling through a more chaotic region—an unstable shard zone where gravity faltered and stone spikes hovered at odd angles. They fought with desperation, fending off constructs mid-leap, barely keeping the convergence at bay.

No unity here.

Just survival.

Another shift.

A marsh, now dried and cracked by the advancing convergence. A single contestant, cloaked in shadows, weaving through enemies with a whisper-thin blade, slipping through gaps like water between stones. Effective. But solitary. Unanchored.

The crowd around the broadcast pillars murmured, watching the flurry of skill and madness unfold.

Then—

The scene flickered again.

The haze cleared.

And him.

Lucavion.

The camera didn’t cut to him. It found him—like it had been trying to track a moving storm. His form came into view mid-motion, his estoc gleaming as it tore through the hide of a warped beast. Flames cracked around him—not conjured, but echoed, as if the very act of cutting the monster loose from life summoned a shockwave.

The white cat on his shoulder barely flinched, paw flicking at the air in lazy approval.

Lucavion smiled.

Not with arrogance.

With ease.

As though none of this—convergence, monster waves, collapsing space—was even slightly inconvenient.

“Now that I’m looking at it…” Aurelian murmured, leaning closer, “that flame… it’s strange.”

Selphine narrowed her eyes. “That’s not elemental fire.”

“Of course it’s not,” Aurelian said, rolling his eyes without looking away from the screen. “The flame is black, Selphine.”

She turned her head just enough to give him a sideways look sharp enough to shave steel—but said nothing.

Instead, she turned back to the projection, lips pressing into a thin, unimpressed line.

Lucavion moved again.

Not with urgency—but with the kind of precise, fluid rhythm that didn’t need haste to be devastating. His estoc sang through the air in a tight arc, and once again the black flame flared—not from his hand, but from the motion of the blade itself, trailing behind like a wake.

When it struck, it didn’t explode or sear like fire should.

It ate.

The warped beast he hit spasmed—and then crumpled inward, as though the flame had burned through the mana holding it together. Not even ash remained. Just the faint scent of ozone, and a thin ripple through the ground where the flame had grazed it.

“…That’s not destruction,” Selphine said after a pause, her voice low now. Focused. “It’s consumption.”

Aurelian leaned forward, elbows planted on the table, eyes never leaving the illusion. “Maybe it’s tied to a [Mana Accumulation Art]? Some sort of specialized intake method that warps his core signature?”

“Could be,” Selphine murmured. “If he’s drawing in ambient mana during motion and refining it through an advanced technique—then redirecting it into blade-form…”

Aurelian nodded slowly, eyes flicking across the lingering afterglow. “That would explain the delay between strike and flare. And why the flame doesn’t behave like typical elemental fire.”

“Look,” Selphine pointed. “That one there—same monster type as the last group Mirellia’s team fought. Her fire spell took nine seconds to neutralize it.”

“And his?” Aurelian watched as the beast’s chest imploded from a shallow cut.

“Three,” Selphine said. “If that.”

They both fell quiet again.

Because whatever this black fire was—it wasn’t just flash or flair. It was efficient. Quiet. Ruthless.

And uniquely his.

The white cat shifted slightly on Lucavion’s shoulder, eyes half-lidded, tail curling lazily as another monster growled in the distance. Lucavion didn’t brace. Didn’t even adjust his footing.

He just raised his blade.

The flame flickered again—soft at first, then sharp, like a whisper turning into a scream just behind the veil.

Aurelian’s voice was quiet now. “It’s not magic the way we know it.”

“No,” Selphine agreed. “It’s something older.”

And both of them knew—

Whatever he was using…

It wasn’t taught in any court.

The projection pulsed again—another shift, another quadrant.

The scenery this time was harsher. Rock and dust and broken stone, lit red by the distant glow of the convergence line inching across the land like a hungry tide. The trees here were skeletal, stripped of leaves by mana distortion. Cracks ran through the earth like veins of old wounds reopening.

And in the center of it all—

A figure moved through the storm.

Aurelian blinked. “Oh. Him.”

Selphine’s lips curved slightly. “Caeden Roark.”

The projection pulled into focus, revealing the broad-shouldered young man with the cleaver half the size of a grown man’s torso—his grip tight, his stance wide, his bare arms glistening with sweat and blood under the haze of crimson light. His dark bronze skin bore fresh wounds, but none deep enough to stop him. Each strike came down like a falling mountain, and every time he swung, a monster went down.

One. Two. Three.

Not elegant.

Not calculated.

But strong.

He wasn’t dodging anymore—he was absorbing. Letting strikes glance off thick muscle and braced limbs. When a beast lunged for his shoulder, he caught it with one arm and ripped it free from his body with the other, cleaver already reversing direction to split it in two.

Selphine’s eyes narrowed. “He’s been fighting nonstop, hasn’t he?”

Aurelian nodded slowly. “Look at his boots. The leather’s torn at the sole. That’s a full day of movement, minimum. No break.”

“And still standing,” Selphine murmured.

The illusion lingered on his face as he turned. There was no grin. No joy. Just a raw, heavy focus—the kind of presence built not in academies or noble courts, but on blood-soaked ground and nights without food. He looked like someone who’d carried things heavier than that cleaver long before this trial began.

And behind him, through the dust, a trio of younger candidates scrambled to keep up.

He wasn’t shielding them like Reynald.

He wasn’t commanding them like Mirellia.

But they followed him.

Because if nothing else, Caeden Roark cleared a path.

“You think anyone’s backing him?” Aurelian asked.

Selphine didn’t answer right away.

But then she said, “They will be.”

And she was right.

Because even through the illusion broadcast, even from a thousand feet of projected distance, you could feel it.

The hunger of the watching powers.

The patrons. The house agents. The academy scouts.

Watching every swing of that cleaver.

Watching a man carve his name into the stone of the trial with nothing but grit and raw strength.

“They’ll want him for muscle,” Aurelian said.

“No,” Selphine corrected, gaze still locked on the screen. “They’ll want him because he doesn’t fall.”

And in a world that fed on ambition, war, and magic—

That kind of endurance was more terrifying than any spell.

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