Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

While his core—[Devourer of Stars]—remained sealed, unmoving like a moon behind clouds, his flame had grown feral. Focused.

"Still," he said, voice low, "even now, I haven't broken through. Four-star peak… and stuck."

[You've absorbed more than most do in a decade,] Vitaliara said. [Monsters, spells, battle essence. But your core is different. It wasn't made to follow rules. And you—]

She gave a small huff. [You've never been good at staying on a single path.]

Lucavion chuckled under his breath. "No. I suppose I haven't."

He flexed one hand idly, watching the faint tendrils of Equinox flame swirl between his fingers—black tinged with silver, and the silver shot by shadows.

"But even if I wanted to push forward, there's nothing left that's strong enough. Nothing willing to feed me the last drop I need to crack this."

[Or maybe it's not about strength,] she said softly. [Maybe it's something else you're lacking.]

Lucavion didn't answer at first. The quiet spoke for him.

Because he'd thought the same.

All this time he'd been cultivating, growing, surviving—he'd done so without guidance, without blueprints. Without knowing what came next.

He wasn't walking a warrior's path. He was carving his own from the bones of what came before.

Blind.

"But that's what you're here for, isn't it?" he finally said, glancing sideways at her. "My second set of eyes."

Vitaliara didn't reply right away.

Instead, her voice turned almost nostalgic.

[When you reached your peak, something stirred in me, too.]

He glanced toward her now, truly listening.

[My strength is… returning. Slowly. But it's not just power. It's memory. Abilities. Reflexes I thought I'd lost in the collapse.]

Her tail brushed against the side of his jaw as she rose slightly along his shoulder.

[One of them has come back fully now.]

Lucavion arched a brow. "Oh? Do I get a name?"

[Not quite.] A pause. Then, [It's not an attack. It's perception.]

Lucavion slowed his stride.

"Go on."

[I can see vitality now, in more detail than before. Not just the shimmer of health or energy. I see… the spread. The flickers. The flow.]

Her eyes narrowed, the gold catching the moonlight.

[And I've noticed something peculiar.]

"Peculiar how?"

[In humans, emotions—real emotions—are tied to vitality. Joy makes it dance. Fear contracts it. Rage twists it. But lies… lies stall it.]

Lucavion's brow ticked.

[Lying cuts the flow off, like a false note in a song. Even skilled liars can't stop the flicker, the hesitation.]

Her tail twitched.

[And that baron? When he spoke of remembering the Princess, of old alliances, of pledges? He might as well have been spitting mist.]

Lucavion let out a low hum.

"So the performance was worse than I thought."

[It was crafted. Every word. He didn't believe it himself—but he was trained to act like he did.]

A beat of silence.

Then Vitaliara's voice turned faintly dry.

[Which, ironically, makes him more honest than most nobles.]

Lucavion laughed—quiet and sharp. "Now that's a horrifying thought."

They continued walking, the curve of the road leading them out of the tangle of narrow paths and into a broader street lined with shuttered shops.

[But it means something else too, Lucavion,] she added, softer now.

He tilted his head.

[It means I can see through more than barons.]

Lucavion's steps paused.

She looked directly at him, her golden eyes narrowed just slightly.

[Even you.]

There was no challenge in her voice.

No threat.

Just a truth.

Lucavion met her gaze.

Then smiled.

Lucavion's smile lingered—quiet, unreadable. A half-curve that didn't touch his eyes.

"I don't lie," he said calmly. "Your ability does not matter in front of me."

Vitaliara, with no ceremony, lifted a single paw and bopped him on the cheek.

He didn't flinch. But his smirk deepened.

[You may not lie,] she muttered, [but you hide quite a lot.]

"To which I say," Lucavion replied without missing a step, "that is the mystery of a man."

[A charlatan.]

"A mystery," he repeated, a flicker of amusement sharpening his voice, "of a charlatan. A fool. A wanderer. Whatever word makes the poetry easier to swallow."

Vitaliara huffed, the sound small but pointed, and settled herself once more along his shoulder, though her tail twitched like a ribbon in the wind.

But she wasn't finished.

[You still haven't answered me.]

Lucavion raised an eyebrow, glancing at her sidelong.

[You said it was all orchestrated, all arranged. And you acted before the threads fully wove together. So—how? Why did you do it? And how did you know something like this was about to unfold?]

He didn't stop this time.

Just slid his hands deeper into his coat pockets, walking through the lantern-dotted night like a man returning from a play he hadn't paid to attend.

"How did I know…" he mused, the words tasting like dust and ash on his tongue.

Then he exhaled slowly. "It's the same source as how I knew about Aeliana."

Vitaliara tilted her head. [So—Revelations? Visions? Something you can't explain?]

Lucavion's eyes narrowed faintly as a breeze stirred through the eaves above them, rustling the hanging festival streamers.

"Something like that."

[That's not an answer.]

"It is an answer," Lucavion said, voice smooth as silk drawn across a blade. "It's simply not the answer you seek."

Vitaliara flattened her ears. [Don't speak in riddles.]

"But it's the truth."

[Humph!] she huffed, turning her head with a feline flick of indignation. [You're impossible.]

Lucavion chuckled under his breath, the sound like falling coins—sharp, weighty, but faint. The quiet between them returned as they passed beneath a canopy of half-wilted lanterns, the streetlights dimming with distance.

But inwardly?

He was no longer walking the cobbled roads of the capital.

His mind had already slipped backward—sideways—into memory and fiction both.

Princess Priscilla Lysandra.

How did I know?

The answer settled in him like a stone dropped into still water, leaving ripples behind that would never quite fade.

Because I read it.

Because I remember.

The novel.

Shattered Innocence.

He could still recall the way the words unfolded across the pages. How, buried within the political spires and schoolyard rivalries of the Royal Academy, there had been mention—brief, half a paragraph at best—of a scandal that marked Priscilla's entry into court life.

"The unwanted princess," they had called her. "Who could not even protect the retainers that pledged to her."

It was never shown. Never expanded.

Just an ugly little note in the margins of the empire's tale, as told by the perspective of the heroine, Elara. And when she asked about it—when she confronted the Crown Prince about his sister's reputation—

He had answered.

"It was necessary."

"They were never hers to begin with."

Lucavion remembered that line. It had chilled him even then.

Because in Shattered Innocence, the Crown Prince was more than a political genius. He was the obsessive, possessive, perfectly controlled tyrant-in-training. Everything he did was designed to control the stage. And if a scene didn't serve his play?

He rewrote it.

Of course he had arranged the humiliation. Of course he had turned her retainers against her, then painted her as the one who failed them. The novel framed it as a piece of character lore—Priscilla's shame, her driving wedge from the imperial family. A footnote that led to her loneliness, her hunger for validation, and eventually… her downfall.

After all, she was the perfect Villainess Candidate, from the start.