Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 763: Entrance

The carriage slowed.

Not with a jolt—but a deceleration so precise it felt like the world itself had exhaled. The distant rhythm of hooves, faint as a memory, softened into complete stillness as the arcane wheels drew to a seamless halt.

A shimmer passed across the window—a faint ripple of light, barely visible unless one was already watching for it.

Lucavion’s gaze narrowed.

“Checkpoint,” Caeden said simply, already unsealing the scroll marked with the Sanctum’s sigil from his inner coat.

Outside, the Academy’s outer threshold loomed—less a gate and more a veil, a lattice of suspended mana threads glinting faintly in the night. Towering statues on either side held spears crossed overhead, their runes faintly aglow, their eyes blank and unwelcoming.

The footman stepped down, then opened the door with silent formality.

A figure stood waiting.

Not a guard. Not a servant.

Something in between.

Her robes were regulation-issue, but trimmed with ceremonial silk, her expression unreadable behind a half-mask etched with floating glyphs.

“Elayne of the Glass Veil,” she intoned first, her voice modulated by the mask. “Confirm your presence.”

Elayne tilted her head, flicked her fan open with a whisper of silk. “Present.”

“Toven Vintrell.”

Toven raised a hand, grinning. “I sparkle with punctuality.”

“Caeden Roark.”

Caeden stepped forward, presenting the scroll. “Confirmed.”

“Mireilla Dane.”

“Confirmed.”

A pause.

“Lucavion.”

No title. No house.

Just the name.

Lucavion met the masked official’s gaze without rising. “Alive and unrepentant.”

The woman didn’t react—but her mask flickered once, runes reorienting. Then—

“Entry acknowledged. You may proceed.”

A flick of her hand, and the veil parted like silk cut by a dagger.

The carriage continued.

And almost immediately—

Lucavion felt it.

The world… shifted.

Not violently. Not even overtly.

But the moment they crossed the Academy’s threshold, something changed. Something subtle.

A pressure behind the eyes. A bending of space without movement. The stars above them froze mid-glint, unmoving. Too bright. Too still.

The path beneath the wheels? Unending. Perfect.

Too perfect.

Caeden’s brow furrowed faintly. Mireilla straightened.

Elayne’s fan didn’t twitch—but her fingers tightened around it.

Lucavion stared out the window.

And sure enough—

The banquet hall wasn’t getting closer.

Its towers shimmered like painted illusions in the distance. Clear. Real. And yet—never near.

He tapped the glass once.

Then stilled.

The mana had changed.

Not just the air—the weave.

Lucavion closed his eyes briefly, letting the sensation roll over him, not pushing back against it but allowing it to seep into his senses. It was subtle, refined. Not like the wild, tangled mana of outer realms, or the brutal density of blood-forged sanctums. This was something… designed.

’So this is it,’ he thought, the faintest current of tension catching on the edge of that realization. ’The Academy’s core signature.’

He’d read about it, of course. Shattered Innocence had described it in intricate, veiled language, cloaked as metaphor and poetic nuance. The arc where Elara first stepped into these grounds—the prose had nearly glowed with the writer’s awe. Mana shaped by ages, bound to purpose, whispering through soil and stone like a hymn that remembers its singers.

It had seemed like fiction.

Now?

Now he understood.

The mana here didn’t just exist.

It listened.

It wasn’t reacting to him, not quite. But it was aware. Alert. Like a living skin stretched over land, every footfall pressing into its memory.

He opened his eyes slowly, gaze sharpening against the surreal distance of the banquet hall. Still unreachable. Still beautifully framed against a sky that refused to shift.

’The path isn’t meant to bring us there. Not quickly. Not comfortably.’

No—the Academy wasn’t welcoming them.

It was measuring them.

And deeper still—beneath the layered awareness of the place—Lucavion sensed something rarer: resonance. Not in the traditional sense. Not like a bond. But like an echo.

’Cultivating here would change a person. Not just physically. Internally. The mana’s refined. Filtered. It doesn’t fight your will. It sharpens it.’

He leaned slightly closer to the window, the pale reflection of his own eyes flickering against the glass.

’No wonder every faction, every guild, every rotting noble house wants a foothold here.’

Then he saw it.

Above the path, beyond the long illusion-stretched distance—one of the Academy’s main towers shimmered.

But this time—it wasn’t just architectural grace or ornate spellwork.

A visionplay danced across its highest balcony.

Like a mirage cast from memory, faint golden images flickered into view—a young woman stepping through marble gates, a ribbon of wind catching in her gentle white hair, her eyes wide with new purpose and old grief.

’What is that?’

The thought came unbidden, sharp beneath the layers of practiced detachment.

The visionplay shimmered again.

But this time—it shifted.

The young woman in the mirage moved not with the eager steps of a new initiate… but downward. Descending. As if the memory reversed itself, sinking back into the stone like breath drawn in instead of exhaled.

Lucavion narrowed his eyes.

’She’s not walking into the Academy…’

She was vanishing beneath it.

As if returning to something buried.

Or perhaps—someone.

The vision trembled, gold fading toward ash—then stilled.

Just before it disappeared entirely, the figure paused.

And turned.

Her face was veiled in light—indistinct, unrevealing. But her posture… that remained.

Straight. Poised. Watchful.

And then—she bowed.

A shallow incline of the head. Nothing exaggerated. Nothing ornate.

But unmistakably directed—toward him.

Lucavion froze.

’Eh…?’

It wasn’t confusion that gripped him.

It was recognition of something that made no logical sense.

The kind of recognition born not of memory—but implication. A silhouette that bowed like it had been waiting for this very moment. For him.

The vision collapsed a heartbeat later.

Gone.

The golden shimmer faded from the tower. The sky returned to stillness.

And the carriage came to a halt.

Smooth. Final.

Outside, the grand steps of the banquet hall stretched like a stage awaiting its players. Banners whispered in the manufactured wind, catching moonlight and mana both, their silk etched with House crests and imperial flourishes.

The door opened.

The moment had arrived.

The door opened with a whisper—not a creak, not a clatter. Just the sound of air parting before ceremony.

Lucavion’s gaze hadn’t left the tower. Not fully. Even now, the afterimage of the silhouette lingered in his mind like the imprint of light after a lightning flash.

But the moment pressed forward without him.

A voice, clear and practiced, broke the breathless hush of arrival.

“Welcome to the Arcanis Imperial Academy.”

The speaker stood framed in silverlight—an attendant, younger than expected, cloaked in imperial gray with threads of azure charm woven through the trim. His posture was impeccable. Polished shoes, scroll clasped to his chest like a badge, eyes perfectly neutral.

But not empty.

He looked at them the way a gatekeeper weighs a key—each figure measured, catalogued, compared to something unseen.

Elayne stepped out first, each movement like a line from a carefully calligraphed script. Her fan flicked once, then closed. She didn’t speak.

Toven followed—lighter in step, grin flashing for a single heartbeat before it softened into the kind of charm nobles couldn’t quite pin down as genuine or dangerous.

Caeden emerged third. Quiet. Precise. Already slipping into the atmosphere like it had been crafted around him.

Mireilla came last of the four before Lucavion. One boot hit the marble stair with deliberate disrespect. She cracked her neck, adjusted her coat, and offered the attendant a smirk that carried exactly zero imperial reverence.

And then—Lucavion moved.

Not slowly.

Not dramatically.

Just with presence.

Like gravity. Cold and quiet and absolute.

The attendant inclined his head politely, but didn’t speak again.

Didn’t need to.

The five of them were moving now—ascending the banquet steps that caught the mana in arcs of reflected light. Each footfall seemed to echo louder than it should have, as if the Academy listened not only to their names, but to their weight.

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