Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 980: Protagonist (2)

“You can let go now.”

The instructor’s voice was supposed to be a wake-up call. Yet, Elara didn’t move.

The sphere hadn’t gone still—it was waiting.

She could feel it, a faint tug deep beneath the frost. Something layered underneath the cold, something the test hadn’t quite decided to release. It was the quiet before a crack forms on ice—the tension of stillness that wasn’t meant to last.

The instructor reached out, hand hovering just above hers. “Miss Caerlin,” he started carefully, “you can—”

The words stopped there.

The sphere pulsed again.

Hard.

Light flared across the glass like a heartbeat too strong to contain itself. The frost veins fractured, splintering into sharper, thinner filigrees that glowed white-blue and then—

flickered.

A second pulse followed, deeper, heavier, carrying a resonance that didn’t belong to frost at all. The air thickened; the hum in the floor went off-beat. A faint vibration crawled up through the soles of her boots, through her bones, into the space behind her ribs.

The instructor jerked back slightly.

The sound it made wasn’t loud—but it cut.

A low, rolling thrum that seemed to crawl up through the marble floor and bloom through the walls, rattling the lanterns in their invisible suspension.

Heads turned instantly. Students nearest to her stopped whispering. The hum of the other spheres faltered for a moment, like they, too, were listening.

“What’s happening?” someone muttered from the line.

Another voice, uncertain—”Is it supposed to do that?”

Even the instructors at the other stations glanced over now, their calm expressions edged with unease. The glyphs carved along the hall’s ceiling dimmed a fraction, reacting to the fluctuation.

The assessor beside her blinked at his tablet, frowning at the surge of light that still crawled under the glass. “I—ah…” He cleared his throat, forcing composure. “I suppose the artifact acted with a little delay. It… happens, on rare occasions.”

His tone said routine. His eyes said not routine at all.

Elara’s palms remained against the surface, though she could feel the sphere vibrating faintly now—alive, restless. The frost that had bloomed earlier was shifting, melting into silver light that was no longer cold.

It felt… different. Not alien. Not unfamiliar either.

A warmth stirred beneath her sternum, gentle at first, then sharper—like a small pulse of sunlight trying to push through winter. It spread slowly through her veins, a soft heat threading into the chill that had always claimed her.

And with it came the memories.

Her breath stilled.

Because she knew this. This pulse. This rhythm. This was from before.

Before her core had been broken. Before Eveline had found her half-alive and hollow.

Before she became Elowyn Caerlin.

It was from when she had still been Elara Valoria.

The heir of the Valoria Duchy.

Back then, her mana accumulation method was different. It had carried that light—pale and steady, threaded with power that wasn’t about destruction but definition. It had been everything that made her her.

The energy crawling through her now was a ghost of that old self, returning with the grace of a knife slipping between ribs. She wanted to breathe, but the act felt too big, too human, for what was happening inside her.

The sphere’s glow changed again. The blue frost melted into a rising white shimmer—clean, pure, uncolored light that filled the glass until it looked as though someone had trapped a small star inside it.

Students stepped back instinctively, murmurs rippling through the crowd. The instructor took another cautious step away, shielding his slate against the glare.

“Secondary manifestation,” he said under his breath, almost to himself. “Possibly light…” He hesitated, eyes narrowing at the unusual delay between pulses. “Strange, though. It should have appeared simultaneously with frost.”

Another instructor called from across the hall, “Artifact interference?”

He shook his head. “No. Calibration’s stable.” His gaze flicked back to Elara—steady, assessing. “Either she’s… a unique case, or it’s a mishap.”

The phrasing was neutral. The tone wasn’t.

Elara barely heard him.

Her fingers tingled. Her arms felt weightless, as though the light itself was sinking through her skin. That faint warmth filled her chest and lingered, trembling like it didn’t know whether to stay or fade again.

It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t even particularly bright.

But it curled deeper than anything else.

And even when the light began to fade and the instructors murmured to one another, she just stood there.

’….Why…’

The word trembled through her mind like a breath she wasn’t supposed to take.

She’d thought she’d severed everything connected to that life—the memories, the power, the blood that once carried her name like a curse. Eveline had made sure of it. Years of control, of rebuilding herself from the ashes of what had been stripped away.

’I buried it. I buried all of it.’

Her fingers twitched against the glass, the last flickers of white still lingering beneath her skin like ghosts refusing to leave. She could almost feel the old core, the one she’d watched crumble to dust, stirring in the hollow it had left behind.

’I was supposed to be clean. Empty. Safe.’

The light in the sphere began to dim, its rhythm slowing until it matched the quiet rise and fall of her breath. The instructor stepped closer again, hesitating before touching her shoulder. “That should be all,” he said softly, as though not to startle whatever force had just settled inside her.

She nodded once. Mechanical. Detached. Her hands slipped away from the crystal, and the air felt too light, her own skin a stranger’s.

The hall was murmuring again—whispers threading through the crowd, cautious, speculative. She didn’t need to hear the words. She could feel their edges brushing against her like gnats.

Unique case.

An anomaly.

Elowyn Caerlin.

She swallowed the bile rising in her throat and took a step back, pretending the weight in her chest was nothing more than exhaustion.

’Cut off? Clearly not.’ The thought came bitter, small. ’Guess I’m still just Elara trying to pretend she’s someone else.’

And that was when she felt it—eyes on her.

She didn’t need to look to know who it was. The air around him always carried that same quiet disturbance, a shift in temperature that wasn’t physical but instinctual.

When she did glance up, her gaze caught on him at once.

Lucavion stood near the edge of the crowd, still in the same lazy posture, hands tucked loosely into his pockets. But his expression wasn’t playful this time.

Those black eyes—usually bright with mischief, taunting light—were utterly still.

As if they knew something.

The way he looked at her made something in her chest twist. It wasn’t curiosity. It wasn’t even surprise.

It was recognition.

’Would he know?’

The thought lodged in her throat like a shard.

Lucavion had known Elara Valoria—the heir, the frost prodigy, the girl whose magic once gleamed like winter sunlight.

But that girl had died.

Hadn’t she?

He couldn’t possibly piece it together. Not from this. Not from a flicker of light, a trick of mana, a strange afterglow in a hall full of anomalies.

’No.’