Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra - Chapter 959

Chapter 959: Name and identity

Selphine had always been drawn to words.

Not just their meanings, but the way they bent with time—how empires split, how dialects drifted, how sounds hardened or softened depending on who carried them across borders. She collected them like some girls collected pressed flowers, folding scraps of old text into her journals, memorizing subtle shifts in vowel or cadence.

The Lorian Empire and the Arcanis Empire might share a tongue now—born of the same mother before history carved them apart—but sameness never lasted. In Lorian speech, s often bent toward sh, vowels stretched longer, syllables dragged like silk. In Arcanis, consonants clipped shorter, cleaner, more practical. What once was one voice had become two dialects wearing the same face.

That was why the name had caught her.

Lucavion.

The moment she’d heard it, something had rubbed wrong. Like a thread snagging at the back of her mind. She’d rolled it over, again and again, but it didn’t fit. Not perfectly.

Not Arcanis. Not quite Lorian either.

She’d seen something close before—in an old manuscript she’d once smuggled from her father’s library. A catalog of regional names from the western Lorian frontier, half-archaic even then. The entry was small, easily missed. Lucavien.

A Lorian name, yes. But a dated one. Old. The kind that had long since eroded into more common forms. No one her age should have it unless it was chosen deliberately—or inherited from a line stubborn enough to preserve it against time itself.

Selphine drummed her fingers lightly against her goblet as she watched him across the table. Lucavion—laughing too easily, grinning as though nothing mattered, wearing his name as casually as he wore everything else.

Lucavien. Lucavion.

So close. Too close to be coincidence. Yet not quite right.

‘So which is it?’ she thought, eyes narrowing just faintly. ‘Is he Lorian? Or is that not his real name at all?’

The thought curled sharp at the back of her mind, settling into the place where her curiosities always hardened into puzzles.

“Are you from the Lorian Empire, by any chance?”

The question slipped from Selphine’s lips smooth as silk, yet edged like steel.

The table stilled—not entirely, not obviously, but just enough. Marian’s laughter softened mid-breath. Aurelian’s fork paused halfway to his mouth. Even the twins blinked in unison, caught between conversation and silence.

Across from her, Lucavion tilted his head, grin curving wider, the exact same grin he’d worn all meal. But his eyes… flickered. Just slightly.

And then—

CLANK!

The sound rang out sharp and sudden, louder than it had any right to be.

Selphine’s head snapped to the side.

Elowyn.

Her fork and knife lay scattered against her plate, the half-cut slice of bread beneath them now splattered with sauce. Her hand hovered above it, stiff, fingers curled too tight as if she hadn’t even realized she’d dropped them.

“Elowyn?” Selphine’s voice came soft, curious. Almost too casual.

“Ah…”

Elowyn’s lips parted again, then pressed shut before sound could escape. At last, she shook her head once, quick, as though shaking free from something unseen.

“Sorry,” she said softly, steadying the fork back onto her plate with fingers that trembled just faintly. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

Marian leaned forward immediately, eyes bright with the same easy warmth she always carried. “Maybe you’ve just overdone it? Training, sparring, whatever you were doing this morning…” She waved her fork vaguely in the air. “Your mana looked stretched thin even before we sat down.”

“Maybe,” Elowyn echoed. A single word, clipped and practiced. Too easy.

Selphine hummed under her breath, watching the exchange with that sharp, quiet interest she never quite hid. The explanation fit, yes. But it rang too neat. Too simple. And Elowyn wasn’t simple.

‘No… that wasn’t fatigue,’ Selphine thought, her gaze flicking briefly back to the fallen utensils, then returning to Elowyn’s face. ‘That was a reaction. To him. To his name.’

She let the suspicion coil inward rather than spill. For now.

Her eyes slid back across the table, meeting Lucavion’s.

Pitch black.

That was the first thing that had struck her, and it struck her again now. His grin lived easily on his lips, his posture so languid it bordered on careless—but his eyes never seemed to match. They were dark, deep, too still. Black like glass before frost, black like water where no light reached. And sometimes, when she caught them at the wrong angle, they didn’t feel warm at all.

Cold. Intimidating, even.

Most would flinch. But Selphine only leaned in, chin propped lightly on her knuckles, her expression perfectly composed. If he wanted to unsettle, he’d have to try harder.

Mystery, after all, wasn’t a warning to her.

It was amusement.

It was a game.

Selphine’s fingers tapped once against the stem of her goblet, deliberate, measured. Then she let them still. Her gaze never wavered.

“So?” she asked at last, voice soft but cutting through the hum of conversation around them like a blade through silk. “Your answer?”

Across the table, Lucavion’s grin didn’t falter. If anything, it grew. But it wasn’t quite the careless grin he wore when teasing the twins or leaning into Marian’s jokes. This one held an edge— amusement curling at the corner, shadowed by something sharper.

“My, my…” he drawled, tilting his head just slightly, as though the angle itself gave him the upper hand. “What an interesting question. And out of nowhere, too.” His teeth flashed in a smile too bright for the dark glint of his eyes. “Where did that come from, I wonder?”

Selphine’s lips curved faintly, but her expression remained poised, cool. “I will answer that,” she said evenly, “if you answer the question.”

A ripple of silence passed over the section of the table around them. Marian glanced between the two of them, fork halfway to her mouth. Aurelian leaned back in his chair, brows lifting in vague intrigue. Even the twins had gone still for once, sensing the tension.

Lucavion chuckled low in his throat, leaning an elbow onto the table and resting his chin against his palm. “That is… a strange way of coming at it, don’t you think?” His grin widened, though his eyes never softened. “Almost like we’re fencing with words.”

“Maybe we are,” Selphine replied.

Lucavion’s grin sharpened, wolfish now. “But what happens,” he said slowly, voice dropping just enough to curl into the space between them, “if I say—” His fingers snapped once, a casual sound. “Then let it be?”

Selphine tilted her head, her long lashes lowering half a fraction as she studied him. The pause that followed stretched taut, as if the whole table leaned forward without meaning to.

Her smile curved sharper—not wide, but dangerous in its subtlety. “Then I suppose,” she murmured, “that I’ll know you’ve avoided the truth.”

Lucavion’s grin didn’t slip, but one brow arched, a flicker of something amused—and sharper—passing through his dark eyes.

“And what,” he said slowly, voice smooth, rolling like smoke, “will that tell you then? If I choose silence over truth?”

Selphine’s smile deepened, the kind that revealed nothing yet promised she knew more than she should. Her chin tilted just slightly in acknowledgment, her eyes glinting with that sharp edge of satisfaction she always carried when a puzzle clicked into place.

“It may confirm my hypothesis,” she replied, her tone as calm and precise as if they were discussing mathematics instead of identity.

For the first time, Lucavion leaned back a fraction, his grin softening—not fading, but curling differently now. Less playful, more calculating. His gaze lingered on her, and for one suspended moment, the air between them felt colder than the frost Elowyn conjured.

“Your hypothesis, you say,” he murmured, tasting the word as though testing it for weight. A beat. Then a soft chuckle slipped from him, low and deliberate. “I see…”

The table around them remained hushed—no one daring to cut through the tautness of the exchange. Marian’s brows knit, uncertain whether to prod or stay quiet. The twins exchanged a glance, eager but unwilling to interrupt. Even Aurelian leaned in faintly, lips pursed, intrigued in spite of himself.

Selphine only held her poise, wine-dark eyes locked on Lucavion, her smile never wavering.