Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra - Chapter 1048 Hello

Chapter 1048  Hello

“This conversation is unnecessary. We have exams to focus on.”

Lucavion gave a soft laugh under his breath. “Ah. There she is.”

Elara’s lips tightened—not outwardly, but enough that she felt the faint pull at the corners. He always noticed when she shifted; he always tracked which version of herself she let forward.

She hated that.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said calmly.

“Of course you do.” His voice was warm, almost indulgent. “But if pretending otherwise keeps you balanced, I won’t object.”

Elara didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Silence now was not vulnerability—it was armor.

By the time they neared the Magisterial Annex, the hallways had grown quieter, the echo of their footsteps the only sound in the long stone corridor. The looming doorway ahead was carved with runes and exam sigils, its archway cold and imposing in the morning light.

Lucavion slowed his pace fractionally, matching her stride as they approached.

“Well then,” he said, adjusting his coat as though settling into a performance. “Shall we?”

Elara nodded once, expression perfectly composed. “Let’s not be late.”

“Fear not,” he murmured, amusement threading his tone, “I wouldn’t dare embarrass you.”

She ignored that.

They stepped beneath the carved arch.

For the first time since leaving the dining hall, Elara felt her heartbeat steady—not because Lucavion’s presence had become easier to bear, but because the destination forced her focus into place.

Exams were predictable.

Lucavion was not.

At least, that was what she told herself. Exams were predictable. Structured. Contained within rules and rubrics that did not bend to whims or moods. Unlike him.

She let that thought anchor her as they stepped into the Magisterial Annex Hall.

The air inside was cooler, touched by the faint shimmer of spell-wards woven across the ceiling. A half-circle of desks had been arranged before a raised dais where examiners would sit; the room itself held a gravity that pressed the students into quiet focus.

There were others already seated—no more than fifteen, perhaps twenty. A small group, which made sense for an oral exam of this level. Each student sat with a rigid kind of readiness, backs straight, expression composed but tense. A few glanced up when Elara and Lucavion entered; most quickly looked away.

The two of them together drew attention whether they wanted it or not.

Elara did not let the stares linger. She walked toward an empty seat in the second row, set her satchel down with quiet efficiency, and exhaled once through her nose. Her pulse finally steadied fully, aligning itself with the rhythm of preparation.

This—this she could handle.

Oral exams demanded clarity, structure, and precise mana theory. Not emotion. Not memories. Not the tangled, shifting dynamic of someone like Lucavion Vale.

He took a seat one desk behind her and to the left—close enough to see her posture, but not close enough to speak without drawing attention. She didn’t need to turn around to know he was watching the room with that infuriating mix of calm and amusement.

She forced herself not to think about it.

Focus.

Her hands folded neatly atop her desk. Her breathing slowed. Her spine straightened into that familiar academic poise. She let her thoughts sift and settle, letting all the noise drift outward and away.

Stormhaven could wait.

Valeria’s smile could wait.

Lucavion’s evasions could wait.

The instructors entered through a side door, robes whispering softly as they walked to the dais.

Elara’s heartbeat aligned with the moment—steady, controlled.

Oral exam.

She inhaled once, sharpening her mind.

Let everything else fall away.

Elara’s attention was fixed on the examiners taking their places, her mind sliding back into the disciplined stillness she relied on. She inhaled once, preparing herself for the cadence of questioning she knew would follow—

—and then the side door opened again.

Soft footsteps entered the hall.

Something in the air shifted.

Elara didn’t look at first. She didn’t need to. Every instinct in her body snapped taut, a silent alarm running beneath her skin. The temperature of the room felt different. Colder. Sharper. Too familiar.

She lifted her eyes.

And her world stopped.

A young woman crossed the threshold with unhurried poise, her steps quiet but impossible to overlook. Platinum hair flowed like silk down her back, catching the glow of the mana-lamps and scattering it in pale, mirrored shades. Her skin was luminous—cold porcelain kissed with moonlight. Her posture held a grace no etiquette instructor could teach: refined, effortless, innate.

And her eyes—

Lavender.

Soft, bright, unforgettable.

Elara’s breath caught so sharply she almost inhaled wrong.

‘No.’

The woman’s gaze drifted casually across the hall, unhurried, unbothered, a gentle curiosity touching her features as she searched for a seat. For everyone else, she was simply a striking presence—impossibly beautiful, quietly regal, commanding the attention of a room without needing to speak.

But for Elara—

It was a ghost.

A memory.

A wound.

‘Isolde.’

Elara’s fingers tightened around the edge of her desk—barely, just enough for her nails to press into wood. Her breath hitched, a sharp intake she forced back down before it could become visible. The illusion around her face held steady, but she felt the falter beneath it, a tremor in her pulse she hadn’t felt in years.

‘Not here. Not now. Breathe.’

She inhaled through her nose, slow, controlled, though the air felt thinner than it had a moment ago. The room seemed farther away somehow, the murmured rustle of students shifting into their seats blurring into a muted drone. Only the soft footfalls across stone remained sharp, each step drawing closer, peeling open a wound she had believed scarred over.

Isolde’s gaze swept lazily across the room, taking in faces, noting the arrangement without any apparent urgency. But Elara knew—knew those eyes better than anyone. Knew how they sharpened behind gentleness. Knew how hatred could hide beneath lavender.

The memory rose—unbidden, unwanted, cold as iron.

The banquet, or one would no longer call it…

In the dungeon.

Lanternlight flickered across walls etched with runes of suppression. She had been trembling—not from cold, though the dungeon was freezing, but from the echo of poison still grinding through her blood.

She’d lifted her head then, vision wavering, breath ragged, wrists burning beneath the chains. Footsteps had approached. Soft. Deliberate. Too light to belong to guards.

Platinum hair had appeared first, gleaming in the torchlight like strands of moonlit frost. Then lavender eyes—no longer soft, no longer fragile, no longer the eyes of a sister she had loved her whole life.

They had been brimming with hatred.

Pure. Unfiltered. Focused entirely on her.

Elara’s breath tightened again—not visibly, not enough for anyone in the room to mark the shift—but the tremor unfurled inside her chest like a crack spiderwebbing through ice. The dungeon memory sharpened, refusing to fade, refusing to soften with time as it should have.

And then the sound of that voice echoed inside her skull—

the voice she had tried for years to bury.

The voice from that night.

“You were always in my way.”

“Father loved you more.”

“Adrian wanted you first.”

“Why couldn’t you just disappear?”

“Everything you had should have been mine.”

The words had dripped from her lips like poison.

Not shouted. Not sobbed.

Cold. Precise.

Delivered with the serenity of a girl who had finally placed the last piece of her plan.

Elara remembered how it felt—how her own breath had broken, how her numb fingers had twitched against iron restraints, how the lanternlight had blurred through tears she never let fall.

She remembered whispering:

‘Isolde… I never took anything from you.’

And Isolde’s answering smile—

small, sweet, utterly monstrous.

“Yes. You did. By existing.”

The memory slammed into her now with brutal clarity.

Her hand twitched under the desk.

A sharp, involuntary jerk of tendons.

She pressed her palm flat against her knee to stop it.

Focus.

But the present refused to stay separate from the past.

Isolde glided deeper into the room with that effortless grace. The same grace that Elara herself had once.

She carried herself like moonlit royalty, every movement delicate and deliberate. Heads turned without her trying, eyes followed her as though enchanted.

Just then Isolde reached the row where Elara sat and slowed—not because she saw her, not because some buried recognition stirred, but because Isolde had always known how to wield a room simply by pausing in it.

Her steps hushed.

Her presence sharpened.

Her shadow brushed across Elara’s desk like a passing chill.

Elara’s pulse stumbled.

‘She stopped.’

‘Is she—?’

A gentle voice flowed down, warm as honey and cold as steel beneath it.

“Hello.”