Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra - Chapter 951: It had to be her

Chapter 951: It had to be her

It had to be her.

There were too many threads, too many inconsistencies that only made sense when wrapped around the same core.

Lucavion’s fingers curled faintly at his side as he walked, retracing the path from memory. The spar. The smell. The frost. Elowyn’s eyes—no, not just her eyes. The way she moved. The hesitation threaded behind every strike, the resolve sharpened into every pivot.

Not Elowyn.

Elara.

After all, Reilan had turned out to be no less suspect. No less familiar. No less infuriatingly vague. And Lucavion… he prided himself on seeing through people. Through masks. Through lies.

He didn’t need to be told someone’s name to understand who they were.

Not when he had the Flame of Equinox.

It wasn’t just for burning. Wasn’t just a weapon.

That fire saw life.

Vitality.

Every soul carried its own signature—its own rhythm. A flicker in the mana stream, a pulse in the core. No two were identical. And once he’d seen someone’s before, even if the face changed, the mana didn’t lie.

That’s why it had always been so easy to identify others in disguise, even without trying. Even when they didn’t know they were hiding something.

But Reilan?

Elowyn?

Nothing.

Not even a haze to trace. Not even a fragment of their core’s rhythm exposed to him. They were like two silhouettes behind a frosted mirror—visible, but unreachable.

Which could only mean one thing: concealment.

High-level. Deliberate.

And if the concealment was that deep… then it wasn’t just some passing spell. It was either cast by someone who knew what they were hiding from, or was woven into them by someone even more powerful.

’She wouldn’t go to those lengths… unless she had a reason.’

And Reilan—if that really was Cedric—then everything fit too easily.

Back then, Elara never moved without Cedric. Never hesitated unless he told her to. Their bond, whatever it truly was, had been more than mere friendship. Something tethered. Strategic. Almost brutal in its efficiency.

So of course, if Cedric was here…

She would be too.

And yet—

Lucavion’s brow knit faintly.

It wasn’t just that.

There was one more thing. The one part that should’ve disproven everything but somehow didn’t.

The magic.

Ice magic, to be specific.

To be frank, ice wasn’t rare

. Especially not among this year’s crop of first-years. There were several frost mages with far more spectacle than control, all aiming to specialize in elegant ranged dueling or containment formations.

If he hadn’t known better, today’s display could’ve just been one more forgettable case.

Elowyn hadn’t even used any spell that would’ve triggered him by name, or by the spell itself.

If she had cast even one of those older spells—just one clean trace of her former style—he would’ve known instantly.

But today?

None of that.

Just standard-form ice. Controlled, yes. Tactically sound, sure. But stripped of personality. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ nοvelfire.net

Which was precisely the point.

She knew he would recognize her if she fought like herself.

They had bled together in Stormhaven, survived formations collapsing, battled creatures that warped mana itself—and in that kind of crucible, you didn’t forget how someone cast.

You didn’t forget how someone thought through their magic.

And Elara…

She wasn’t stupid.

She knew what she was doing.

That’s why she didn’t cast like herself.

Not once.

And yet—

Lucavion’s eyes narrowed slightly, the edge of his breath curling into the cold air outside his dormitory window.

There was one thing he knew she could’ve never predicted.

One variable she could’ve never accounted for.

He’d read the novel.

Shattered Innocence.

In the latest Chapters, one detail was focused.

A weakness.

Not in her magic.

Not in her force.

But in her flexibility.

The Elara from back then—powerful, reactive, sharp—but linear.

She’d always needed structure. Patterns. Anchor points to operate from.

And apparently, someone else had noticed too.

Because in that final update—just before the text collapsed into that dreaded line—

“Please support the author while waiting for the next Chapter.”

The main focus was….

Her flow.

And the text named her method.

She’d taken the scattered notes of a certain future dead professor—a specialist in adaptive ice casting, someone who once taught irregular rhythm theory in spellwork—and had begun rebuilding her own technique with it….

Her ideas weren’t just theory.

They weren’t bound to lectures or training logs. They were application—living adaptation. And not just to standard forms, either.

In Shattered Innocence, the focus had shifted in the later Chapters. Less about battlefield trauma, more about technical reinvention.

Elara was changing—not abandoning her ice, but reshaping it. Reforging the same mana that once moved in rigid lines into something far more flexible, unpredictable.

She used it.

And in that final Chapter—right before that cursed line cut everything short—there was one scene.

One spell.

One moment.

CRACK!

The memory returned with jarring clarity.

That sound—the snap of frost tearing across stone.

A thin sheet of ice had shot across the path just ahead of him earlier that morning. Not aggressive. Not designed to trap or harm. It bloomed too quickly, too deliberately, like frost drawn with a stylus across glass.

Lucavion had halted then, boots catching on the sudden slick, forced to shift his weight to keep balance—momentarily off-center, just for a breath.

At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it.

But now—

“That spell…” he murmured again, more to the quiet fire inside him than to the walls around him.

Glacier Vein.

Standard field manipulation. Two-star classification. Basic-level ice technique. No serious combat value on its own—at least, not as taught in conventional formats. Meant to alter terrain minimally. Trip footwork. Force repositioning.

But the way she’d cast it…

It wasn’t standard.

It wasn’t raw.

It had moved with intent.

And more importantly—it had struck him at the perfect moment. Not just as an inconvenience. Not even to harm.

It had redirected him.

One inch to the left. Just enough to offset his initial charge. Just enough to throw off the tempo of his first strike. At the time, he’d adjusted mid-motion and pushed forward without losing form.

But it hadn’t been a mistake.

It had been deliberate.

And now he remembered why he recognized the name so clearly.

Because it wasn’t a spell most fire-aligned combatants like him paid attention to. Let alone memorized. Let alone remembered by name.

Unless—

Unless he’d read it.

And he had.

In Shattered Innocence—the final Chapter before the cliffhanger.

“Please support the author while waiting for the next Chapter.”

But before that…

There had been a scene.

Elara. Exhausted. Sitting in a frost-bitten courtyard under a half-collapsed archway, ink-stained fingers curled around a journal filled with the old professor’s notes.

She hadn’t wanted to practice the spell. Had dismissed it for weeks.

But then came the line:

“Glacier Vein… no one expects it to matter. That’s exactly why it will.”

And then the method. The trick.

Using the spell not to trap enemies—but to guide them. To plant frost exactly where their center of gravity would fall. Not where they were, but where they’d move.

It was the first spell she’d decided to test differently.

Her first step toward flexibility.

And this morning?

That was exactly how it had happened.

She cast it low, unassuming, a ripple of frost barely noticed by those who didn’t know what to look for.

But he had seen it.

Felt it.

And now?

Now he knew what it was.

He hadn’t connected it then. Wouldn’t have, if the spell hadn’t caught just right—if it hadn’t forced his footing just enough to catch his attention.

But now, it all made sense.

’You never thought I’d read your story, did you?’

Lucavion’s hand flexed, the warmth of the Flame of Equinox pulsing faintly in his palm, not to burn—but to affirm. To remember.

’And yet you cast that spell right in front of me… the one you rewrote for yourself.’

He couldn’t stop the faint curve of a grin from rising at the edge of his mouth.

Tired. Not triumphant.

But knowing.

That’s all it took.

One spell.

One beat.

It had to be her.