Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 769: The heart

Jesse’s breath hitched before she even realized she’d stopped breathing.

The moment the doors opened, before the light even caught the full of him, she knew.

No voice announced him. No title rang from the lips of heralds. But it didn’t matter.

She felt him.

Her eyes—sharp, trained to read shifts in battlefield tempo, in hallway politics, in the subtle flick of power between nobles—froze.

Because there he was.

Lucavion.

And everything stopped.

She couldn’t remember what the other nobles around her were doing. Couldn’t remember Isolde’s soft voice or Adrian’s faintly muttered remarks, couldn’t hear the scratch of polished boots or the music still weaving in the distance.

Because he had stepped into the hall, and the rest of the world had dulled.

He was taller now. His posture—always confident—had settled into something heavier. Not arrogance. Not even command. Something deeper. As if the air bent slightly to accommodate him. As if existence had made space for someone who no longer needed to announce his place in it.

His face…

Sharper now. Cleaner lines beneath the cheekbones. A more defined edge to his jaw, refined by age, by war, by purpose.

But the biggest change—the most jarring—was what wasn’t there.

The scar.

Gone.

Erased clean from his skin, as if the years in the military hadn’t carved their signature into his flesh. As if the pain and fire and blood he had dragged them all through had somehow… disappeared.

But the feeling?

The feeling hadn’t changed.

If anything, it had deepened.

Stronger. More controlled. And yet beneath that polish, Jesse could still sense it—the way his presence threaded through the room like a low drumbeat.

Her heart pounded once.

’He’s more handsome now…’

The thought came unbidden, treacherous. She hated it. Hated that it sounded like something a girl would whisper behind a fan at a garden ball. Hated that it felt real.

Because he was.

More than before.

He always had a presence, even when they were soldiers. But back then it was rough. Untamed. The kind of allure you didn’t trust because it came with fire and fury and silence that lingered long after he’d left the room.

Now?

Now it was like someone had taken that chaos and refined it into a weapon of elegance.

A blade dressed in silk.

And yet—despite everything, despite the changes in his face and frame and movement—

He was still Lucavion.

The boy who once stood between her and the commanding officer’s wrath, shoulder bloodied but never backing down. The one who made her read reports twice because “you missed a comma,” and wouldn’t let her eat until she’d finished properly. The one who sat beside her during the worst week of the rain season, when the trenches collapsed and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

The one who, without ever saying it, guided her.

Taught her to stand on her own.

He was him.

And standing there, lit in the chandelier’s silver light, eyes sweeping the hall like they had already seen every truth within it—

He looked like everything she had sworn to forget.

Her fingers curled against the edge of her gloves, careful not to let the motion show. Her face remained composed, as expected. No expression. No tremble. Just breath. Controlled. Even.

But inside?

Inside, she felt herself unraveling.

Not with longing. Not with sorrow.

With something older.

Something raw.

Because the man standing across the banquet hall wasn’t the Lucavion they’d all whispered about in the war briefings.

He was something more.

And Jesse?

Jesse Burns wasn’t a child anymore.

She wasn’t the girl who had needed saving. Not the soldier clinging to structure in a world that kept taking it from her.

She was someone now.

Someone with a name. With power. With a presence that had made the maids bow and the nobles watch.

And as she looked at him—

As her eyes found his—

Her lips parted, almost silently.

’You…’

She didn’t finish the thought.

Because she didn’t know whether it would end in came back, left me, or never changed.

Her breath caught again—but this time, it wasn’t out of shock. Or fear.

It was hope.

That dangerous, flickering thing she had buried long ago beneath rank and ration packs and the silence that followed every empty barracks.

Because as she stared across the banquet hall—past the veils of silk and status, through the fog of nobles who had never once heard a bullet scream—her eyes stayed locked on him.

Lucavion.

And her chest—damn it, her chest actually ached.

Not from pain.

From the sudden, blinding warmth of possibility.

Will he recognize me?

She looked different now. Her hair was neater, the angles of her face more defined, her figure dressed in the kind of formal elegance she used to scoff at. Gone was the ash-stained armor and the dirt-caked boots. Gone was the girl who’d leaned on him like a crutch during that first winter in the South Ridge campaign.

But her eyes…

Her eyes were the same.

And if he looked—really looked—he’d know. Wouldn’t he?

He has to.

Her hands trembled, barely. Enough for her to fold them tighter beneath the table, to anchor herself in posture if not in certainty.

Because the questions were rising. Rising like the flood she’d kept locked behind duty and silence and time.

Why did you leave me in that battlefield, Lucavion?

She had searched for him that day. After it was confirmed that he had deserted.

But he hadn’t been there.

No note. No word. No trace.

Only his absence.

And the cold realization that he had vanished.

Why didn’t you say anything? Not even a goodbye? Not even a lie?

Her throat tightened. Her vision blurred for a breath.

But she steadied herself.

Because now—now he was here. In flesh. In silence. In motion.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d turn his head and see her.

Not Jesse Burns.

But her.

The girl he’d left.

And she had so many questions.

So many damn questions she had forced herself to wait till the right moment came.

And she would get her answers.

Every last one.

Not tonight—maybe not even tomorrow—but soon. Because she wasn’t someone who waited idly anymore. She wasn’t the shadow behind the commanding officer, the ghost in formation, the girl grateful for scraps of attention or warmth.

She had built herself from the trench up. With frostbitten fingers and a spine of fire. And now—draped in silks tailored to nobility, with polished boots and a gaze that made seasoned men flinch—she chose what she wanted.

And Jesse Burns wanted him.

Not as a childhood crush. Not as some fairy tale relic of the past. But as something far more dangerous.

Real.

Lucavion had carved his place into her life without even meaning to. In the way he corrected her, the way he encouraged her when she nearly lost everything.

But now?

Now he was here.

No longer a ghost.

No longer absent.

And she would not let the chance slip again.

He belongs to me.

Not like possession. Not like conquest. But like gravity—something inevitable.

Because no matter the scars, no matter the titles, no matter what faces they had to wear in this glittering, lie-drenched hall of protocol and pretense…

He was the one who made her feel alive in that place between orders and chaos.

He was the one who saw her when no one else did.

And if he’d forgotten?

Then she’d make him remember.

She would find the right moment. The right silence. The right breath. And she would ask.

Ask why he left her in that ruin of a battlefield without a word. Ask what shattered him so badly he vanished without trace. Ask if he ever meant to come back.

But more than that—

She would make him feel it again.