Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 774: Headmaster Verius (2)

“But that’s all rumor, right? There’s no proof. I mean… no one’s ever made a Ten-Star spell. Not since—”

“Lysandra the First Flame,” Selphine supplied.

He nodded. “Right. The founder of the Empire. The flame that burned down the Old Kingdoms. That was—what—over a thousand years ago?”

“A thousand and seventy-three,” Selphine corrected automatically. “She was the first. The only. Ten-Star confirmed by Ascension.”

“And if the Empire’s never produced another one since,” Aurelian added, “why would it suddenly happen now?”

He didn’t mean it as an insult. Just the quiet voice of reason that lingered behind every legend.

But Elara… felt her breath settle.

Not with disbelief.

With awe.

’Master always spoke of him as if he weren’t quite human.’

Not with fear. Not with worship. But with that strange edge in her voice—the one that hovered between admiration and memory, like she had once stood beneath his shadow and still hadn’t quite left.

’Verius Itharion isn’t just powerful, Elara. He is what power becomes when it no longer needs to prove itself.’

And now, seeing him—

She understood.

She remembered Eveline’s eyes, storm-grey and ever calm, the way she had wrapped discipline in warmth, knowledge in gentleness. The way her spells never fractured when cast—because they belonged to her. Controlled.

But even Eveline had hesitated when speaking of Itharion.

Elara studied the lines of his robe, the breathless way the mana bent without resistance, like it knew its master. As though the air itself had grown used to his weight, to the silence he demanded not with command, but with presence.

She could not sense the end of his power.

It wasn’t just more than hers—it was structured, infinite. And old. Like the magic that curled in his wake had been part of the world long before language, and would remain long after names like hers and Lucavion’s and even Lysandra’s were buried beneath the dirt.

But even as awe pressed into her chest, something else stirred beneath it.

Not defiance. Not rivalry.

Just… edge.

The edge of a blade she’d carried for years, even as her master’s teachings tried to soften it. The edge of what she had come here for.

’Even gods bleed if you strike the right vein.’

She did not look away as the Headmaster reached the center of the stage, robes settling like dusk around his frame.

The hall held its breath.

Then he spoke.

“Welcome,” Verius Itharion said—and the word itself changed the shape of the air.

No magic. No amplification. Just voice.

Perfect. Calm. Deep enough to settle in bone.

“To the Imperial Arcanis Academy. The gate between what you were—and what you might become.”

And just like that, silence was not just silence anymore.

It was ceremony. It was challenge. It was the quiet before the forge.

Elara didn’t blink.

She just listened.

Because when power spoke, even vengeance paused to learn.

*****

Headmaster Verius Itharion stood motionless for a moment longer, letting silence wrap the hall in its embrace. Then, his voice emerged once more—measured, rich, and anchored with the weight of centuries.

“Long before you were born—long before I was born—this land was not united. Kingdoms rose and fell like tides, ruled not by vision, but by appetite.”

He stepped forward, each motion a punctuation.

“But a flame came. A singular will. Lysandra the First Flame. She did not merely conquer—she unified. She forged the foundations of the Empire with the same fire that scorched the old world to ash. And among her first decrees…”

He paused, letting the weight of it settle.

“Was this.”

A slow, precise gesture swept toward the hall.

“The Imperial Arcanis Academy.”

He did not raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The words carried all the force of legacy.

“This institution is not a school. It is not merely a place of study. It is the marrow of the Empire—the spine that supports it. The First Flame believed that power, if unshaped, is ruinous. That magic without discipline breeds not greatness, but monsters.”

The room was still, held in the orbit of his cadence.

“And so, she created us. A forge for talent. A crucible for will. A place where knowledge would be as sharp as blades, and where ambition would be tested by more than desire.”

Verius Itharion’s gaze moved over the assembled students—not as a surveyor of worth, but as a reader of potential yet unwritten. His next words emerged slowly, each one deliberate, deliberate as the brushstroke of a master calligrapher inscribing history.

“She built everything from nothing.”

His voice did not swell. If anything, it softened. Not with sentiment, but with reverence born of absolute truth.

“Lysandra the First Flame did not inherit greatness—she authored it. She rewrote the rules of cultivation. She dissected the flow of the arcane and bent the bones of the world until they aligned with vision. And in doing so, she gave us this: the foundation for not just survival… but ascendance.”

He gestured lightly to the ceiling, where the etched constellations shimmered with ambient mana, casting glints of silver across their faces.

“This Academy was her mandate. Her sanctuary. Her warning.”

He let those three words linger.

“She knew. That knowledge untethered from growth is stagnation. That strength without discipline is collapse. And above all, she knew our world would never be safe.”

The air in the chamber dimmed slightly, not from light—but from the mood. As though a shadow had passed through memory itself.

“There have always been threats,” Itharion said. “From beneath the roots of the earth, from beyond the skies, from the twisted reaches of forgotten realms. And above all, from within.”

Then, his voice took on a different weight—older, darker.

“Her final battle was not with a kingdom, or a tyrant. It was with a thing born of broken promises and twisted divinity. The ’Fallen One’—a god that devoured its own name, and sought to unmake what it could not control.”

Silence. Utter and immediate.

“And in the end,” Itharion said quietly, “she gave her life not to destroy it—but to seal it. To leave the world with one last breath.”

He closed his eyes, and the words that followed came not as his own—but as those of a memory passed from mouth to mouth, soul to soul, for a thousand and seventy-three years.

“This world will not always love you. It will not always be kind. But it will always challenge you. And if you seek peace without strength, you will find neither. Seek knowledge. Seek power. Seek truth. Never kneel to ease. Never surrender to comfort. Greatness is not born. It is chosen—again and again—until your name burns brighter than the stars.”

Verius opened his eyes.

“That was her final gift. Her final order.”

He looked to the students now—not at them, but into them.

“To be here is to inherit that command.”

He raised one hand, and the ambient mana of the hall swirled toward his palm—condensing, refracting, forming a single rune.

“To study is not to survive,” he said. “It is to overcome. To change. To master the storm—and in doing so, become the lightning.”

The rune pulsed, and then dispersed in a flicker of silver.

“This is the beginning of your trials,” he said. “And only the worthy will write their names in the lineage of fire.”

Then, silence.

Not the absence of sound.

But the birth of reverence.