Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

Chapter 840: Complete

“Winner, Lucavion.”

The match was his.

But as he stepped away, that old sense of triumph—the kind that usually lingered in the wake of a clean, earned victory—didn’t come.

Instead, it left a hollow hum in his chest.

Not regret.

Not quite sadness.

Just… complexity.

He had won.

And still, somehow, he felt like he was catching up to someone who had already fought their way ahead.

Jesse wiped the sweat from her brow, orange eyes steady on him.

Not angry. Not pleased.

Just there.

She gave a single nod.

Lucavion returned it.

Because beneath the clash of steel and the ache of time—

They finally saw each other.

****

The duel had ended.

The blade was sheathed. The cheers had quieted. The announcer’s voice faded into the air like smoke.

And Jesse returned to the Lorian delegation.

Her footsteps were steady, precise—as if the battle had drained nothing from her. As if her breathing hadn’t hitched halfway through the fight. As if her chest wasn’t still burning from the words that had never been said aloud.

Prince Adrian was the first to speak.

“Better than expected,” he said mildly, arms folded behind his back, expression calm but not unreadable. “You held your ground.”

A few nobles behind him murmured in agreement. One of the older ones—a baron, maybe, whose name Jesse never bothered to learn—nodded as if this were a military report.

“She didn’t flinch. Not once,” another said, voice like gravel wrapped in velvet.

“She,” Isolde added quietly, sharp eyes flicking to Jesse’s posture. “She really did well…”

Yet there was something in her gaze.

Something shiny.

Jesse gave a nod.

Small. Distant. Barely there.

Because she wasn’t listening.

Not really.

Their praise—earned or not—was just static to her now.

Her mind was somewhere else.

On someone else.

Lucavion.

He was still in the ring, adjusting the cuff of his coat, expression unreadable to anyone who didn’t know how to look properly.

She couldn’t read his mind.

She wasn’t some sword prodigy, born with unnatural insight or preternatural instincts. She didn’t see emotions in the flick of a wrist or the twitch of a shoulder like he did. She wasn’t a genius—not like him.

But she saw one thing.

His eyes.

The way they lingered when their blades touched.

The way he looked at her after the last strike.

She saw it.

Her feelings had reached him.

And now?

Now all she wanted was to run to him.

To grab him by the collar and shake answers loose. To press him back against the edge of the courtyard and demand why he left. Why he never wrote. Why she had to claw her way through every bloody step while he disappeared into myth and silence.

She wanted to trap him there.

Not with steel.

With everything else.

With her questions.

With the ache.

With the sheer, merciless fact of survival in his absence.

But she couldn’t.

It didn’t work like that.

Not in front of the court. Not under Adrian’s gaze. Not with the eyes of two Empires watching like hawks in velvet.

Lucavion was no longer just hers to confront.

He was a symbol now.

And so was she.

So she stood still, hands behind her back, jaw tight, gaze fixed forward.

“Jesse,” Adrian said again, a bit more softly this time. “Well done.”

Another nod.

Another heartbeat passing.

And still, she said nothing.

Because in her chest—beneath the silence, beneath the armor—one thought burned hotter than all the rest:

Soon.

Soon, she would find him again.

And this time?

They would speak with more than just blades.

“Miss Jesse. Allow us.”

The voice was soft, professional—too clean to belong to a soldier, too practiced to be a friend. One of the Arcanis healers, clad in pristine robes with the empire’s crest glimmering faintly at their collar, had approached without sound.

Jesse blinked.

Only then did she feel it again—the sting near her ribs.

Right. That strike.

A glancing blow, not deep, but sharp enough to split skin beneath her uniform. She hadn’t even noticed the warmth soaking through the edge of the fabric until now.

Too much noise. Too much emotion.

She nodded once.

The healer moved with quiet precision, fingers glowing with pale green light. No chanting. No dramatic gestures. Just a smooth pass of magic along her side, like a breath of wind threading through muscle and nerve. The pain ebbed instantly. Faded like a dream.

It took a second.

And then they were gone.

No words. No lingering.

Just like that, she was alone again.

Jesse exhaled slowly, letting her palm brush the edge of her ribcage, already sealed. The skin beneath was warm, freshly healed. Almost untouched.

But she still felt the ache.

She turned her head slightly—not toward the nobles still muttering about scores and styles, not toward Adrian or Isolde or even the place Lucavion had been.

Something else had tugged at her.

Someone.

And there—at the edge of the delegation’s reach, just past the central dais, tucked in the arc of shadow beneath a trailing curtain of white silk—

—were eyes.

Not golden, not black.

But violet.

Sharp.

Intent.

Watching her not like a court observer, or a curious noble trying to gauge her rank.

But like a participant.

A player.

A pair of violet eyes, narrowed slightly, unreadable beneath lashes too long to be called delicate.

And above them—

Hair.

Pale.

Almost white—

—but no, not quite.

Pink.

Sleek, soft-looking, almost too fine to be natural. Light catching on it like dawn light through rose glass.

She didn’t need to think long.

That girl—no, that woman—was the one who had been standing with Lucavion just before the duel. She remembered it clearly. The way he had tilted his head slightly toward her, how his stance, relaxed yet attentive, mirrored that rare kind of comfort Lucavion never allowed anyone near him to possess.

And now…

Now that same woman was watching Jesse.

From the shadows.

With that look.

As if she knew something. As if Jesse’s performance had been weighed and measured and found… amusing.

Her jaw clenched.

’She was close to him.’

It didn’t take much to connect the threads. The Arcanis girl didn’t look surprised. Didn’t look curious.

She looked familiar.

Like she’d known Lucavion for a while.

Jesse’s orange eyes narrowed—not in confusion, but something deeper.

Sharper.

The woman’s expression didn’t falter.

And then she disappeared again—just like before—vanishing behind the silk drapes, her presence folding into the grandeur of Arcanis like smoke into snow.

Jesse stared at the empty space she’d left behind.

’Unforgivable.’

It wasn’t just jealousy. It wasn’t just the possessive knot tightening behind her ribs.

It was herself.

Everything she’d built—every scar, every breath she’d used to shape herself into something strong enough to meet Lucavion again—flared under her skin now like heat rising off a battlefield.

That girl didn’t know the weight Jesse carried.

Didn’t know the years. The nights. The silence.

She hadn’t seen Lucavion when he was nothing.

She hadn’t held his words like lifelines when the world was crumbling.

She hadn’t earned him.

And yet she’d stood by his side.

Close.

Too close.

’He’s mine.’

The thought wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t noble.

But Jesse never claimed to be either.

She had bled for him.

She had waited.

And now?

Now some stranger, veiled in Arcanis silk and violet arrogance, stood where she should’ve been?

No.

This wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.