"Is that still the case?" she asked.
The words were not cruel.
Not loud.
But they reached him with a clarity sharper than any blade.
Lucavion’s breath ca in slow, asured pulls.
He pushed off the wall with one hand, brushing dust from his shoulder like it was a botherso leaf.
Then he straightened.
No limp.
No anger.
Just that sa maddening, infuriating calm.
He t her gaze.
And, softly—quietly—
He nodded once.
"It is."
Selenne’s gaze didn’t waver.
She stared.
And stared.
Into him—not at him. Past flesh. Past spine. As if the stars in her eyes were mapping sothing in him even he hadn’t nad yet.
But she said nothing.
No reprimand.
No praise.
Just that silence—her silence—full of aning, full of choice.
Then—
A small motion.
Her fingers lifted in the barest of gestures, smooth and unhurried, like a ripple across still water.
She pointed to the chair across from her.
As if nothing had happened.
As if she hadn’t just hurled a celestial force through his ribs and into the wall behind him.
Lucavion blinked once.
Then—
A soft laugh escaped him. Barely more than breath. Less derision, more... amusent. Admiration, maybe.
Or sothing adjacent.
He started toward the chair, slow, deliberate steps carrying a touch more care than before, his shoulder faintly rolled to work out the ache—but his grin intact.
And, of course—
He couldn’t help himself.
"Fierce," he murmured, voice light, casual.
And with the weight of a complint ant for soone dangerous enough to deserve it.
******
What is one of the things that is necessary inside a romance fantasy novel like Shattered Innocence?
Simple.
Soone must stand for the right things—when everything else doesn’t.
Not the main character. Not yet. No, the protagonist is still in tatters—grieving, hiding, watching the world through the cracks of a mask she didn’t choose. She needs soone to look toward. Soone rooted. Soone who reminds both her—and the reader—that strength isn’t always loud, but it is always real.
And in Shattered Innocence—that soone was her master, Eveline.
Yet at the sa ti, there was another important character that was necessary for the protagonist.
After all, Eveline had her powers and influence limited inside the capital thanks to certain reasons in the past.
And that would have ant that her existence inside the academy and Arcania itself was never ant to be sothing that she could rely on easily.
Hence another character was necessary.
Soone that would shelter Elara.
Considering the fact that Elara has joined the academy as a commoner student via changing her identity, with her talents and her looks, things were bound to get political at certain point.
At the end of the day, Elara was still a commoner student inside the Academy of nobles.
That’s what it boiled down to.
No matter how clever she was. No matter how brilliant, how stunning, how quietly poised her steps were across the marble floors of Arcania’s most brutal academic theater—she was out of place. By blood. By birth. By station.
And in a world where identity is currency, being born without a crest was the kind of poverty that couldn’t be hidden for long.
Which is exactly why soone like Selenne was necessary.
She wasn’t just a professor. She wasn’t even just the Archmage of Starlight. No—her presence was an anchor in a sea of politics that had long since forgotten what fairness looked like.
She appeared early, right after the Academy gates opened. Before the nobles could fully align their factions. Before the hierarchy had a chance to ossify for another year. Before anyone knew what Elara truly was.
Her role?
Political protector.
Strategic shield.
Unspoken sword.
Because Eveline—Elara’s true master—couldn’t be that. Not here. Not now.
She wasn’t allowed to enter the halls of Arcania with the sa freedom. Her influence was limited, tangled in the old cris of the capital and the scars of a betrayal too deep to be easily brushed aside. Her power, though imnse, was exiled by paper and politics.
Which left Elara exposed.
Which ant soone else had to stand where Eveline could not.
That soone... was Selenne.
And it worked.
She never declared Elara her ward. Never spoke openly in her defense. But her presence alone was enough to stall the tide. Her na—her aura—was an unbreachable wall to those who might’ve tried to "remind" Elara of her place.
That was the novel.
That was Shattered Innocence.
’But things are... different now.’
Weren’t they?
Because Elara never entered the Academy as a commoner this ti.
This ti....she rather joined the academy as a noble, though she still changed her identity.
’At least that is what I presu.’
Lucavion thoughts wandered now.
She didn’t need Selenne’s shield.
Because she wasn’t the one walking into the lion’s den unard anymore.
Lucavion was.
He was the one who took her place.
He was the one labeled as the first-ranked Special Admission student. A title too fresh, too unregulated, too strange. No House, no crest, no connections. Just a black estoc, a sharp tongue, and a record of being inconvenient to the people who cared about appearance more than power.
He was what the novel had Elara to be.
But then again—
This fierce-looking woman... this celestial storm made flesh...
She was glaring into his soul.
And right on cue—
"It is not the ti to doze off."
Her voice didn’t rise.
Didn’t crack like thunder or burn like wrath.
It just was—
Stern. Exact. Unyielding.
Lucavion blinked once. Just once.
’It appears that the novel didn’t do her justice,’ he thought, the corner of his mouth twitching with reluctant amusent.
The tone was what he rembered—buried sowhere between the first twenty Chapters of Shattered Innocence. He couldn’t recall the exact wording of her lines, or the starlight taphors that had littered her introductions, but the stern deanor?
That, he rembered.
She had always spoken like her words were court verdicts—sharp, clean, carved in marble. The kind of voice that didn’t ask for obedience. It expected alignnt.
And now that sa tone pierced through whatever reflection he had started to drown in.
"I will not keep this long," she said.
No elaboration.
Just the point. Selenne never wasted breath on niceties or indulgent scene-setting. She already had your attention. Why gild the blade?
Then her eyes t his—again.
Only this ti...
There was no visible pulse of magic. No force. No threat.
And yet, Lucavion felt the shift.
That sensation again—of a map being drawn across his core. As if her gaze was a cartographer’s pen, tracing fault lines he hadn’t even acknowledged yet.
And then—
"What is your goal?"
The question landed without fanfare.
But it didn’t need one.
Lucavion’s fingers twitched slightly over the edge of the chair’s armrest.
Ah.
Of course.
That question.
The one no instructor had dared to ask so cleanly.
Not what are you doing here.
Not what are your intentions.
Not what House do you serve or what legacy do you carry.
No.
Just:
"What is your goal?"
A question only soone with power and patience could ask without fearing the answer.
Lucavion exhaled once through his nose. Not loud. Not long.
And then—his voice, quiet, smooth, not quite playful:
"Changing the things that I don’t like."
-------A/N--------
I had been playing Sekiro for the past days, since this internship, and everything had been getting too much recently.
Thankfully, next week will be the last one (I hope).
Then I will focus on regular updates, more, will continue with Hunter as well.
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