Shattered Innocence: Transmigrated Into a Novel as an Extra

[There’s something divine here.]

The words weren’t a warning.

They were recognition.

And the moment Vitaliara whispered them, Lucavion stilled—truly stilled.

His gaze swept the forge again, slower this time. Deeper. Not just admiring the architecture or sensing the mana, but listening beneath it. To the cadence of heat. To the rhythm of molten aether. To the deliberate, sacred stillness that only came from one kind of hand.

‘Old man…’

His jaw tensed just slightly, eyes narrowing.

‘So you’re here too.’

Of course he was. This forge wasn’t just powerful—it was aligned. Structured like a ritual. Precise, but full of soul. Only one man he knew had ever worked iron like it was prayer and made even the gods feel unnecessary.

A certain old man that he had met before.

The forge-mad hermit of flame and purpose. The man who once scolded Lucavion for sharpening a blade “like a butcher folding arrogance.” The man who had refused to forge for kings but once made a sword from the blood-steam of a dying wyrm just because it challenged him.

Lucavion hadn’t seen him in years.

Hadn’t expected to, either.

After all he knew that old man would be coming here.

His hands relaxed at his sides, though tension still coiled behind his spine like a waiting blade.

Because if he was here… then this part of the story hadn’t changed.

Not yet.

He would need to see.

Lucavion stepped forward, boots echoing softly against the sanctified floor as the rest of the group followed him deeper inside. The heat rose not as discomfort, but as welcome. The scent of forged legacy filled the space—old iron, new flame, and magic that believed in itself.

Toven was still too in awe to speak. Mireilla’s posture was alert again, her fingers twitching faintly, perhaps in recognition of what true craftsmanship felt like. Elayne, ever-silent, moved with the stillness of someone watching for patterns within patterns.

The interior of the forge unfurled like a cathedral carved into flame.

They stepped past the threshold—and silence met them, not from absence, but reverence. The forge breathed, and every blacksmith within it moved to that rhythm. Each hammerfall was deliberate, each spark a verse of ancient scripture flung into the air.

The hall split into distinct chambers connected by arc-lined pathways of glowing obsidian. Masterwork anvils—few in number, each carved with binding runes older than most bloodlines—sat in elevated alcoves, surrounded by thin veils of heat-distortion and ambient magic.

The space wasn’t crowded. It didn’t need to be.

There were fewer than a dozen smiths within view—and each one bore the mark of someone who had earned the silence they worked in. Their coats were etched with a triple-forge insignia, their tools bound in mana-threaded leather. They moved with a precision that made it clear: this was not just labor.

This was craftsmanship made holy.

Weapons hung along a curved glass wall—displayed like relics. Each one unique. Some hummed faintly, alive with contained enchantments. Others rested in serene stillness, as though sleeping, waiting to be claimed by the right hand. There was a glaive of golden boneglass, an obsidian scythe with hollow rune-chambers down the shaft, and a dueling spear folded from dawnlight alloy that shimmered only when ignored.

The raw materials were behind transparent arcane seals: chunks of pulsating mana ore, harvested monster cores, folded celestial alloy, and a single piece of what looked like starmetal—lightless, too dark to be natural, and too cold to be inert.

Toven let out a quiet whistle. “This place makes the royal forge look like a beginner’s furnace.”

Mireilla didn’t reply, but she looked like she agreed.

Kaleran finally came to a stop before a wide dais with the crest of the Empire’s Arsenal burned into its floor—a ring of blades circling a core flame.

He turned to face them, hands clasped behind his back.

“This,” he said, his voice steady and formal, “is Solvaris Emberhold.”

The name settled into the chamber like an invocation. Even the forge-flames seemed to pulse at its mention.

Kaleran continued. “The seat of the Empire’s highest forge-circle. Weapons crafted here are not merely enchanted or reinforced—they are written into the Empire’s doctrine. This place births the arms of generals, champions, and chosen few.”

Lucavion felt it more than he heard it—the pull.

That pressure of divine weight wasn’t here in the front, where even nobles could walk and gawk. It was further in. Beneath the layer of ceremony and gilded commission.

Deeper.

‘That’s where you are, isn’t it?’

Lucavion’s gaze lingered past the ring of blazing forge-lights and the etched platforms of heat-bound steel. Beyond the enchantments and ceremonial craft, he could still feel it—that subtle draw, that coil of pressure not born of mana but of memory. Somewhere in the depths of this sanctified structure, the old man was working.

Not instructing. Not supervising.

Forging.

It wasn’t something that could be mistaken. The divine weight Vitaliara sensed wasn’t some metaphor. It was real—etched into the metal with every blow of a hammer that never asked for permission to change the world.

A rhythm unlike any other.

That was the description in the novel, though that is for a sooner future.

But for now, the path inward was closed. A barrier of respect—or bureaucracy. Either way, not yet.

Kaleran gestured, drawing the group’s attention once more. “You will now be shown the available material catalog. Your options are limited by two factors—your point balance, and your resonance affinity.”

He stepped aside, and several robed assistants emerged from the far walls, each leading a floating slab of arcane glass that displayed shimmering projections of materials: refined elemental ore, magically inert alloys for pure reinforcement, woven mana-silk for lightweight armors, spiritsteel laced with soul-echoes, even adaptive crystal that could remember and return to its original shape after a shatter.

Toven’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. “I want everything.”

Mireilla crossed her arms. “You’ll be lucky to afford a sheath if you don’t focus.”

Kaleran ignored the muttering. “These are the materials you may choose from—unless your assigned blacksmith determines you are compatible with something rarer. If such a match occurs, it will be made clear to you. You will then be brought to the negotiation chamber to confirm the cost.”

Lucavion’s gaze flicked over the projected ore lists, but only as a formality. Nothing here sang to him yet. The metal he was meant to carry was elsewhere. Below.

“As for your forge-masters,” Kaleran said, gesturing with one gloved hand, “you will each be paired now.”

From across the open floor, five blacksmiths approached—each different in form and bearing.

One was tall and wiry, his hair shot through with copper strands of mana-burn. He moved with twitchy precision, like a man who hadn’t slept in three days and didn’t need to.

Another, a woman with iron tattoos crawling up her throat, carried three forging hammers at her hip and the air of someone who once beat a knight unconscious with all of them at once.

Each of them looked at the candidates not like nobles or prodigies—but like potential disasters waiting to happen to their tools.

The assignments began.

“Caeden Roark,” Kaleran called. A smith with frost-rimed pauldrons stepped forward, eyes already measuring him.

“Mireilla Dane.” The hammerwoman nodded sharply, beckoning her forward with no words.

“Elayne Cors.” A lean smith with gemstone-threaded gloves raised an eyebrow as she stepped into view.

“Toven Vintrell.” Toven brightened—then paled slightly as a hulking forge-master built like a mountain crossed his arms and said nothing.

Finally—

“Lucavion.”

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