I Became the Bully Extra in a Novel I Hate

Another morning passed without word from the King.

Solenne and Cael stayed behind at the residence, buried in correspondence — letters bound for Ishkral, letters for the Allright Council, a full report on the audience that needed to reach home before rumor got there first. Arthur took the excuse to get out of the room and see something that wasn't parchment.

Theodore came with him.

The streets moved the same unhurried way they had the first day, elves passing between alchemy stalls and quiet storefronts, most of them sparing a glance at the two humans walking among them and nothing more. A few held their look longer than comfortable. Arthur kept his palms together at his forehead whenever one of them did, and most looked away satisfied after that.

They wandered without much direction, following whichever street looked interesting. One corner held nothing but alchemists, each storefront displaying rows of bottled mixtures instead of ordinary goods. Some shimmered silver, others carried tiny lights that drifted inside the glass like trapped fireflies.

"Do they drink all of those?" Theodore asked.

"Not all of them," Roz answered. "Some are medicine. Some preserve food. Others are used in construction. Alchemy here isn't reserved for battle."

Arthur translated what Roz says to Theodore.

Theodore nodded in fascination.

Arthur slowed near another shop. Thin sheets of pale bark hung from wooden frames while an elderly elf brushed a clear liquid over them. The bark stiffened almost immediately, turning smooth enough to write on.

"Paper?" Arthur asked.

"Tree hide," Roz corrected. "It lasts longer."

Theodore blinked. "So they make books out of trees… without cutting the tree down?"

"They harvest only what grows back," Roz said.

Arthur watched the old elf finish another sheet before quietly moving on.

"They're serious about not wasting anything," he muttered.

And Above them, something drifted between the towers — a long, low carrier shaped like an open boat, no wings, no visible mechanism, held aloft by nothing Arthur could name.

Theodore's head tipped all the way back to watch it pass. "How is that even staying up?"

"No idea."

"I want to ride one before we leave."

"Ask Yveselune."

"I might actually do that."

They wandered further from the main avenue, into narrower streets where the buildings pressed closer together, pale trees growing right up through gaps in the paving stones. Arthur caught movement in a side alley and slowed without deciding to.

A woman in a cloak, back turned, the crest of the Elercross Empire stitched at her shoulder — one of the master mages who'd ridden escort on the journey out. She was crouched near the base of a wall, doing something with her hands low and close to the ground, out of sight behind her own body.

Arthur stopped. Put a hand out toward Theodore without looking at him.

Theodore froze too.

The mage's head started to turn. Arthur pulled back around the corner fast, Theodore half a step behind him, both of them pressed flat against the wall until the footsteps behind them didn't come.

He risked another look.

She was placing a folded paper into a small box, a relic fitted into its lid, glowing faint gold. The moment the lid closed, the whole thing shimmered and vanished — gone, no smoke, no sound, just absent from the alley like it had never been there.

A transport relic. Arthur stayed still until she moved on, coat swinging, unbothered, like she'd done this exact thing before and would do it again.

Theodore leaned in, voice barely above a breath. "That's weird, Vex. You think we should tell the princess? Or — is she doing it because Solenne told her to?"

"Let's tell her either way," Arthur said.

They kept moving, putting distance between themselves and the alley before either of them said anything else about it.

Further down, where the street opened into a small courtyard, a group of elven children were playing with three brown bellus, chasing them in tight circles, shrieking with the specific joy kids brought to games nobody but them understood the rules of.

The children spotted Arthur and Theodore and stopped mid-chase.

Both men stopped too, out of instinct more than decision.

The kids approached slowly, cautious at first, then bolder, small hands reaching out to poke at the fabric of their coats. A few pointed directly at Roz, chattering in quick, high voices.

One boy, short emerald hair, hair still damp from playing in the snow earlier, said something directly to Arthur.

Roz translated, flat. "He says you're weird."

"Weird?" Arthur crouched slightly. "What does he mean by that?"

"He says your aetheric signature doesn't match itself. Two different souls tied into one body, both distinct." Roz's ears flicked. "He's not far off, kid."

"That's oddly specific for a child to just guess."

"Which is exactly why I find it interesting that he came up with it on his own."

Arthur smiled at the group, gave them a small bow, and moved on before the questions got any more pointed. Theodore lingered a second too long, clearly charmed, and had to jog to catch up.

"Master," Arthur said once they were clear of the courtyard. "About what he said—"

"I was already going to bring it up." Roz's voice had gone lower than usual, more careful. "During the culmination. The fight against the battlemage."

Arthur's eyebrows lifted. "Auros."

"Something happened to you that fight. I still can't explain it fully." Roz turned his head, red eyes fixing on Arthur directly. "Midway through, the bond felt wrong. The weight of it. The texture. It shifted, and every part of me was telling me the person fighting on that platform wasn't the same person I'd bonded to that morning."

Arthur went still. His steps stopped without him deciding to stop them.

Beside him, Vexis had gone quiet too, hovering closer than usual, staggered by the same thing landing on him at the same time.

"I've never felt that kind of severance before," Roz said. "Not with my first caller. Not with Verul, centuries ago. Never."

Arthur turned it over, slow.

The elf that saved us outside the fortress. She said something almost identical. Two signatures. Not one soul wearing a strange shape — two, tied into the same body.

'They can sense it,' Vexis said quietly. 'Both of us. Separately. Elves can tell.'

Arthur didn't answer that out loud. He didn't get the chance to.

A commotion broke out further down the street — shouting, the scrape of something heavy dragged across stone, voices pitched high with panic.

"Vex, look!" Theodore's hand shot out, pointing.

Arthur turned.

A carriage had come to a stop at the mouth of the street, its side caved in, scorched black along one panel. Elves in armor were being pulled from it, some limping, some carried, all of them bleeding — red mixed with a deeper blue that Arthur hadn't seen before, running from wounds that hadn't been treated in whatever time it took to get here. One soldier had lost most of an arm below the elbow, the stump wrapped hastily in cloth already soaked through. Another had burns covering half his face, skin blackened and cracked in a pattern that looked exactly like what Arthur's own compressed magic left behind when it hit something square.

The elves helping them out of the wreckage moved with the specific, frantic care of people who'd already lost someone tonight and were desperate not to lose anyone else.

Every face in the growing crowd carried the same look. Distress. Fear sliding fast into something angrier.

Then one soldier turned.

Half his face was gone — one eye missing, the ear on that side burned to nothing, the wound too fresh to have scarred over yet. His remaining eye swept the crowd, unfocused at first, searching for something to land on.

His remaining eye stopped on Arthur

The wounded soldier's mouth opened.

Words spilled out between ragged breaths, harsh and fast, too broken for Arthur to understand.

Roz's ears twitched.

"…Shadow," he translated quietly.

The soldier shouted again, louder this time.

"…Black magic."

Another sentence followed, half-swallowed by blood.

Roz was silent for a heartbeat.

"…He's saying the one who attacked them used black shadows. That it looked like… you."

Arthur's eyes snapped toward the ruined carriage.

The scorched wood wasn't merely burned. black stains clung to it, refusing to fade, spreading through the cracks like something still alive. Something like hellshade:

His stomach dropped.

What.. looked like me?

Or something close enough that an eyewitness couldn't tell the difference.

Theodore swallowed hard.

"Vex…"

Arthur didn't answer.

Around them, more elves stopped walking.

One by one, their eyes settled on him.

Nobody reached for a weapon.

Not yet.

But the way they looked at him had already changed.

His remaining eye stayed locked on Arthur the entire time.

And in it, Arthur saw exactly what the soldier thought he was looking at.

Not a guest. Not an ally who'd bowed at the gate and meant it.

Something to fear.

Something to hate.