I Became the Bully Extra in a Novel I Hate

Arthur's mind wouldn't slow down.

How does someone out there have my face. Vexis's face. How is that even possible.

'Arthur.' Vexis's voice came steady, deliberate, cutting through the spiral before it went anywhere worse. 'Breathe. You're spinning.'

I can't help it. If someone out there looks like us and just attacked a hunting party, that means—

'It means we find out what it means. Not now. Not standing in the middle of a street full of people who already want a reason to hate us.'

Theodore's hand landed on his shoulder. "Vex. Hey. Look at me."

Arthur blinked and focused. Theodore's face was tight with worry, eyes flicking between him and the growing crowd.

"I'm going to get the princess," Theodore said. "Stay here. Don't do anything."

He didn't wait for an answer. He was already running, boots kicking up snow, heading straight for the residence.

Roz hopped down off Arthur's shoulder and approached the wounded soldiers, low and careful, his voice dropping into that quick, clicking register Arthur couldn't follow. The one-eyed soldier flinched at first, then answered, halting, breath catching between words.

Red-coated healers moved through the group now, hands lit green, sealing wounds one at a time, working fastest on the ones losing the most blood. The crowd kept growing anyway — word spreading faster than the healers could work, more elves arriving from side streets, more murmuring, more eyes finding their way to Arthur and staying there.

Roz came back to his shoulder a minute later.

"They were on a hunt," he said, quiet, only for Arthur. "Attacked by humans in dark cloaks. Several of them." A pause. "One of the attackers wore your face."

Arthur's stomach dropped straight through the ground.

"My — what?"

"That's what he said. The one missing the eye." Roz's ears were flat against his skull. "It's why he screamed. He wasn't accusing you of being there. He recognized your face on someone who wasn't."

Arthur stared at him.

"If he's telling the truth..."

The words refused to finish themselves.

There should only be one Vexis Lestilaut.

One body.

One face.

So who had the soldiers seen?

His pulse picked up despite himself.

If someone else could wear his appearance this easily, then everything he'd built since arriving in this world could be destroyed by actions he never committed.

Arthur looked at the soldier again. The elf caught his eyes for half a second and looked away fast, shoulders drawn tight.

The murmuring around them sharpened, elf turning to elf, voices low and fast in a language Arthur still couldn't parse, but the tone needed no translation at all.

What is happening to me.

Black magic. It has to be. Or — no. What if it wasn't black magic at all. What if it was shadow. My shadow.

That's impossible. Nobody else in this world has Hellshade. I built it from nothing. There's no catalogue entry for it anywhere.

Unless someone copied it. Or unless something else entirely is wearing my face and I have no idea what it even is.

Guards arrived before his thoughts settled anywhere useful — pale armor, gold ornamentation catching the filtered light, moving through the crowd with practiced efficiency, pushing the onlookers back into a loose perimeter.

Solenne arrived moments after, Cael and Thalon flanking her, several master mages trailing close behind. She took in the scene in one sweep — the wounded, the burns, the crowd, Arthur standing at the center of all of it with every eye still drifting his way.

"What happened," she said, low, urgent.

"They were attacked," Arthur said. "Humans. In dark cloaks. And one of them—" He stopped himself. Started again. "One of them looked like me."

Solenne's expression didn't change, but something behind her eyes sharpened.

Yveselune arrived last, moving fast, already directing the guards to widen the perimeter further, her voice carrying clean authority over the noise. The crowd thinned under her direction, healers finishing their work, wounded soldiers carried off toward proper care, the temperature of the whole street dropping by slow degrees.

It still didn't feel resolved. Not to Arthur. He could feel the residue of it in every glance that passed his way on the walk back — quieter now, but not gone.

Back at the residence, Solenne sat them all down and made Theodore and Arthur go through it again, piece by piece.

"So the attackers wore dark cloaks," she said. "And one had your face."

"That's what the soldier told Roz."

"And nobody caught anything else. No name. No signature. No clear location for the attack."

"Just that it happened outside the kingdom, on a hunt." Arthur's hands weren't quite steady. "Solenne, if someone's out there wearing my face and attacking elves, that's going to land on me. Whether I did it or not."

"I know." Her voice stayed level, but there wasn't much comfort in it. "Which is exactly why we wait for the King's word before we speculate any further. Panicking in front of me doesn't help either of us."

Arthur exhaled and made himself sit still.

The knock came within the hour.

Yveselune stood in the doorway, expression carefully neutral in the way Arthur had learned meant she was working hard to keep it that way.

"The King has summoned you," she said. "All of you. Now."

The throne room felt different this time.

The walk there had been quieter than the day before.

Servants who had once greeted them with polite bows now lowered their eyes and hurried past without a word. Guards stood at every intersection of the palace corridors, more than Arthur remembered seeing during their first audience, each one watching the delegation as they passed. None of them reached for a weapon, but none of them smiled either.

The news had spread.

Whatever the wounded hunting party had reported was no longer confined to the street where the attack survivors had returned. It had reached the castle, the servants, the guards—perhaps the entire city by now.

Arthur could feel it in the silence.

Every step toward the throne room felt heavier than the last, as though the palace itself had already decided he was someone to be judged before he'd spoken a single word in his own defense.

The King sat in the same root-carved seat, but the ease from the first audience was gone entirely. His eyes were fixed on Arthur from the moment they entered, and they didn't move.

"Bring him forward," the King said, the relic humming a half-second behind.

Solenne stepped forward first.

"Your Majesty."

She bowed once.

"Vexis Lestilaut has not left the palace grounds since arriving in your kingdom. Every member of my delegation can attest to that."

The King's eyes remained on Arthur.

"I know."

His answer came immediately.

"Which is precisely why this concerns me."

Only then did he look at Solenne.

"If my own soldiers insist they saw his face beyond these walls..."

His gaze returned to Arthur.

"...then the question is no longer where he was."

"It is who they saw."

Solenne didn't move at first. Cael's hand found her arm, brief, and she stepped back, jaw set.

Arthur walked forward alone.

"You carry two signatures," the King said. "My children in the streets noticed it before my own court did. My advisors have confirmed it since."

"My court also questioned every surviving witness from the hunting party."

"They described the same man."

"No hesitation. No contradiction."

He paused.

"Even now, as I sit before you, I can sense the unusual aetheric signatures bound to your soul. Two distinct signatures."

"The testimonies support one another."

"That is why you stand before me now."

His eyes narrowed. "You have the right to explain."

Arthur's throat went dry. There wasn't a version of the truth anyone in this room would believe.

Not without sounding completely insane.

"I don't fully understand it myself, Your Majesty. It's — complicated."

Arthur searched every face in the room.

None of them looked ready to believe the impossible.

"Complicated is not an answer." The King leaned forward. "A soldier, wounded within the hour, testified that a man wearing your exact face attacked his hunting party outside these walls. While you stood inside them." A pause, deliberate. "Explain that to me as well."

"I don't know who that was." Arthur kept his voice as even as he could manage. "I've been here the entire time. Everyone in this room can attest to that."

"Convenient, that someone shares your face and appears the moment suspicion falls elsewhere."

"I understand how it looks."

"Do you." The King's voice hardened further. "A human with two souls tied into one body. A doppelganger attacking my people beyond these walls at the same hour you sit safely within them. And a princess asking me to trust an alliance built on the goodwill of someone I cannot even properly identify."

The relic hummed through every word, cold and precise.

"Tell me, young man." The King's eyes bored into him. "What kind of mage are you, exactly?"

Arthur felt every eye in the room turn toward him at once — Solenne's, Cael's, Yveselune's, the guards flanking the throne, all of it landing at the same moment the King's question did.

He opened his mouth.

Every answer led to another question.

Every truth sounded like a lie.

And for the first time since waking in this world…

Arthur found himself completely speechless.