Transmigrated into a Novel as the Female Lead’s Ex-Husband

Luke turned and moved.

He stayed off the main streets, cutting through the narrow gaps between buildings that only locals knew about. The snow helped. It covered his tracks almost as fast as he made them. The wind erased footprints within minutes.

The assassin had already dealt with the neighbourhood's security cameras before launching the attack. That was standard procedure for a professional hit.

Luke already checked using the software on his phone. It is easy for him to hack into the surrounding security cameras.

The few cameras that covered the streets near the alley had been controlled to show fake footage before Luke ever left the market. The assassin had prepared his approach carefully, making sure there would be no evidence of his presence.

Which also meant there was no electronic evidence of Luke's presence in the alley during the fight.

No footage of the attack. No footage of the cleanup. No footage of Luke carrying a body through the snow.

The assassin's own preparation had protected his killer.

The irony was not lost on Luke.

The abandoned building was exactly where the memories said it would be.

Luke slipped through a gap in the rusted fence, crossed a small yard filled with frozen debris, and found the basement entrance behind a stack of broken concrete slabs. The lock was old but functional. The original had maintained it.

Inside, the space was small, dark, and cold. Dust covered everything. A few plastic containers sat against one wall. A folded tarp. A sealed bag with basic supplies.

Luke set the body down in the far corner and covered it with the tarp. Then he placed the artifact bundle beside it, wrapped separately in a piece of old cloth he found on a shelf. The frozen blood mass from the grocery bag went into one of the sealed containers and was placed on the opposite side of the room.

He would dispose of the body and blood later.

He stood back and looked at the scene.

The body was hidden. The artifacts were secured. The blood was contained. The alley was clean.

It wasn't perfect.

But it was enough.

The body wouldn't be found here unless someone specifically came looking for it in this exact location. And even then, the cold would preserve it and slow any change that might produce noticeable signs.

Luke left the basement, locked the door behind him, and walked back out into the snow.

He gathered what remained of his scattered groceries from the entrance of the alley. Some of the items had spilled. A bag of rice had torn open. The eggs were cracked. He took what he could and left what he couldn't save.

By the time he reached his apartment, his hands were steady, his breathing was normal, and every trace of what had happened in that alley was either buried, hidden, or dissolving into the winter night.

But inside his chest, something was still tight.

He had killed a man.

Not in theory. Not in a novel. Not in someone else's memory.

He had killed a man with his own hands, in his own fight, with his own power.

The original Luke had killed before — the Bureau demanded it. Field agents didn't have the luxury of clean endings. Some missions ended with bodies on the ground, and the agents who survived those missions carried the weight of it for the rest of their careers.

But those were the original's kills. The original's memories. The original's weight.

This one was his.

Luke set the grocery bags on the kitchen counter and stood still for a moment.

He didn't feel guilt exactly. The assassin had come to kill him. The assassin would have killed him without hesitation or remorse. There was no moral question in defending his own life.

But there was something else.

A heaviness.

The understanding that this world was no longer a story. Not a novel he could close. Not a plot he could observe from a distance. The blood had been real. The body had been real. The cold of the blade going through the man's neck had been real.

And the next time might not go as well.

Luke let the thought sit for a few seconds.

Then he pushed it down and started putting the groceries away.

There was something else he needed to think about.

Something more immediate.

The Bureau.

Luke placed the last can on the shelf and leaned against the counter.

He knew — from the original's memories and from the novel — that the Bureau maintained a city-wide detection network. It wasn't perfect, and it wasn't all-seeing, but it was always running.

The system was built to monitor energy fluctuations across the city, picking up the distinct waves that were released whenever an awakened power was used.

Every ability left a signature. Ice, fire, lightning, psychic force, physical enhancement — they all produced measurable ripples in the energy field around them.

The Bureau's sensors were scattered across every district, embedded in infrastructure, hidden in plain sight. They tracked, recorded, and flagged unusual activity around the clock.

In theory, every time an awakener used their power inside the city, the Bureau knew about it.

In practice, the system had limits.

Short bursts of power — especially low-level or brief ones — often registered as minor blips. The sensors couldn't distinguish between an awakener practising in their apartment and a real combat event unless the output was high enough or sustained long enough to trigger an elevated alert.

Background noise from legal awakener activity, authorised training, hero operations, and routine Bureau work created a constant baseline that made it harder to isolate individual signals.

Still, the system worked well enough to catch most illegal use, most unlicensed activity, and most combat events that lasted longer than a few seconds.

Luke's fight in the alley had been short.

Very short.

But it had still happened. Energy had been used. Waves had been released.

However, and this was the part that mattered, the assassin's mask had been an artifact.

The mask hadn't just been armour for the face. It had also been suppressing the assassin's energy signature. That was standard equipment for professional killers in this world. If you were going to assassinate an awakener inside a city monitored by the Bureau, you needed gear that could hide your own power from the detection grid. Otherwise, the Bureau would be on your location before you even reached your target.

The mask had hidden the assassin's speed-type energy from the sensors.

But it hadn't hidden Luke's.

Every agent in the Bureau learns to identify such artifects. The question was how the Bureau would interpret the signal.

A short burst of ice-attribute energy in a residential neighbourhood, during heavy snowfall, in an area without any active Bureau operations or known threats.

There were two likely interpretations.

One — someone had been practising their power illegally. This happened all the time. Unlicensed awakeners, restless power users, and teenagers who had recently awakened and couldn't resist testing their abilities in empty spaces. The Bureau dealt with dozens of these cases every week. Most of them resulted in nothing more than a warning or a small fine.

Two — a fight had occurred. But without a sustained signal, without evidence of a second power source, and without any emergency reports from civilians, this interpretation was much less likely to be taken seriously.

Luke was betting on interpretation one.

And he had already prepared his excuse.

If the Bureau sent someone to investigate — which they probably would, even for a low-priority blip — they would trace the signal to this general area. They would check the records. They would find that an awakener lived nearby. They would look up his name.

Luke.

Former Bureau agent. Ice attribute. Recently transferred to Silver Moon Corporation.

But it was a minor violation.

The kind that resulted in a warning, maybe a fine, maybe a short interview.

Not an investigation.

Not a raid.

Luke's excuse was simple. He had been practising ice manipulation near his apartment. A brief session. Nothing dangerous. He had stepped outside because the apartment was too small to use his ability comfortably, and the alley had seemed like a private enough space. He hadn't realised it would register on the sensors because he was still adjusting to life outside the Bureau's training facilities.

It was a weak excuse.

But it was believable enough for a low-priority case.

The Bureau would send someone to confirm, deliver a warning, and move on. Standard procedure. Routine. Boring.

The kind of task is usually given to a junior agent with nothing better to do.

Luke leaned back against the counter and let out a slow breath.

That was his plan.

Simple. Clean. Built on the assumption that the Bureau would treat this as what it appeared to be — a minor energy signature from a recently relocated awakener who didn't know better.

He had about two to three hours before anyone would show up, based on what he remembered of Bureau response times for low-priority signals. The heavy snow would slow things down even further. Road conditions, shift changes, paperwork — all of it would add delay.

Luke used the time.

He cooked a simple meal with what was left of his groceries. Rice. Vegetables. One of the cans of soup was heated on the stove. He ate slowly, sitting alone at the small kitchen table, while snow continued to fall outside the window.

The apartment was quiet.

The food was warm.

Luke finished eating, washed the dishes, and cleaned up the kitchen. Then he sat down in the chair near the window and waited.