The Extra is a Genius!?

The light of the dying sun poured through stained glass windows, casting warped shapes of crimson and gold across the stone floor. Dust floated like ash in the air, turning slowly in the silence.

The chamber was not a cathedral—but it wanted to be. High ceilings, vaulted arches, glass mosaics depicting nothing holy. There were no saints here. Only symbols, and the silence of something watching.

At the center of the room, beneath the full weight of that fractured light, stood Kaelith Drosen.

His hands were folded behind his back. His silver hair was tied neatly, his black coat pressed, spotless despite the tension clinging to his frame. He didn’t speak.

Above him, seated on a ring of elevated stone thrones carved into the circular wall, were six figures, each wrapped in a dark cloak, each marked with the same sigil burned in red across the face of their hood—a stylized eye split by a claw-shaped curve. The mark of the Heirs of the Void.

No names were spokenin here, no greetings exchanged either.

This was judgment.

Kaelith raised his gaze, his expression calm.

He knew why he was here.

Behind him, a faint vibration stirred the air. A new presence materialized—a crystal orb, black as obsidian and suspended in midair, began to hum softly. Within it, the faint image of a humanoid figure flickered into existence: featureless, distant, wrapped in layers of shadows and light like writhing smoke.

And then, it spoke.

Not with normal words.

With weight.

"Bound servant of shattered fate... speak your sin."

The voice echoed like steel grinding against glass. It didn’t come from the orb. It came from every surface in the room.

Kaelith closed his eyes briefly, then bowed his head.

"I failed, master."

The silence dragged on for several long seconds. Kaelith stood still at the center of the chamber, the light from the stained glass casting deep reds across his face.

Then the voices came—one after another, distorted but unmistakably human beneath the interference.

"So that’s it? ’I failed’? You called us here just to say that? You fucked up, you know?"

Another voice, sharper, more irritated than the one before.

"You had everything. The professor Caldus. The pawns. All the setup. And what do we get? Screaming, fire, new heroes, and a failed mission?."

Someone to his left chuckled bitterly.

"All that preparation, and some school kids tripped you up. Pathetic."

Kaelith kept his posture straight, eyes forward.

"I misjudged the number of active variables. Some actors acted earlier than expected, there was something we didn’t expect."

"Actors? Don’t romanticize it. You got outplayed by kids no less! By mere kids, you the big prospect Kaelith, the future seventh pillar. Failed miserably."

"We waited years for that alignment, and you blew it because you wanted to ’handle things directly.’ Smart move Kaelith."

Another voice, bored and slow.

"How many cycles do we have left before the convergence closes again? Three? Maybe two?"

"Closer to one. And you wasted this one."

Kaelith exhaled once.

"I accept the weight of the failure. I don’t deny it."

From above, the obsidian crystal pulsed again. The shadowed figure inside did not move, but its voice—inhuman, cold and vast—rippled through the chamber.

"Misstep... is deviation.

Deviation... is ruin.

Ruin... is contagion."

That silenced the others for a moment.

Kaelith lowered his gaze slightly.

"I’ll fix it."

"No, no. You’ll try," snapped one of the hooded figures. "You don’t get trust back that easily, atleast not from us."

"If we let you try again, it’s because we’re out of time. Not because you deserve it."

Kaelith nodded once. No arrogance in his movements, no excuses either, he knew he fucked up badly, this mission was important.

"I’ll make it right. I already have a plan."

The crystal pulsed once more, and the voice returned—deeper now, resonating through the stone.

"Then speak, Kaelith of the Broken Thread.

The circle listens. Let this be... your final chance."

Kaelith lifted his chin slightly as the last echoes of the voice faded into the stone. The crystal’s glow dimmed, but its presence lingered like a blade held just above the throat.

He took a breath, slow, steady and controlled.

"I’ll enter the academy under a new name. A replacement for the position left vacant by Caldus."

Some of the hooded figures shifted in their seats, but none interrupted.

"The structure is weak now. The administration is scrambling to cover the fallout from the Banquet. The director is surrounded by internal politics. It’s the perfect time to insert a new actor, and that actor will be me."

He stepped forward once, still within the ring’s bounds.

"Once inside, I’ll operate from the center. No more wide-reaching plans. This time, we cut them down one by one. If I’m a professor I will have access to all the instalations of the academy, and no one will ever suspect me."

He let the words settle before continuing.

"The ones responsible for the collapse... the ones who disrupted the ritual and shifted the attention of the crowd. I saw them during the award ceremony."

He paused, then listed the names like carving them into the chamber walls.

"Elena von Lestaria. Marcus. Clara de Nivaria. Selene von Iskandar and more..."

He hesitated.

"Noel Thorne... his name was called during the ceremony too. But he didn’t show up."

Kaelith’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if replaying the moment.

"They didn’t explain why, no injury had been reported, and there was no record of any formal absence—he was simply gone, as if he’d vanished without warning or reason, leaving behind only silence and unanswered questions."

A voice to the left grunted in disapproval.

"So he was smart enough to stay off-stage. That doesn’t make him irrelevant—it makes him interesting."

Another voice, lower and more cautious, added:

"Check him. Quiet ones are the ones that rot the foundation, you need to check all the variables this time, if you fail again you will be death."

Kaelith gave a short nod.

"I will. If he proves significant, he’ll be added to the list officially for now he is just a background character."

The silence returned—but it wasn’t peace. It was decision.

The obsidian crystal pulsed again, this time more violently. Light twisted inside it like stormclouds folding in on themselves.

Then came the voice.

"One path remains.

One thread... still taut.

But threads fray.

Threads snap."

Kaelith stood still. The flickering red from the stained glass danced across his face, but his eyes didn’t shift. He waited for the last words.

"We grant... reprieve. A decision that was final and absolute, but bound by hidden conditions."

The stone floor beneath him began to glow. A single sigil—intricate, circular, older than the kingdom itself—spread out like ink in water, carving itself into the stone with red light.

A hooded figure rose from their seat and descended silently toward him, carrying a small obsidian brand rod in both hands. At its tip, the same crimson symbol that marked their cloaks: a stylized eye split by a clawed crescent.

Kaelith pulled back the left sleeve of his coat and extended his forearm without hesitation.

The brand flared to life.

There was no sound.

No scream.

Only burning flesh and the sharp scent of mana reacting to old, forbidden magic.

The symbol seared itself into his skin—permanent, blackened, alive.

"Let the mark burn until the task is complete," the Voice echoed.

"Should you fail again... you return not to silence, but to erosion."

Kaelith lowered his arm and looked at the wound. The lines pulsed faintly, not with pain, but with a kind of cold clarity.

"I understand," he said.

The great doors of the chamber creaked open with a heavy groan, letting in the first breath of cold evening air.

Kaelith stepped through them without looking back.

He didn’t limp. He didn’t flinch. But as soon as the doors closed behind him and the sound of chanting vanished, his expression shifted.

The perfect calm fractured into something colder—something bitter.

He looked down at the mark on his arm, now hidden beneath his sleeve again, and exhaled through his nose.

"...Bastards."

His voice was quiet, but venom laced every syllable.

"They’ll pay for making me kneel in front of those degenerates."

He began walking, each step echoing through the corridor like a ticking clock.

"And him, with his cryptic mumbling... ’threads fray, threads snap’—how about talking like a fucking person for once, he don’t even show up fisically like the others, who he thinks he is?"

He chuckled to himself, though there was no humor in it.

"Every time he opens that crystal, it’s like someone’s casting a poetry curse."

Kaelith paused at a junction where two corridors met, his gaze rising toward a window showing the blood-orange sky above.

Then his eyes narrowed.

"But fine. I’ll dance in your hand for now."

He touched the edge of the mark beneath his coat, felt the sting still pulsing against his skin.

"Let’s see how long they smile once I start cutting pieces off their board."

"Oh... You wait for me stupid kids, you will got engraved in your skull the name of Kaelith Drosen."

And with that, he vanished into the descending night.