Warmth, again.
It greeted her like an old friend—soft and heavy, like a weighted blanket pulled from a dryer on a winter morning. There was a faint floral scent in the air. Lavender? Chamomile? Something gentle and very not Tokyo.
Something British.
Reina stirred.
Or rather, Rei Akiyama, Japanese high school student, con-goer, fandom addict, and reluctant truck victim, did. Or had. She wasn't entirely sure where Rei ended and this new body began.
She opened her eyes.
The ceiling above her was wood—planks dark with age, running diagonally in a way that made the whole room feel oddly cozy. There was something charmingly crooked about the place, like a setting from a fantasy film trying very hard to seem quaint.
Light filtered in through a latticed window. Dust danced in sunbeams. Somewhere downstairs, something sizzled—breakfast, maybe. Her stomach growled. That was weird. Spirits shouldn't feel hungry.
Then again… maybe she wasn't a spirit.
She sat up.
Her limbs didn't cooperate at first. Her arms felt short. Her center of gravity was too low. Her pajama sleeves dangled past tiny wrists, and her bare feet swung well above the floor.
She paused.
She was small.
No—young.
Slowly, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and dropped to the floor with a soft thud. The impact startled her, and she wobbled, knees bending more than they should've. Definitely shorter. Definitely lighter. Maybe… nine? Ten?
She took a cautious step, then another. Her legs worked, but they didn't feel broken in yet. Like she was wearing someone else's childhood.
Across the room stood a tall, old-fashioned mirror with iron hooks at the top and bottom. The glass was slightly foggy from age, but not enough to hide the girl staring back.
Reina Grimhart.
That was her name now.
---
She stared at her reflection.
She had long, chestnut brown hair braided neatly over one shoulder, fair skin with a natural flush, and large hazel eyes. They didn't shine with innocence the way most children's eyes did. No—there was something older behind them. Something wary. She looked like a girl on the edge of remembering a dream she wasn't supposed to.
She reached out, pressing a hand to the cool surface of the mirror.
"I look… normal," she whispered, her voice higher than she remembered. "No lightning scar. No glowing aura. No fox tails or magic circles."
Just a girl.
A very small, very real girl.
She pulled her hand back and looked down at it—small fingers, soft palms, not a hint of a callous or ink stain. So different from the hands that had once typed out thousands of fanfiction words at 2 a.m. So unfamiliar… and yet, undeniably hers.
Reina.
---
The door creaked open, and she flinched.
A woman stepped into the room, tall and solid in stature, dressed in a lavender robe with slightly frizzy hair pinned up into a loose bun. She looked at Reina and smiled—a warm, worn smile like a wool blanket.
"Well now," she said, voice rich and accented. "Back from dreamland at last, are you?"
Reina stared at her blankly.
The woman chuckled. "Don't panic, love. You've only been resting a day. Not uncommon after a surge. Your father said you had quite a fit over a stuck window."
A surge? That must've been her "cover" for the soul transition. She filed it away.
The woman continued. "Name's Lyra. I'm your neighbor, unofficial healer, and occasional babysitter while your mum's away with the Department of Muggle Integration."
Right. Mum works for the Ministry. Dad's a Muggle clockmaker. She remembered reading it in the "character notes" Clerk-17 handed her before launching her soul like a Pokéball.
Lyra stepped closer and knelt beside her. "You gave your dad a bit of a scare, you know. Magic running wild like that—nearly broke every jar on the spice shelf."
"Sorry," Reina muttered automatically.
Lyra smiled wider and patted her shoulder. "Nothing to be sorry about. It happens to magical kids. Especially just before their cores stabilize. That'll be around eleven. You've got a year yet. Time to grow into it."
A year.
Eleven.
Her Hogwarts letter would come then. The real story would begin.
Until then… she had time.
---
After Lyra left, Reina sat on the window bench and stared out into the garden. She could hear a raven cawing from the chimney, and beyond the low stone fence was a distant forest, shadowed and dark.
So this was the world of Harry Potter.
She was here. Really here.
Her fingers twitched against the wood grain of the bench, and she felt it—a faint shimmer beneath her skin. Magic. Not the flashy kind. Not even the kind she'd imagined when Clerk-17 had said "Mascaromancy." This was quieter. Subtle. Like the first notes of a song just beginning to hum behind the curtain.
And then—just for a heartbeat—she saw it.
A flicker in the window glass. A vague shimmer behind her reflection. Round. Pale. Featureless.
A mask.
She turned.
There was nothing behind her.
But the shimmer… lingered. Not a vision. A presence.
A promise.
---
Later that night, after dinner with her very kind, very exhausted parents (who looked at her with the sort of relieved worry only new parents of magical children could have), she found a small sketchbook in her room.
It was tucked between old schoolbooks and spelling practice sheets.
She pulled it out. Sat at her little desk. Opened the cover.
The first page was blank.
And waiting.
She picked up a colored pencil—green.
Drew a round face. Big, hopeful eyes. Freckles. Messy hair. Not detailed. Just the suggestion of someone. A spirit of strength, fear, growth.
Izuku Midoriya.
Her heart thumped once.
The pencil glowed faintly.
It passed. The glow faded.
But Reina didn't frown.
No mask today.
But soon.
Reina stared down at the sketch of Izuku Midoriya, her pencil hovering just above his half-smile. He wasn't perfect—not her art, nor the boy drawn from memory—but there was a weight behind those penciled eyes that gave her pause. A quiet resolve. A symbol.
Funny.
She'd never once thought of herself as brave.
In her old life, Rei Akiyama had been many things: bookish, anxious, introverted, terminally awkward. She'd studied hard, smiled at teachers, and lived in libraries and livestream chats. She'd loved stories with her whole heart—but from a distance. Other people dreamed of changing the world. She escaped into worlds where someone else already had.
And now, here she was.
Reina Grimhart. Living, breathing, wandless magic in her blood, a childhood ahead of her in the most famous magical universe on Earth—and a power no one else would ever understand.
Mascaromancy.
It wasn't like in the anime. There was no system menu, no glowing HUD, no dramatic notification or power unlock animation. Just this soft pull under her ribs, like thread spooling in her chest. Like magic wasn't something she cast, but something she shaped.
Like it was waiting to become something else.
She closed the sketchbook gently.
The room was dim now, golden light fading to blue as the sun dipped behind the trees. Shadows stretched long on the walls. Her new bedroom smelled faintly of dust, parchment, and wild herbs tucked into a drying ring near the ceiling.
She glanced toward the door.
Footsteps in the hall—her father moving about downstairs. The low hum of magical wards resetting for the night. A kettle whistled once, then was silenced by a softly murmured spell.
There was a rhythm to this world. A gentler one. Magic wasn't everywhere—but it wasn't hidden either. It was in the way teacups stirred themselves and curtains folded at a whisper. It was in how her bookshelf reorganized as she stacked the sketchbook on top.
And it was in her, too.
Waiting.
---
Reina crossed the room to the mirror once more. Not because she needed to see herself—but because she wanted to.
There she was: the girl with big eyes and too much memory behind them. The girl who'd died in the wrong clothes for reincarnation and been reborn in the right story.
She looked… human.
Mortal.
But something in her posture—how her fingers curled slightly at her sides, how her jaw tensed—reminded her of something Clerk-17 had said, offhandedly, like a line of dialogue tossed to an NPC.
> "You won't be shackled by fate like others."
At the time, she thought it meant freedom.
Now, she wondered if it also meant responsibility.
Was she meant to change things?
Or just witness them?
She reached out and traced her reflection's jawline with her fingertips. The glass was cool, grounding.
"I don't want to break the world," she whispered. "Just… remake the part that needs it."
---
A creak near her foot caught her attention. She looked down. One of the floorboards had shifted slightly beneath her weight. A loose one.
Curious, she knelt and pried it up with her fingers. Dust puffed out as she lifted it, revealing a small hollow space—and inside, a bundle wrapped in cloth.
She pulled it out.
It was a bundle of masks.
Small ones. Children's playthings, really. Simple wooden faceplates—one painted like a fox, another like a lion, a third with swirls like water. The paint had chipped with time, but the craftsmanship was careful.
She turned one over.
Faint runes lined the inner rim—almost invisible unless viewed at an angle. They were old. Simple. Meant to resonate with passive magic.
Someone had made these by hand.
"Dad?" she whispered aloud, glancing toward the door. "Did you…?"
But the magic was too subtle. Not adult-made. More like… a child's.
Had she made these? In this body's early years?
Or had someone else left them?
She pressed her fingers to one—a fox mask, lightly lacquered—and for just a second, she felt a flicker of something. Like playfulness. Like motion.
Nothing dangerous. Nothing active. Just a memory of magic.
She clutched the bundle to her chest and stood, heart pounding.
Masks.
She didn't know what these were yet.
But she would.
---
Back in bed, the bundle now tucked under her pillow, Reina lay staring up at the wooden beams of her ceiling.
Tomorrow, she'd ask her father if he remembered them.
The next day, she'd draw another face—maybe Sailor Mercury this time. For closure.