The morning air was crisp and clean, carrying the scent of dew-covered grass and blooming sage. Thin sunlight filtered through drifting clouds as birds called to one another between the trees that bordered the Grimhart family's modest country home.
Reina stood barefoot on the porch steps, wrapped in an oversized wool cloak that dragged behind her like a miniature queen's train. Her feet brushed against mossy flagstones, damp and cool, grounding her in a way that felt more real than anything since waking in this world.
The sketchbook was tucked beneath her arm. Her fingers clutched it tightly—not just because it was her connection to the power she was slowly discovering, but because it was familiar. Paper. Pencil. The simple act of drawing, of creating, of shaping something from memory. That part of her hadn't changed.
It was everything else that had.
She wasn't Rei Akiyama anymore, closeted Tokyo fangirl and part-time perfectionist. She was Reina Grimhart: nine years old, half-blood witch, future Hogwarts student—and, if her gacha luck was to be trusted, the sole inheritor of an ancient magical gift called Mascaromancy.
Which, apparently, meant she could make magical masks that turned her into fictional characters.
Except... she hadn't made any yet. Not fully.
Not consciously.
The fox mask she'd found under her bedroom floor had done something. Something impossible.
She still wasn't sure if she was hallucinating or just incredibly lucky.
But she needed to know.
---
The back garden was wild in that romantic English-countryside sort of way—half-tamed ivy and stubborn lavender bushes jostled for space between the cobbled path and a sagging wooden fence. Sunlight spilled through old birch trees, casting scattered shadows on patches of wildflowers and overgrown hedgerows.
It was quiet here. Private.
She padded across the grass and knelt in a sun-warmed clearing between two hedges. She laid her sketchbook carefully on a flat stone and opened it to the page she'd drawn the night before.
Sailor Mercury.
Round glasses. Calm blue eyes. A soft smile. The image looked back at her like an old friend.
She reached out and traced the edge of the pencil line.
Still no shimmer. No pulse of magic. No mask rising from the page.
But that was fine.
She could wait.
---
Next to her sketchbook was the bundle of masks she'd found in the floorboard—a handful of old wooden faceplates, each about the size of a child's palm. Some were painted, some plain. They weren't enchanted, at least not in the way Hogwarts textbooks described. But when she touched them, her fingers tingled faintly.
Especially the fox.
It was carved from a reddish wood, sanded smooth along the edges, with flared cheeks and painted fur patterns in faded white. Its smile was wide and sharp, but not menacing. Mischievous.
Alive.
She picked it up with both hands and held it to her chest.
There was something about it. Like it had waited for her.
Something instinctual told her this mask wasn't drawn or built with Mascaromancy—it was probably just a toy. But something else—deeper—said the mask wanted to be used. That magic could find its way through anything, even a child's toy forgotten under the floorboards.
She stared at it for a long moment.
Then whispered, "Alright… let's try."
She raised it.
Pressed it gently to her face.
And everything changed.
---
There was no burst of light. No scream. No dramatic swirl of magic.
Instead, the change came like a tide.
Magic surged through her skin like warm static. Her spine straightened and then bent in an unnatural coil. Her bones shrunk, not painfully, but with deep pressure—her arms pulled inward, legs shortened, her whole body folding down into itself like origami reforming into something new.
Her hands were no longer hands.
They were paws.
She dropped to all fours as fur erupted across her body in a rush of tingling heat. Her cloak slipped off her shoulders and puddled around her. Her face lengthened. Ears sharpened and twitched toward a distant rustle.
The garden exploded in color and scent.
Everything became more.
She was smaller, lighter, lower to the ground. Her nose twitched. Her tail swayed behind her with perfect balance.
She turned her head. Looked back at the mask—now blended to her form—and felt the world in an entirely different shape.
She was a fox.
---
And not just illusion.
Not just polyjuice or glamour.
This was real.
She felt the shift not as a costume but as a state of being. Her instincts sharpened. Her body adjusted instantly to the shape. The wind pressed through her fur. Her heartbeat was faster, her lungs smaller, more efficient. She fit into this form, like a memory she'd never made.
She took a cautious step.
Then another.
The grass bent beneath her paws with the softest pressure. She sniffed the air. Heard a beetle in the dirt. Saw a rabbit bolt from the hedges forty feet away.
Her muscles tensed.
She chased it.
---
The world blurred around her as she bounded through the underbrush. Her body moved like water, effortless and fast, twisting under vines and darting around stones. The fox's form responded perfectly to her will—balanced between her human thoughts and the form's instincts.
She loved it.
The freedom. The speed. The joy.
She wasn't afraid.
She felt powerful.
Like magic was more than spells and charms.
It was identity.
---
Eventually, she slowed.
She collapsed into a warm patch of grass beneath a half-crumbling garden statue. Her flanks heaved softly. Her paws trembled with the leftover rush.
Then came the ache.
It started in her chest—a faint burning, like someone lighting a candle too close to her ribs. Her limbs grew heavier. Her ears began to ring. Her vision wobbled at the edges.
She'd used too much.
The magic was running out.
And as gently as it came, the transformation faded.
Fur dissolved into skin. Paws stretched back into fingers. Her body reshaped—unfolding slowly this time, as though reluctant to leave the freedom behind.
She sat up, shaking.
Human again.
The fox mask lay beside her in the grass, its paint slightly more faded than before. A faint trail of steam curled off it in the afternoon sun.
---
She stared at it for a long time.
Not in fear.
Not even in disbelief.
But with awe.
She had become a fox. Fully. Truly. Not through wandwork or potion. Not through illusion. But through will, memory, and Mascaromancy.
Or maybe the mask had only awakened what was already buried deep in her core.
Either way, she'd crossed a line.
And she couldn't go back.
---
Back in her room, wrapped in a soft towel and a fresh set of robes, Reina sat on her bed with her sketchbook open in her lap.
She stared down at the page she'd drawn that morning. Sailor Mercury smiled gently up at her, her face framed by soft hair and quiet determination.
A part of her wanted to draw more. To finish the mask. To test it. See what it felt like to transform not into a creature—but into another person.
But not yet.
She wasn't ready.
Not for that.
Instead, she traced the shape of Mercury's tiara with her fingertip and whispered, "Soon."
Because now, she knew.
A mask wasn't just a costume.
It was a doorway.
And she had a whole world of faces waiting to be worn.
Reina's fingers idly traced the curled edge of the fox mask resting beside her. Even now—cool and silent in her lap—it seemed alive. Not in a creepy cursed-object way, but in the same way a well-worn book felt alive: touched, remembered, carried.
The fur between her ears was gone, but the phantom sensation still lingered. The world was quieter now in human form, dulled in color and noise, but… she didn't mind.
She had felt something, back there. A rush she couldn't explain. It hadn't just been magic. It had been joy. Liberation. The kind of joy she'd only ever felt once before—when she was twelve years old, sitting on her bedroom floor at 3 a.m. after binge-watching an entire magical girl anime, whispering: I want to be like them.
And now, she could be.
In more ways than one.
She hugged her knees to her chest, chin resting atop them. The cool breeze played gently with strands of her hair. Her sketchbook lay open beside her, the Mercury page untouched since morning.
"I really did it," she whispered. "No wand. No incantation. No Animagus ritual. Just… a mask."
Her voice felt too big in the stillness of the garden. As if saying it aloud might attract something listening.
But she didn't care.
---
The clouds shifted, throwing her into shade. A few golden leaves drifted down from the birch trees at the edge of the property. Autumn was beginning to take root here, creeping slowly along the borders of the season.
Reina stayed where she was for a while, letting her magic settle. The earlier transformation had drained her—not completely, but enough to feel a hollowness in her chest, like she'd sprinted halfway through a dream.
It hadn't hurt.
But she could feel the limit.
The cost.
Magic was not free.
She'd felt the line where energy started to dip, where instinct started to take over, where the transformation no longer felt like her.
She was lucky she'd stopped when she did.
Or maybe the mask had stopped her.
She wasn't sure which one she found more terrifying.
Or exciting.
---
Eventually, she stood, brushed grass from her robe, and gathered her things.
The fox mask.
The sketchbook.
The pencils.
A small, half-eaten apple she'd pocketed from breakfast.
She cast one last look at the wild hedges and scattered garden stones.
No one had seen.
Good.
For now, her secret was still hers.
---
Back in her room, the late afternoon light made everything soft and golden. Dust floated lazily in the air like suspended magic. Her books—Muggle and magical—rested in uneven stacks on the shelf, pressed between jars of quills, empty potion bottles, and a tiny clay figurine of a lion that roared when tapped.
She sat on the floor beside her bed, wrapping the fox mask gently in a silk scarf before tucking it beneath a loose floorboard—the same one where she'd found it.
She paused a moment after sliding the wood back into place.
Something inside her hesitated.
Like the mask was a living thing, waiting in the dark.
She didn't fear it.
But she respected it now.
---
She stood up, stretched, and turned to the desk.
The Sailor Mercury sketch still waited patiently on the page—clean, perfect, unfinished.
Her fingers twitched.
She grabbed a blue pencil.
Slowly, she added detail.
The tiara.
The blue collar and bow.
The shape of her ears.
The outline of the visor.
Each line pulled magic into her chest—not enough to activate, not yet. But responsive. Like iron filings pulled toward a magnet. She could feel the magic remembering this girl. This character. Her essence.
Memories from her old world flooded her mind.
Ami Mizuno—softer than the rest, gentler, brilliant. Always reading. Always quietly watching. Not the loudest fighter, but one of the strongest. The heart of logic and compassion. The one who gave people space to feel.
Reina drew her glasses last, framing her eyes.
Then stopped.
She exhaled.
The mask didn't rise off the page.
But she felt the energy settle—a calm pulse beneath the skin of her fingertips. Waiting.
"I'm not ready yet," she whispered.
And the page pulsed—like it agreed.
---
That night, Reina stood at her window and looked out over the moonlit fields.
Fog crawled across the grass, low and slow, hugging the ground like breath.
Stars blinked into view, clear and sharp.
She could feel her magic again—resting, not gone. Coiled beneath her skin like a slumbering current.
She wasn't like the other magical kids who would get their letters next year.
She wasn't just a girl with a wand on the way.
She was a girl who could become.
A fox.
A fighter.
A scholar.
A hundred faces, a hundred bodies.
All waiting to be made.