Late July 1991, No. 16 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, London, England.
"Hiss—"
"Vincent Moriarty" woke from a soft bed, rubbing the spot between his brows. The pain felt exactly like what he'd experienced during spirituality depletion, and he thought with alarm: Where is the spirituality in my body? Why can't I feel it at all?
On top of that, his body felt extremely weak.
He looked up at an unfamiliar ceiling and sat up sharply. What greeted him was a completely unfamiliar room. The layout was simple: a wardrobe, a full-length mirror, an oak desk, a sofa chair, and a bed.
Beside the bed was a nightstand. On it sat a gas-lamp-like object (a desk lamp), and beside that, a framed family photo and a cup of water with small red berries soaking inside.
He picked up the photo frame. A young couple and a boy in his early teens, the whole family beaming. He turned it over. A string of letters on the back — a script he had never studied.
Frowning, "Vincent Moriarty" flipped the frame back over and was about to set it down — but then the reflection in the glass stopped him cold:
Why has my reflection turned into a man with short black hair?
Wait!
Something clicked. He looked down between his legs, stunned: I... I've actually become a man?!
He — or rather, she — felt her heart lurch violently.
How many years had it been? Since ascending to a Clairvoyant, she hadn't experienced emotional turbulence like this in a very long time. Even with the calm, still-water temperament she had cultivated over the years, she couldn't help but be shaken right now.
Yes — the "person" currently inside "Vincent Moriarty's" body was not Vincent Moriarty at all.
It was the daughter of the former "Caesar" of Intis — Emperor Roselle. A titan of the supernatural world. One of the Four Sea Kings. The Queen Mystic, leader of the secret organization Element Dawn, a Sequence 3 clairvoyant: Bernadette Gustav.
(T/N: The author has purposefully mentioned her as a sequence 3 instead of sequence 2. Must be some time scale issue)
A gentle breeze drifted in through the window. Bernadette turned to look. Through the clean glass she saw a colorful garden outside, tidy streets, and rows of houses in a style she had never encountered before.
Bernadette's frown deepened. Wasn't I... aboard the Dawn, searching the God War Ruins for any trace of the Black Emperor? How, after a single night, have I ended up here — and in a man's body of all things?
Lost in thought, Bernadette climbed off the bed and went to the full-length mirror. She got a clearer look at her current appearance: early twenties, brown eyes, short black hair. Reasonably handsome, though the faint dark circles under his eyes made him look a bit run-down.
White pajama top, loose-fitting. Below the waist, bare legs — and Bernadette could very clearly feel the underwear digging tightly into places it had no business being.
Have I really become a man?
No. Things don't seem to be quite that simple.
Unfamiliar script. Unfamiliar architecture. Vanished spirituality. A body that felt like it was running on empty. Every single thing around her was telling Bernadette the same thing — it was less like she had become a man, and more like her soul had entered a man's body and arrived in an entirely foreign world.
It was a bit like the "transmigration stories" her father Roselle used to tell her when she was small.
Years of experience allowed Bernadette to collect herself quickly. She reached out a hand — a silver ring on one finger — picked up the trousers draped over the sofa chair, pulled them on, and stepped quietly out of the bedroom into the living room.
The moment she entered, she was met with more things she had never seen in her life — electric lights, a refrigerator, a television, an air conditioner. To this Queen Mystic from the world of the Lord of the Mysteries, all of it was utterly foreign.
All of it confirming, beyond any doubt, that this was another world. Or another planet? Or perhaps the legendary Western Continent?
But why would I end up here?
Boom.
Without warning, the fireplace across the room burst into green flames on its own. Every nerve in Bernadette's body snapped taut. She snatched the mop leaning against the wall, stepped back quickly, and fell into a combat stance — spirituality or not, Bernadette was still a master of combat!
Almost at the same moment, accompanied by a sharp whistling sound, a spinning-top-like object on the coffee table began whirring rapidly.
The next second, a tall figure stepped out of the fireplace. The man was tall and lean, with silver hair and a silver beard long enough to tuck into his belt. He wore a classic wizard's robe and half-moon spectacles on a face that looked gentle and kindly — behind the lenses, a pair of brilliantly blue eyes.
If the real Vincent had been here, he would have recognized immediately that the old man before him was none other than the great White Wizard of the wizarding world — Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore.
Dumbledore brushed the soot from his robes and said, "Ah, Vincent, I do apologize for disturbing your rest at this hour, but I've been frightfully busy lately — the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, you understand — this was the only time I could arrange to interview you in person."
His tone carried a note of genuine apology. "Regarding your application to join Hogwarts as a Muggle Studies professor, there are still a few things I'd like to ask you face to face."
He paused, glancing at the spinning top on the coffee table with a smile. "Oh — I didn't expect you to still have the Sneakoscope I gave you all those years ago."
Then he adjusted his spectacles and turned to look at Bernadette — still holding the mop — with a puzzled expression. "Er... Vincent, is something the matter?"
"..."
Bernadette maintained her vigilant stance. Because as for every single word Dumbledore had just said —
she hadn't understood one of them.
Meanwhile,
in another world separated by infinite time and space — aboard the Dawn, sailing through the Fog Sea.
A young woman dressed in a girlish yellow dress was slowly stirring awake in the captain's cabin. Fair skin. Long chestnut hair flowing naturally to her waist. Quite beautiful — a face that could rival most Demonesses.
"Bleurgh—"
The instant her consciousness returned, a wave of nausea erupted in her chest. The woman scrambled to the edge of the bed, opened her mouth, and hurled a stream of rainbows.
As it turns out, even a beautiful woman's vomit smells just as awful.
"What's going on? I feel like I've been sitting on a boat for a whole day and then knocked back a full bottle of baijiu."
She pressed a hand to her full, heavy chest and did her best to settle the churning inside — but what came out of her mouth was a sweet, melodious voice.
"???"
She froze. Slowly looked down and murmured in disbelief, "How did my pectoral muscles get so...
What the actual—?!"
To be continued…