"…"
A pair of dull brown eyes gaze down at the first diary entry he had ever made. A diary entry he had made only in his mind. Viewed by the ethereal gaze of an unwilling soul in a world not his own.
* * *
June 17, 1991
Dear Diary (?),
Here's the part where I'm supposed to say it was a dream come true.
But waking up in a stranger's body, in a stranger's home, to the sound of someone screaming your name like it was a curse—yeah, that wasn't in any fantasy I'd signed up for.
They call me "Vale" now. A name scratched onto some adoption paperwork by hands I've never seen. It's not mine, not really—but I've learned not to argue with people holding belts and wooden spoons.
I remember dying. That's the first thing. Cold, loud, bright, then dark.
The second thing? Waking up choking on dust in a shelf that smelled like mold and piss, my body half the size I remembered it being, my hands shaking with a magic that didn't belong to me. Or maybe it did. Maybe it always had, and I just didn't know until that moment.
I wasn't supposed to be here. This world wasn't real. It was a story—a book, a movie. Something safe, behind a screen.
But it's real now.
And I'm real in it.
Sort of.
* * *
'Anyone reading this would definitely send me to the infirmary or straight to a writing competition.'
It didn't feel like his own words. Everything was in a dissonant dance of colours and thoughts. Nothing made sense, apart from the flaring pain on every bruise in his body.
And the shouting.
"Vale! Vale you rat-like bastard, get out!"
The door was torn open, screeching on its hinges. A hand pierced through the boy's defences as if it were nothing but air, grasping at his shirt and dragging him out with sheer force.
"Ack!"
Choked by his own clothes, he flailed.
"Shit!"
Inadvertently letting out a curse, the boy instinctively fought back. The sudden eruption of pain fuelled the spark of his rage, turning it into a gas explosion of emotions.
—Boom!
Along with bleeding nails and a nosebleed, there was an outflow of deep, black mist. It rushed forth like a tidal wave, consuming everything.
The hallway cracked. Lightbulbs burst one after another in a staccato rhythm, like glass rain. The walls warped inward, groaning as if the house itself had taken a punch to the ribs.
And the man—James—was no longer shouting.
He was silent.
Because the moment his hand touched the boy's chest, it was as if something ancient and wrong had touched him back. He stumbled backward, clawing at his own arms, his mouth open in a scream that couldn't escape.
The boy didn't notice.
He was on the floor, knees scraped and trembling, breathing like a cornered animal. The mist poured out of him in heavy surges, coating everything in a thin, oily sheen. It wasn't smoke. Smoke didn't whisper.
But this did.
Whispers like cracks in a mirror. Like wind through a graveyard. Like memory being rewritten.
His eyes glowed faintly gold beneath the fringe of messy hair, barely open.
And the mist said one word, again and again, in the voice of a thousand frightened children:
—"Stop."
With a final pulse, the darkness whooshed outward in a wide arc, leaving the walls scorched and the air dry like something had burned, but without fire.
Then—collapse.
The boy fell, unconscious, curled in on himself, the last strands of mist curling protectively around his form.
Somewhere, not far away, a quill stirred.
And waited.
* * *
Suddenly, the world stopped. The boy, who now knew his own name, stopped.
He was unconscious. He had no choice.
'No, I'm not unconscious… This state…'
Vale looked at his own body. With his shifting thoughts, the black smoke churned.
And his perspective changed.
'Hm,'
Then came the analysis. Cold. Rational.
Undead.
'I've transmigrated.'
His thoughts' first culmination.
'Into a different world… A wizarding world.'
It was clear from the time period. The black smoke. The emotional outburst… And that faint memory he had seen as a soul.
A ticking clock. Time turners hidden in cabinets. An eternal cycle.
'This smoke. That room.'
Vale's thoughts grew clearer now. Clearer than the crystalline caves beneath the world's surface.
'Have I transmigrated into… an Obscurial?'
How odd, he thought.
'Not the body of the child, but the body of the Obscurial forming in his body? And that room… I was searching up that exact same room on the internet just moments before my death.'
Vale paused.
'…My death,'
The cold, unfeeling death.
'I…'
Choking on his own thoughts, Vale shoved that memory deep into his soul. His death was a terrifying narrative, simply due to its happenstance. Not due to the reason, and certainly not the transmigration afterward.
The mere fact that he died…
'It is enough to drive anyone mad.'
When his thoughts reached this point, the world resumed motion once more. The hourglass continued to empty, and Vale felt his smokey body surge.
Pulled back into the human form he had initially found himself in.
* * *
Vale looked around, his eyes absorbing the flickering light around him.
"What a mess,"
He spoke with a calm clarity, yet it could send chills down anyone's spine. The clarity in his voice held the cold sheen of a blade in the moonlight. Murderous, if misinterpreted.
Disinterested, if given context.
With a flash of insight, Vale snapped his fingers.
—Snap!
"Reparo!"
His voice resounded throughout the ravaged room, bouncing off every splinter and echoing until the corridor outside.
Yet nothing happened.
"…Obviously,"
Muttering in frustration, Vale reviewed the memories in his mind. It didn't take long to understand what kind of life his predecessor lived.
It was even more obvious than his previous thoughts. The bruises. The yelling. The roughened, bleeding fingernails.
'Abuse,'
Nothing more, nothing less.
It was simple yet complex.
A quaint observation. A sad notion.
"I guess I'll have to figure out how to… run away,"
Muttering these words, Vale turned to leave. His eyes lingered on the unconscious adults in the room — Vale's foster parents.
'My abusive foster parents,'
Yet no sense of revenge could even flicker in his soul.
'What an eerie sense of calm.'
A trauma response?
…Or perhaps something more..?