Building a stronger connection between the body and soul, was a weird experience. I was kind of glad, I didn't get an older body. While the other soul wasn't there, the brain still had everything that made that person, well, that person.

One could imagine, it would be like watching another's life through their eyes... but it was more. You were that person, you were yourself, over time, you became neither, someone new.

For me, it mostly meant a deep love, for two people I hadn't known a month ago. A love for two people, who cared for me, for the past three years.

I sat down and leaned back against dad and moms grave.

There was also a wonder, not just at everything new, but at things, I already knew. It was disorienting, it was beautiful. It made me realise, how much I feared I'd never regain that way of looking at the world with innocence, or something else.

It was a difficult to explain emotion. To put it simply, three weeks ago my world was grey, with splotches of quickly evaporating shapes. Now? Now I loved the kaleidoscope of colours everything was. I would make sure, I never lost this again.

I got up and dusted off my blue and white dress. Clean, I run up to Horace standing by and hugged him. I talked to him about how weird it felt with my soul, in the morning. He simply took me to the grave, already waiting by the northern wall of his land.

"How do relationships and all that, work with older Reborn?" This question was nagging at me from the moment I accepted the change.

"In every way, you could imagine little devil." He said and picked me up. "My mother married the man who was reborn in my father's body"

Horace was trembling a little, so I moved to hug him but stopped when I noticed a wide grin on his face. Instead, I poked his cheek. He looked down at me and shook his head.

"Two centuries later, my father was reincarnated after a life in a different world." The man paused and continued, "Another decade later, a violent portal opened in our living room. Out of it came two men and a woman. Fathers new family."

I shook my head and giggled. I could imagine the telenovelas they would create in this world.

In most reincarnation stories I read, the main character was like the first or one in a thousand years. "How common are we exactly?"

I got patted on the head. "You will receive extra homework today." The vampire had an evil grin. It was something I was supposed to already have learned.

I racked my brain. I finally recalled what I wanted, once we reached the mansion again. "It's about one in ten thousand!! No need for extra homework!"

A reply didn't come. Horace did smile warmly at me, so maybe I'd be okay.

I played the violin for the rest of the day.

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"Master Horace has permitted us to bring you, Madeline's luggage mistress." Told me, Cate, while Cate and Jon brought a chest into my room. They set it down between my bed and the window and excused themselves.

There was a key in the lock, so I twisted it and lifted the lid. At the very top, was a stuffed black dragon. I threw it onto the bed. The chest was divided into two compartments, on one side were various clothes and on the other, books, a violin box and one wooden and one stone tablet.

The books seemed to be simpler versions, of what Horace had me study. The tablets had some runes and circles engraved in them, but they didn't react when I pushed mana into them. I probably needed to do it precisely for any effect.

At the very bottom, I found a notebook with poorly written alphabets and attempts at writing "Madeline, dad, mom, Katherine and Marcus.".

I put my head against the edge of the box. "If you don't mind, I will consider you an elder sister Madeline." I murmured.

The room brightened. I looked back and Jon was lighting the candles. I didn't notice when it got dark, with a stronger soul, I was beginning to see rather well at night. I looked at the window, my pupils were almost as wide as my irises. How many things did people not bother inventing, because they had absolutely no need for them?

"Thank you, Jon." With those words, I crawled into the bed. I twisted and turned for a while, finally grabbing onto the dragon. The familiar sensation, put me to sleep immediately.

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When I woke up, the mess I left around the chest was gone. The books were on the table, in the middle of the room, by the window. I lifted the lid a little, the clothes were inside. I put the lid back down and noticed the picture on it.

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A blonde woman, with tall horns, riding a dragon over the setting sun. By her side, flew some angelic looking man. They were a pair, from Madeline's favourite bedtime story. I think they were even still alive, being among the few kings and queens that survived the war the calendar started at.

Once I was older, I would find them, to get them to sign my copy of the story.

Alright, if I will take too long to get up, Anastasia will probably chew me out. It was time for my first lesson with her. I crawled out, put on a black shirt and black pantalon things from the wardrobe and was ready to go.

Outside, Cate caught me, to have me put on shoes. I wanted to make it a game, but it would be a long time before I'd be able to run from them.

Anastasia waited for me in the library. It took up the entire bottom and first floor of the right-wing. In the centre was an area of sofas and armchairs for reading and I took my magic lessons there.

I took a sit on the armchair in front of her. She looked up from a book she was reading and floated a string over to me. I reached out to it and sent it in a circle around myself. When the string was above my lap, I released it.

I pushed mana into it again and floated it up. I still couldn't make it form a circle, but it wiggled. "What's with this string, it's so much easier to manipulate?" I asked, a frown on my face.

"It's the same string you used two days ago." A whisper floated to me. I shrugged, this was fun.

I formed my mana into a ball and put the string inside. I couldn't quite control how it did it, but I could have the string float from the centre to the surface and back. I tried to flatter the ball and it did. When I wanted to elongate it, it again responded.

I looked at my Status, the Well didn't change from yesterday. I tried to give a wave shape to the mana, but it just trembled.

I withdrew the mana back into myself, making the string slap into my chest. Now I felt it, the mana was everywhere in my body. There wasn't more of it, I was connected to it everywhere. "Status"

Soul: 18 Souls ability to behave like flesh.

I spread my arms and made a mana ball, with the string inside, ping pong between them. With each rebound, I elongated the mana and finally dropped my hands. I actually had to strain myself, to make the string curve to fly around me. I continued to make the shape longer while making the rotations smaller.

When I made the ends of the shape connect, the string just flew out, but the mana kept the shape of a circle. At this point, it quite tightly hugged my head. I giggled, the devil had a halo.

"Now do it with small packets of mana" I heard the order. The string was floating before me again.

I caught the string at its end, pushed energy into them and let go. I formed another ball of mana in the middle, then moved it to the side, without moving the string. I formed a fourth packet and they all collapsed.

When the clock candle, burned down two notches I heard Anastasia murmur "Hipsters". "Well then, once you can do this exercise, we will move on to the last one." With these words, she floated a book towards me, "Read it, we will do them once you finished, no need to waste time."

Inside the book, were various simple magic circles and runes. I extended a bubble around it, bowed to Anastasia and with the book following me, run to Horace's studio. He'd have breakfast and more geography and history to force into my head.

Maybe my Mind would finally begin to raise. Now that I knew what Madeline knew, I wouldn't be learning the same things twice.

"Good morning Mads." Greeted me a rumbling voice. For a change, Horace wasn't wearing a suit. Instead, he wore a black robe, shimmering with tiny green scales. On the table in the middle of the room, was a model of a volcano with various tiny towers all over it.

"What's this?" I asked while tilting my head. I run a circle around the table, poking at the black towers. Each time, a tiny draconic head poked out and breathed the tiniest flames, each a different colour.

"Now that you have the "One body and soul" title, your stats should grow at a rate appropriate for a Lesser Devil," the man paused and looked at me. "If you will want to, in two weeks, you can leave until your Academy enrollment, to have an adventure." Horace pointed at the model, "This would be the destination I'd recommend to you."

I looked up at the vampire and nodded. "Wait, I have a new title?"

"It is the easiest one to acquire for those born in this world. It always takes Reborn and Teleported a while to get it though." Shimmered the words as Horace waved his hand dismissively.

Until noon, I learned about the local dragon mountain. It's presence made an area a couple of hundred kilometres wide, have a much stronger mana density. On the other hand, it drew in dragons who required that much mana to breathe comfortably. They, in turn, enforced an embargo on non-magical "toys".

It made for a good destination, since the Academy stood there, and candidates who reached the place on their own got the first pick of accommodations.

"Wait, but don't you avoid awakening children? How'd they get there?" I asked with a mouth full of spider and mushroom pie.

"Children usually receive noble accommodations, their families buy outside the campus." Horace moved the not-a-model-but-a-projection, to show me the city at the foot of the mountain. "Those villas here, outside the Academy walls. I think you'd prefer a shorter walk to school, so I'd recommend the dorms." He pointed at a group of towers next to a half-globe building. "I'm also fairly certain, you'd like a larger room."

Two open ceiling room models appeared. One two by two meters, the other full-on penthouse. I nodded. The penthouse had two rooms for a Jon or Cate and a kitchen.

"Why do things this way?" I asked and added, "Also, what about non-noble children?"

"Most commoners live in the cities, they don't realise we've yet to regain control of most of the world. This encourages them to explore it, rather than use a train and never see the wilderness." Horaces voice sounded like the wind flowing into a recently opened catacomb. That was the most specific voice I heard from him yet. "Commoners also don't reach the minimal stats to study at an Academy, till they're at least fourteen."

"Trains are allowed?" I asked incredulously.

"As long as the engine is replaced with an elemental." The man moved the projection to again only show the mountain. "The third ring belongs to..."

It was really hard to focus on dragon names. I bet they didn't use them in private.