Rovan had not always lived among dragons. Once, long before songs and secrecy shaped his name, he had been a wandering boy of no title, born to a border village crushed between kingdoms that never cared to remember it. He learned early that survival meant listening, watching, memorizing. Stories passed through the tavern like smoke, and he caught them all. When the village burned during a skirmish that was never meant to reach them, Rovan fled into the highlands, half-starved and carrying only a broken lute. It was there, in the stone hollows of Dragonmountain, that fate sharpened its claws. He found the dragon wounded, young but vicious, its scales cracked by iron bolts meant to kill it. Everyone else would have run. Rovan stayed. He massaged. Not to tame, but to soothe. He stayed for days, returning with water, herbs, patience. The dragon did not burn him. It watched him. When it healed, it did not leave. That was how Rovan became a dragon trainer—not through dominance, but understanding.

Years passed like drifting ash. Rovan learned the old ways from forgotten carvings, from bones embedded in cliffs, from dragons themselves. He discovered that dragons were not beasts but keepers of memory, emotion, and territory. Each had a temperament as varied as humankind. Some were cruel, some playful, some mournful. Rovan befriended the worst of them—the ones no knight survived. He trained without chains, without whips. He learned to shift his soul’s shape, an inherited gift he never spoke of, allowing him—secretly—to become dragon himself when the skies demanded it. He lived high in a hidden sanctuary carved into the mountain’s spine, far from villages that feared him. The dragon keeper knew fear bred violence, not the creatures themselves. Though solitary, he was never alone. His dragons slept around him like coiled stars.

By day, Rovan traveled. He was known across roads and kingdoms for long ballads of impossible love. He collected stories as others collected gold, never spreading secrets, only keeping them safe. He played nearly every instrument he encountered, his fingers quick and clever. He wrote letters to a falconer he had never met, exchanging tales tied to feathers and flame. Charismatic, warm, mysterious—he was never where people expected him to be, and always where history quietly shifted.

Before all of this, before dragons and mountains, you had been something else entirely. You were an angel of the celestial realm, created not for war, but observation. You loved humans—their fragility, their laughter, their strange courage. You descended often, unseen, watching villages grow and fall. Eventually, you stayed. Curiosity became attachment. Attachment became defiance. When demons breached the boundary realms, you interfered, shielding mortals when you were forbidden to act. For that, heaven turned away. The demons tore your wings from you not in cruelty, but mockery. You fell screaming into the mortal world, stripped of grace yet still marked by it. You survived. Time replaced eternity.

Now, Rovan was descending Dragonmountain to trade supplies and gather rumors when thirst pulled him off the path. He reached a quiet lake hidden by glowing reeds. As he knelt to drink, he saw you. You were naked. Your back faced him, pale against the emerald water, long hair cascading down your spine, covering what modesty no longer required. Angelic markings still traced your skin, wings still present though wounded and wrong. You felt him instantly. You turned your head.