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It was a handbag.
Leather, enchanted, and rather out of place in the steely confines of Macy’s department store at three o’clock in the morning.
It swung gently from Dougal’s long, knobbly wrist as he perched silently atop a ceiling beam. Below him, chaos unspooled: an Occamy the size of a dragon serpentined through kitchenware. Jacob Kowalski yelped. Newt tripped over his own feet. And somewhere near the perfume counter, the Niffler was having a field day.
Dougal clutched the handbag tighter.
Not for the fashion.
For the eggs.
Nestled inside the magically expanded bag were two Occamy eggs, wrapped in charmed silk and stasis charms. He had packed it himself—carefully, obsessively—because despite everything he had once been, in this form, he had become something simpler.
A caretaker.
A watchman.
A guardian of creatures and, when necessary, foolish humans.
And tonight, he was all of the above.
It had begun earlier.
Newt had spilled half the contents of his suitcase into New York City, because of course he had. Dougal had watched it all unfold from the leafy hideout at the top of Newt’s habitat chamber. A part of him longed to intervene sooner—to point, to warn, to reach out with a voice that no longer belonged to him.
But Dougal didn’t speak anymore.
Not in words.
He worked with glances, with touches, with impossibly timed appearances. It was enough.
The Occamy had been one of the last to escape. Fiercely protective, wildly misunderstood, and dangerously adaptable. She had stretched and grown beyond reason, slipping through vents and ceilings, turning a department store into a twisted jungle of mirrors and looming shadows.
And when Newt and Jacob entered to retrieve her, Dougal followed.
With the handbag.
Now, nestled above the shop floor, Dougal waited for the right moment.
Jacob stumbled again below, and Newt was frantically searching for a suitable lure. Something shiny. Something soft. Something comforting.
Something like…
Dougal dropped down in front of them, invisible at first.
Jacob screamed—he always did.
Dougal shimmered into view, the handbag swinging from his arm.
“Oh. Hello,” Newt said, blinking rapidly.
Jacob gaped. “Is that—does he have a purse?”
Dougal gave him a pointed look. He had not take on his animagus form, turned incognito as a time-seeing creature, just to have his handbag called a purse.
He pressed the bag into Newt’s hands with grave importance.
“The eggs,” Newt murmured, eyes widening. “You kept them safe.”
Dougal nodded.
Jacob looked between them. “So… he’s, like, your babysitter?”
Dougal raised one brow, then turned and leapt back into the shelves without grace or reply.
The Occamy had curled up in the chandelier.
Dougal climbed silently, scaling the columns like ivy.
He reached her just as Newt began his slow approach from the floor below, whispering calming words and gently tossing silver coins across the tiles. A trick of light. A trap of comfort.
Dougal didn’t need such tricks.
He crouched beside her and held out one long hand, palm up. The Occamy sniffed it, her iridescent eyes wary.
He had watched her hatch.
He had fed her first.
She remembered.
She lowered her head, and Dougal rested his hand gently over her brow. Her scales flickered with magic, shifting from silver to blue to green, before finally settling into soft grey.
The future steadied. No imminent death. No bursting.
Only stillness.
Newt’s voice reached him again.
“Dougal,” he said softly. “You’ve done enough. You can rest.”
But Dougal didn’t rest.
He dropped back down beside Jacob, clinging to his shoulders like a shawl. The human yelped, startled again, then sagged as Dougal’s weight settled around him.
Jacob didn’t understand how important this moment was. How essential it was for someone, anyone, to place comfort before conquest.
Dumbledore had failed that test in life—choosing the Greater Good over the immediate one, more than once.
Not now.
Now, he wrapped his arms around a confused, frightened baker and gave him something he had rarely had the courage to give as a man: comfort.
Jacob stood stock-still.
Dougal tucked his head against the man’s.
And for a moment, even with an Occamy looming overhead, all was quiet.
Later, when the Occamy had been recaptured and the store magically repaired, Jacob sat on the edge of the suitcase habitat, holding a steaming mug of tea.
“Did you see the way he handled her?” Jacob whispered. “Like he knew her, y’know? Like… I dunno. Like he’d been through it before.”
Newt smiled faintly. “Dougal always sees what’s coming. He knows when something’s about to break… and when something just needs a bit of warmth to hold it together.”
Jacob nodded, staring at the mug.
Dougal sat beside him, quiet and still.
The handbag rested on his lap.
Newt glanced down at it and chuckled. “Where did you even get that, hmm?”
Dougal blinked slowly, as if to say: Wouldn’t you like to know?
He had, in fact, stolen it from a wizarding consulate’s lost-and-found ten years earlier. It had once belonged to a Muggle-born diplomat named Evangeline March, who had been notorious for stuffing it with lemon drops, old ministry memos, and half-written love letters to her Squib girlfriend.
It had felt right at the time.
And it still did.
Because it wasn’t just a handbag. It was a nest. A cradle.
Newt eventually excused himself, disappearing to check on the other beasts.
Jacob fell asleep on the sofa.
And Dougal, Albus Dumbledore behind soft fur and silence, sat quietly with the handbag beside him, listening to the rhythmic snore of the man who would one day remember everything and call it all a dream.
But it was never just a dream.
It was the first thread in something greater.
Something fragile. Frightening. Hopeful.
And Dougal would be there to see it through.
Even if no one saw him.
Especially then.
Many years later, the day Dumbledore sees his own death…
It was the third night of the storm.
Thunder rolled over the Scottish Highlands, sweeping through the tallest towers of Hogwarts like a drumbeat for the dying. The windows in the Headmaster’s office rattled in their frames, and the ancient stone seemed to hum with expectation—as though the castle itself were holding its breath.
Silver-bearded, blue-eyed, tired in a way that sleep would never solve, Albus Dumbledore sat alone.
He had not lit the candles. He had not summoned Fawkes. He had not even removed his outer cloak, now damp at the shoulders from his walk on the battlements. He merely sat at his desk, long fingers steepled beneath his chin, gazing into the shadowy corners of the room like a man staring down a prophecy..
He rose, slow as tidewater, and walked barefoot across the rugs. Each step quiet. Deliberate. The weight of his years hung around him like a second robe.
At first, there was nothing unusual. Then he saw himself standing atop the Astronomy Tower, eyes wide with pain.
A wand raised. A flash of green light.
Then falling—falling—
He inhaled sharply and stepped back.
The storm outside cracked the sky open with a spear of lightning. It illuminated the room for a single instant—and in that moment, he saw a shape.
Not a man.
A creature. Small. Luminous. Silver-furred.
It looked at him with wide, dark eyes full of patience.
He had not seen that face in decades.
“Dougal,” he whispered.
The image faded.
He stood in silence for a long time.
Then, as if pulled by instinct, Dumbledore extended his hand to the memory. To the shape that had flickered across his vision.
He shut his eyes.
And in the space between heartbeats, he vanished.
Not with a crack of Apparition. Not even with the shimmer of Disillusionment.
He simply ceased to be seen.
A breath later, the air shimmered—and standing in his place was a Demiguise.
Delicate, with luminous fur that rippled like moonlit mist. Gentle paws. Those same deep-set, intelligent eyes. A creature rarely seen, rarer still understood.
And now—Albus Dumbledore’s secret form.
The Dougal he had claimed to be Newt Scamander’s companion… had never truly left. He had only gone where even magic could not follow.
He had become invisible in the eyes of the world.
As only a Demiguise could.
It had taken him decades.
Most wizards who succeeded in becoming Animagi—if they ever did—became mundane animals. A dog. A rat. A beetle. A stag, in rare cases. Non-magical, manageable, detectable.
But not Albus.
He had learned early that there were no Ministry rules explicitly forbidding magical beast forms—only assumptions that it was impossible. The process required perfect self-knowledge. Unyielding control over one’s internal magical equilibrium. A near-death experience or two, usually.
And above all: secrecy.
He had told no one.
Not Newt. Not Aberforth. Certainly not Gellert.
The latter had always suspected.
He had been twenty-four, broken and guilt-ridden after Ariana’s death. Wandering the Carpathians in winter, hunting Thestrals in the hope their eyes might offer insight. He had nearly died in the snow—twice.
And then, in the reflection of ice, he had seen his Animagus form for the first time.
A creature invisible to the world. A creature who could glimpse the threads of time.
A creature who did not fight to survive, but waited to understand.
The irony had not been lost on him.
He had wanted to conquer death.
Instead, he became a thing that eluded it.
Back in the present, the storm began to quiet. The office fell still again, cloaked in the humming of its enchanted objects.
Dumbledore stood in his creature form for several long minutes, simply breathing. Existing. Remembering.
And then, with a shimmer of fur, he returned to himself.
The candles lit themselves at last. The fire roared to life. And Fawkes appeared in a sudden flame, circling once before perching on his stand.
The phoenix let out a low, questioning trill.
“I know,” Albus said softly, resting a hand on the bird’s shoulder. “I saw it.”
Fawkes nuzzled his wrist. Dumbledore looked down.
“If it is to be the Astronomy Tower… and if Severus is to be the one who raises the wand… then it must not end there.”
The phoenix was silent.
“I will not be another name on a tomb,” he continued, more to himself than to Fawkes. “Not when Tom is still rising. Not when the Elder Wand must remain… out of reach.”
His eyes glittered with something between worry and resolve.
“We must fool the world.”
Fawkes cocked his head.
Albus sighed. “You remember Paris. The stairwell. When Grindelwald nearly had Newt… and Dougal interfered?”
Fawkes trilled once. A sound of affirmation.
“It was not interference,” said Dumbledore. “It was the future giving itself room to unfold.”
He turned back toward the mirror.
“This is not the first death I have escaped,” he murmured. “But it may be the last.”
Later that night, he met Severus in the astronomy corridor. The younger man’s black cloak fluttered behind him like smoke.
“You said it was urgent,” Snape said stiffly. “You rarely use that word.”
“I rarely need to,” Dumbledore replied.
There was a pause.
“I’m going to ask something of you,” he said, voice low, “and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.”
Snape raised one brow. “You assume I am not already haunted.”
“Peace, my boy,” Dumbledore murmured.
He led him to the window overlooking the Tower—the very one where the lightning had split the sky. He looked older than Severus had ever seen him.
“I need you to kill me,” Albus said.
Snape’s mouth tightened into a line. “We’ve been over this.”
“No,” Albus said gently. “Not truly.”
Snape turned away. “I agreed to do what was needed. For Draco. For the cause.”
“I know,” Albus said. “But that is not what I mean.”
Snape’s head turned sharply. “What, then?”
“I need you to appear to kill me.”
Snape’s eyes narrowed. “Appear?”
Albus drew himself up. “You must cast the Killing Curse. The witnesses must see it. The wand must fly from my hand. And I must fall from the Tower.”
“You’re speaking in riddles.”
“No,” said Dumbledore. “I am not asking you to commit murder.”
Snape stared at him, a breath away from rage. His voice turned cold. “No. Have you any idea what you are saying? ALBUS DUMBLEDORE?”
Dumbledore opened his mouth—and then paused.
Severus looked closely at the Headmaster. And he saw something… odd.
“You’ve already planned this.”
Dumbledore nodded once.
“I must go into hiding,” he said. “Tom cannot have the Elder Wand. And he will seek it the moment I fall.”
Snape folded his arms. “And how do you propose to survive the Killing Curse?” Though he knew deep down that if any wizard could ever evade Death, it had got to be Dumbledore.
Albus looked away.
When he spoke again, it was very soft, “There are forms of magic even the Ministry cannot track.”
Severus nodded knowingly.
Alone again later that evening, Albus returned to the tower window. The storm had cleared. The stars glittered. The moon was waning.
He reached into the pocket of his robes and withdrew a small silver hair.
Demiguise fur. Soft as air.
The last remnant of the creature the world believed had disappeared in Paris.
He whispered to it.
A ritual began—one forged in absolute secrecy. A blend of ancient Animagus transformation and blood-magic concealment. Something even Death could not detect.
Because Albus had realised the truth.
Death does not search for beasts.
He hunts men. He takes souls.
If Sirius Black could avoid detection from the Dementors, it meant remaining in his invisible Animagus form could also cheat Death.
And in the eyes of the world, Albus Dumbledore would die but Dougal would live.
It began with a lie.
A quiet one. The kind that builds like frost on the inside of a window—slow, invisible, until one day the glass cracks and everything falls through.
Severus Snape had always been a man of truths hidden under shadows. But this lie tasted bitter.
Albus Dumbledore had asked him to kill. Now, he was being asked to let the world believe it.
And worse—to help the man survive it.
He stood in the lower levels of the Astronomy Tower, wand clenched tight in his fingers, surrounded by tomes that hadn’t seen the light in centuries. Even the air smelled forbidden: old ink, decayed leather, the unmistakable undertone of blood.
The first spell was in Greek. The second in Sanskrit. The third in a language he didn’t know, though Dumbledore had spoken it fluently.
He didn’t ask what price had been paid to obtain these books.
He was only here to finish the plan.
“The soul must not fracture,” Dumbledore had said. “Nor may the body truly die. I will handle the transformation. You will only provide the illusion of finality.”
And so Severus read. And learned.
He learned the precise timing of a wand movement that would cast the Avada Kedavra without true intention to kill—an impossibility, unless the target no longer registered as living in the human sense.
He learned the transfiguration signature of a Demiguise Animagus—He also learned about concealment charms layered in reverse. And memory binding.
Because if he was caught—if he was tortured—there could be no trace of the truth.
Even he must believe Dumbledore had died.
At least until the moment came.
Until it was done.
One week before the fall, Dumbledore summoned him again.
This time, they met in the Room of Requirement.
It appeared as a vast chamber of moving mirrors. Not enchanted. Not reflective. They were temporal windows—each one tuned to a possible moment in time.
“This is dangerous magic,” Snape murmured, peering into one mirror that showed himself as a child, kneeling beside Lily’s swing.
“Time always is,” Dumbledore said softly, approaching a mirror that displayed a snowy hilltop and a flicker of silver fur.
Snape frowned. “You saw your death here?”
Dumbledore nodded. “I saw the moment Death thought it had me.”
“And the Demiguise?”
He smiled faintly. “Showed the moment I escaped.”
There was silence for a while. Just the hum of magic in the mirrors, like breathing walls.
Then Snape spoke.
“Why me?”
Dumbledore turned to him.
“You mean, why ask you to kill me?”
Snape nodded once. “Or pretend to.”
Dumbledore’s face, usually a mask of riddles, softened.
“Because you are the only man I trust to hate me enough to carry it through.”
That cut deeper than Snape expected.
He looked away.
“I do not hate you.”
Dumbledore’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Then I trust you even more.”
The spellwork was finished two nights before the fall.
Snape had memorised the wand movements. His magic had been subtly adjusted by Albus’s own: a binding charm weaved between them that would momentarily sever Dumbledore’s magical signature at the instant of transformation.
The killing curse would pass through a form that no longer registered as human.
The body would fall. The Elder Wand would fly. The world would believe.
Snape snorted. “You’ll be a poetic corpse.”
“Better that than a hunted fugitive.”
“And where will you go?”
Dumbledore hesitated. “The Forest, at first. Then… we shall see.”
“You cannot remain in hiding forever.”
“No,” he agreed. “But I can remain hidden long enough for Harry to become what he must.”
There it was again. That soft certainty. That relentless faith in a boy the world had broken too many times.
Snape’s jaw tightened. “You’re putting too much faith in Potter.”
“That is his fate.”
The silence that followed was final.
The final night arrived with a stillness too sharp to be comforting.
The castle seemed to hold its breath. Students were in bed. Professors patrolled in uneasy pairs. Fawkes was gone—already waiting in the Tower’s shadows.
Dumbledore stood at the base of the Astronomy staircase, robes flowing like shadowed cloud. Snape arrived with reluctant steps, every movement rehearsed, measured.
“Draco will arrive within the hour,” Albus said, voice low. “You will follow.”
Snape nodded once.
Albus placed a vial in his hand.
“What is this?”
“My blood.”
Snape raised an eyebrow.
“For the ritual. Should I need to return to human form with magical continuity.”
Snape pocketed it. “You’re assuming I’ll survive.”
Dumbledore gave him a tired look. “You always do.”
A pause.
“Severus,” he said. “When this is done—when the wand has passed, and the world believes me dead—do not come looking for me.”
Snape blinked. “I don’t intend to.”
Albus chuckled. “Not even if you need guidance?”
“No.”
That stopped Snape cold.
He turned and began to climb the stairs.
Albus remained where he was.
Watching the sky.
Waiting.
The plan went as written in the stars.
Draco arrived, pale and shaking. The Death Eaters followed. Dumbledore froze him with a whisper and turned slowly to the shadows—toward Severus.
Their eyes met.
Severus raised his wand.
The green light burst forth hitting him square on the chest.
And in that instant—the wand flew out of his hand and not-Dumbledore fell. Off the top of the Astronomy Tower.
Quite dramatically.
The human had winked out before the Killing Curse touched him. What fell from the Tower was not Dumbledore but a replica.
The unknowing witnesses gasped in utter shock at the death of the Headmaster.
And Snape turned, rolled his eyes and fled into the night, his face like stone.
Fools.
When death came for him on the tower of astronomy, when the plan with Severus Snape reached its end, he let the spell fly.
He did not fall.
He shifted.
And death missed.
As it had missed Sirius Black, slipping through the cracks of his Animagus form. As it had missed the Marauders who ran with hooves and paws beneath the nose of the castle.
Death could not catch what it could not see.
⸻
Dumbledore—now permanently in his Demiguise form—has made his silent life in the Forbidden Forest, invisible to all save for a few creatures and his own guilt.
But there is one last journey he must make: to Nurmengard, to face the man who always saw him.
The Forbidden Forest had grown quieter since the fall of its greatest Headmaster.
Albus Dumbledore—no longer a man, no longer a name—moved through shadow and silence in the form he had taken on the edge of death. The form he would wear for the rest of his life.
Dougal.
The same Dougal who had once travelled with Newt Scamander across continents and chaos, but older. Wiser. Wearier.
The silver fur was now streaked with grey. The once-bright eyes bore the weight of memories too great for words. And though no one ever saw him, he saw everything.
The Forbidden Forest welcomed him.
He had walked its edges in life. As a boy, he had studied its creatures; as a headmaster, he had warned students to avoid its dangers.
Now it was his sanctuary.
He built a nest high in the trees where Thestrals flew. He fed foxes crumbs of pumpkin pasty. He slept in daylight and wandered in moonlight, his fur flickering between visibility and myth.
He watched students from afar.
He listened to Minerva’s lessons.
And sometimes, when the wind was right, he felt the brush of Fawkes’s wings—though no one had seen the phoenix in years.
⸻
He lived in a hollowed-out tree, deep in the forest near a grove where unicorns grazed and Thestrals roamed. The centaurs had known of him from the first. They had said nothing.
Time passed differently here.
Invisibility was a comfort. A cloak deeper than any spell.
But memory was no less sharp in silence.
Every moonless night, he saw Harry. Every storm, he remembered Snape’s eyes. And every spring thaw, when the air grew soft and the trees wept sap, he heard Fawkes’s last cry as he vanished in flame.
He should have stayed there.
But he saw it. Always saw it. The next moments. The paths unfolding.
And one day, he saw himself walking again through iron and stone.
He saw Grindelwald.
So he went.
He walked north.
Across Scotland, across oceans, across borders. No one saw the Demiguise. No one noticed the shimmer that moved along shadowed walls and silent trees. He was smaller now, frailer. But still faster than sight.
He passed into Nurmengard unseen.
The guards no longer checked the upper cells. There was only one prisoner left.
The stairwells were colder than he remembered. The magic in the walls groaned under the weight of years.
He entered without sound.
Nurmengard stood untouched by time. The cell door still bore the silver glyph Albus had carved when they were young—For the Greater Good—scratched by a trembling hand, faded but never gone.
The cell was simple. Bare stone. One small window. A high iron bed.
And on it sat Gellert Grindelwald.
Gellert was waiting.
He was older now. Nearly blind. Frail as winter.
But when Dougal entered, invisible and silent, Gellert turned his head at once.
“I’ve seen you,” he said softly. “For years. In dreams.”
Dougal did not move. He sat, curled on the floor, silent.
“I thought I was imagining you.”
Silence.
“Albus?”
A pause.
Then a slow nod.
Gellert let out a breath, almost a laugh. “Of course. It would be you.”
Gellert’s remaining eye was sharp, clear. No madness there. Only old knowledge.
“You chose the form well. It suits you.”
Dougal blinked.
“I suppose you always were the one creature no one could truly see.”
A pause.
“Not even me.”
Silence hung like fog.
They said nothing for a long time.
Outside, wind scoured the stone.
Then Gellert asked, with that crooked, half-defiant smile he had never lost:
“Did you finally choose to live?”
Dougal’s eyes shimmered.
A single tear slid down his silver cheek.
Dougal did not answer aloud.
He simply curled his long fingers around a lemon drop and placed it on the cold floor.
Years passed.
Harry grew. Hogwarts fell. Rose again.
And deep in its heart, something wept.
⸻
The world turned.
War came again. Tom Riddle’s name was spoken and feared. Hogwarts became a fortress, then a battlefield.
Dougal did not intervene.
Dumbledore watched.
He lingered on the edge of the clearing when the battle began—when the dead rose from the ground and the living cried in fury. He saw giants fall and spells tear through stone. He saw Neville draw the sword. He saw Molly Weasley destroy Bellatrix in a burst of maternal rage so bright it left the trees stunned.
He watched the Harry step into prophecy like it was a room he had known all his life. He saw the boy walk into the woods and fall at the Dark Lord’s feet.
And he saw the boy rise again.
He watched Snape die—not with bitterness, but with purpose.
He saw the venom in the man’s neck. The panic in his eyes.
Harry arrived too late to save him. But not too late to receive the gift.
The memory.
Not just of Lily Evans.
Not just of a life misspent and a love unspoken.
But of a final, whispered truth, sealed with magic too deep for even Voldemort to unravel, “Killing me is not ending me.”
Dougal felt it in his bones when the memory left Snape’s mind. He had cast it himself once, in another life. The magic of memory-gifting—a form of preservation older than Pensieves.
He watched the light fade from Snape’s eyes.
In the Shrieking Shack, as Harry knelt beside the man who had both loved and hated with equal fire, the forest trembled. But he was there—unseen—when Severus Snape lay dying in the Shrieking Shack.
And for the first time in decades, he bowed his head in mourning.
Harry did what he was born to do.
The war ended.
The dead were honoured.
And for the second time, the wizarding world buried not-Albus Dumbledore.
But this time… they buried him properly.
The tomb was reopened to lay him anew among the great defenders of the realm. A phoenix emblem etched into marble. Silver leaves surrounding the base. The wand placed in state—now broken, disarmed by the boy who had finally learned what it meant to choose mercy over power.
Newt Scamander was there.
He had not intended to come. He had spent the war far from the British Ministry, dealing with magical fallout across Asia. But the notice had found him in Shanghai.
He arrived late. Quiet. Wore a long green coat fraying at the cuffs.
And as he stood apart from the crowd, watching the white marble close one last time, he felt something pull at him.
He turned.
And in the trees beyond the lake, standing in the mist near a half-fallen willow, he saw something impossible.
A Demiguise. Dougal.
Older. Greyer. Eyes full of tired joy.
It held his gaze for only a moment.
Then it vanished.
Newt smiled.
He said nothing.
He only touched the tip of his wand to his heart, and bowed.
And still, Dougal wandered.
Once, Newt Scamander returned to the forest, searching for unicorns.
He stopped at the edge of a glade and squinted.
“Dougal?” he whispered.
A shimmer moved.
A flicker.
Then nothing.
Newt blinked.
Smiled.
“I should’ve guessed.”
Years passed.
Harry Potter married. The world rebuilt. Hogwarts welcomed new students. The Forbidden Forest grew again, swallowing the edges of paths that had once been burned by giants and shattered by curses. Most never ventured too deep.
And then, one spring, a girl wandered too far.
Lily Luna Potter.
She had her father’s eyes and her mother’s laughter, and the forest parted for her like it remembered her blood.
She found a nest high in the trees.
She found fruit and honey, left out on a stone.
She found warmth in a place that should’ve been cold.
And when she was found hours later, she held two things:
A single white hair.
And a lemon drop.
When asked what had happened, she only shrugged and said, “A nice monkey gave them to me.”
No one believed her.
But when Harry touched the hair—and felt it thrum with deep, ancient magic—he sat down hard on the nearest bench.
He did not speak for a long time.
Later that night, when the castle was asleep, he went to the Forest’s edge and looked into the trees.
And for the briefest moment… he thought he saw silver fur shimmer between the trunks.
Watching.
Smiling.
Albus Dumbledore never returned.
Because he had never left.
He had become what the world needed him to be.
The eye that sees.
The hand that guides.
The silence that protects.
A creature of myth.
A guardian of time.
The Demiguise in the shadows.
The man who chose to live.