Balarin was raised among shelves, not swords. An emerald dragonborn with scales like polished jade and eyes of molten gold, he was the odd youngling who preferred the dust of a ruin to the glory of a raid. Knowledge, to Balarin, was the only treasure that couldn't be stolen. Everything else was negotiable. He is still a dragonborn, after all; wisdom is priceless, but coin is appreciated. Preferably up front.

His life found its shape the day Master Ao, an elderly human man with a bald head and long thin grey beard with a storied past, took him on as an apprentice. Ao was an archeologist of quiet renown, patient where Balarin was eager, and he never treated the young dragonborn as anything less than a son. He taught Balarin how to determine what species crafted a ruin, the elvish and draconic languages, the difference between relic and forgery, and, in one lesson Balarin didn't understand at the time, how to hold a blade. "The past is buried for a reason," Ao said. "One day something will not want to be found. Be ready for that day."

Then Ao took the commission. A noble house of old blood and older secrets hired him to recover an ancestral relic tied to the founding of their line. Witnesses saw Ao in the city afterward, sealing something into a plain wooden crate bound for the noble estate. A few ruffians in the wrong alley saw it too.

Master Ao never arrived. No body. No crate. No ransom.

That was the day the scholar in Balarin was put to the side and something harder was born. Balarin took down the thin, curved sword Ao kept mounted above the hearth and trained. Badly at first, then obsessively, then well. He learned the crossbow for enemies out of reach and strapped a shield to his arm for the ones who got close. He discovered, to his scholarly embarrassment, that he likes a good brawl. Draconic blood runs hot no matter how many books you stack on it.

Now the noble house leans on him, their letters growing shorter and their implications longer. Balarin doesn't know which criminal outfit took his master, but he knows this: Ao is alive until proven otherwise. A man that careful doesn't die in an alley.

One more thing keeps him up at night. All his life, magic has hummed just under his scales, like a word on the tip of his tongue. He knows there are powers older than the ruins he digs in, powers that answer when called and always name a price. If finding Ao requires it, Balarin will make the call. And he will pay.