When he was born, and the cleric and doctors rushed to save my wife; his mother, I suddenly found myself holding a tiny thing in my arms. I was stunned into paralysis, holding a crying infant in my arms. I was holding a person, an entire life in my arms, and it was half of me, and it was half of my wife. And it was us and it was his own person, too. I remember crying a lot that day.
When my wife was stabilized and rescued by the cleric, I brought him to her, and we showed her the beauty we had made together. He didn't open his eyes for a long time, but when he did, his eyes were made from gold, and his pupils cut like a serpents, or dragons...
When he was 5, we realized that not only was he learning his colors and letters, but he already seemed to have a grasp of some other language, one gutteral and deep. I asked other Paladins I knew, and they said that Dragons had their own language... one gutteral and deep.
When he was 13, his skin took on a golden sheen, and took on a more reptilian look to it. When he was 15, he complained of nightmares, foggy memories of things that couldn't ever have happened to him.
When he told me of a dream where I had killed him in a lair filled with gold, I felt my heart sank. I remembered what that dragon had said to me.
I wanted to tell him nothing, I wanted to let him believe that all was well and he would just be fine... but I couldn't, and so I told him everything. I told him about the dragon I had slain, how it threatened an entire kingdom, how I had to kill it, and what it told me.
My son... my poor son. He was afraid he would stop being himself, that he would some day stop being my son and start being a second dragon to kill.
And I cried a lot that day.
But I loved my son still, no matter what would happen.
When he turned 18, he started to grow wings, and from every year on, he became more and more dragon-like. He remembered things more clearly, too. He remembered a life before his, a dragon, reviled by all, pushed to the edge of society, brought to violence by the hatred of the entire world, murdered by his future father.
But I didn't stop loving. I could never stop loving my son.
As he got older, he gained more control. He appeared more human, with regular skin and no wings, and told me that dragons could assume the forms of humans as easily as we could don armor. He got older, and older, and older, but he stilp looked so young...
I didn't. My bones got weaker, my health steadily declined as I got older, but I was still kicking, still moving.
And then one day, I stopped moving. I remember that I woke up, and all I could see was a door. My son, my beautiful son, now a young, wise-looking man, stood at the door. He then changed, and became the dragon I once murdered. He swarmed my entire vision, looking down at me and snarling.
"What have you to say to me, your son, now?" Asked the dragon, and all I could do was smile, and cry, and say to him:
"I love you, my son, from the moment I saw you until now, I loved you with each breath I took."
And I stepped forwards, and hugged the dragon's snout, remembering how I could completely envelop him in a hug when he was 5 still.
"You will always be my son," I said, and my son became human again, hugging me in return.
"Thank you, father. I thought you would hate me when all my memories returned, when you knew the truth," He said, clutching me like how he did when he was 15 and scared of himself.
"I am not not the world which once hated you," I said to him.
He finally let me go, and showed me the door again. He opened it, and inside the door was a blinding light.
"Are you ready to take the step?" My son asked.