The afternoon sun shone upon his back, casting a gigantic shadow across the posed line of skulls before him, marking the still-charred treeline of what should have been swampland. He looked at the display with indifference for a moment before calmly walking past it - the first gigantic paw step in what seemed like forever. Domevlo made no effort to hid his presence, who, or what he was. With large wings held just slightly outstretched from his body, he continued his slow trek inwards, large paws leaving prints in ash, is dirt, in mud, as he progressed further, deeper, and things got greener, swampier.
The colossus had returned, but he was not the same as before. The migration to the mountain had churned up suppressed memories of a brutal, slimy, underpawed past. The memories came to him like ghosts, until finally he had to leave, to chase them down and see if they were real, or if he was going insane. They led him to his point of origin, the home of the Dvergr. The Dwarves. He was not greeted warmly, as one pride member, the old and balding Onundr, recognized him as the villainous traitor who had single-pawed seen to the destruction of one of the family clans, not through bloodshed, but through scheming and treachery. This pieced together the memories that had been haunting him. But he was not that lion anymore. He had changed.
This did not matter to the Dvergr. Some pasts could not be lived down, even if you didn't remember them. But there was no time to earn closure, as the Aberdere Range was shook once again. The Earthquake took Dvergrheim, and with it much of the pride. There were survivors, but they would not be of his concern, for it was in the midst of the calamity that the God of Scars appeared before him.
The god saw that he understood his domain like no other - scars, physical, emotional, mental... and understood that it was time to pass the mantle to someone else. And there was none more deserving than Domevlo.
It wasn't like the god left him with any choice in the matter, and the next thing he knew he awoke amongst the mountain rubble with large wings, and an even larger frame - and he was already a large lion to begin with - but moreover, an odd feeling of....timelessness, and immortality.
Time passed as Domevlo regained some sense of self, and was drawn to the old swamplands. The old home of the Jini-msemi. A land scarred by fire and such emotional trauma that it left a mark on the very cosmos itself. Moreover, he could feel her and her healing presence here, at the very heart of it.