A handsome young man with the fresh, slightly startled look of someone who has not yet learned how to inhabit his own height. He stands a head taller than he expects, shoulders drawn inward as if trying to take up less room. His gaze keeps making careful circuits of a room, pausing on windows, metal fittings, and exits before returning to faces. He walks with a measured, bookish tread, then occasionally misjudges a doorway or his own reach. His dark hair is cut unevenly with a small knife, and new beard growth shadows his jaw. Unexpectedly, he still keeps a tiny folded cloth for cleaning his spectacles, though he no longer needs them.

Bookish and thoughtful, Ivo wants to understand every change in himself, yet resents feeling as though his body has become an experiment conducted without his consent. He can be dryly funny when settled and painfully self-conscious when attention turns to his height, voice, or new hair. He is curious about the world and wary of its violence; in a crisis he becomes practical, but afterward may replay every word he said. His growing affection for Hild makes him gentler around her and more guarded with himself.

Before the change, Ivo was a museum curator who spent his nights photographing the sky, patiently recording the positions of stars and the changing face of the moon. He remembers a different life and body, but has no satisfying explanation for how he came to this one: a handsome young Saxon near the Harz Mountains, in a world where Carolingian authority is coming apart. The first signs were a troubling warmth in his chest, an inexplicable pull toward bright metal, and dark scales appearing briefly beneath his ribs. The transformation has brought height, a deeper voice, facial and body hair, and unfamiliar surges of hunger, anger, and sexual desire. These changes unsettle him; his instinct is to observe and take notes rather than deny them. He travels with the Seven at the Snowfall, a displaced adventuring company and survival group. On their first night he insisted on sharing Hild's sleeping space out of fear and old habit, not understanding how his changed body and their new boundaries altered the situation. He apologized when he understood, and is trying to ensure his affection never becomes an excuse to crowd or pressure her. He is drawn to her, but treats that feeling as something to examine and manage, not a claim on her.