About Airovale
An epic steampunk fantasy told in three formats: haunting music, cinematic episodes, and literary adventure.
Each offers a different lens into a world where time is currency and every gift demands its price.
An epic steampunk fantasy told in three formats: haunting music, cinematic episodes, and literary adventure.
Each offers a different lens into a world where time is currency and every gift demands its price.
Airovale is both sweeping spectacle and intimate parable. It's a story that lives across your senses—watch it unfold in cinematic episodes, read the deeper journey in the novel, feel it through music that captures time's inexorable passage. Each format stands alone, yet together they weave a richer tapestry of this steampunk realm where aeronauts navigate the skies and fae guardians enforce ancient laws.
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Airovale is an epic steampunk fantasy, where every gift demands its price.
The story opens on a typical day of Life in the Village, revealing the bustling capital of merchants, aeronauts, and families as zeppelins and hot-air balloons stitch trade across the South Sea archipelago. A caravan of miners makes a perilous trek to The Crescent Islands, rich in copper and secret gold. Armed with an ancient map obtained by chance, a hidden location promises untold riches—but at a deadly cost. They violate a sacred space, evoking the Curse of the Temple Gold, where an ageless guardian calls a storm that decimates the fleet. Survivors dump their fortunes, trading weight for lives to save those plunged into the sea. Coming Home empty-handed, they embrace their true wealth—life and family.
The great storm crushes many ships, but the winds take a single zeppelin and cast it into the forgotten blue horizon of the southern sea. Adrift for weeks without a map or direction, the ship sets down on the uncharted island of Canyon Myst. Despair turns to solace as the fae and human Mystics provide materials for repairs and return—while warning to take only what is needed. The fire-stone mines provide coal for fuel, but digging reveals massive gems and gold, shifting dreams of home into dreams of building kingdoms. Now beyond what was needed, The Law of Exchange keeps score in wages unknown, soon revealed in how Deceptive Time works on the fabled island. Hours on the island move differently than in Airovale, but a forbidden love between Aden, a crew member, and Kira, a betrothed fairy, blossoms as they explore a submerged ancient city. Testing the boundaries of human and fae magic, they encounter portals that uncover a time paradox on Canyon Myst.
Enlightened about the time shift, Aden rushes to inform the crew as his affair with Kira is revealed. The Duel ensues, leaving him a castaway, marked for death while his jewel-loaded airship escapes the wrath of the Mystics. Aden faces The Long Night alone on the island, before discovering the full truth at the Mystic Portal. The outcome is revealed in the book and episodes on Airovale.com.
Airovale invites you to ask: what is time worth, and what would you trade for more precious moments, while wasting the minutes at hand?
Choose your gateway into this immersive steampunk fantasy world
Haunting orchestral soundtrack that captures the essence of time's passage and fae magic
Listen to Soundtrack10 free cinematic episodes that bring the steampunk world to vivid visual life
Watch All EpisodesEpic fantasy novel where characters' inner struggles and philosophical questions unfold across hundreds of pages
Read the Book
Jef Gray believes the best stories are the ones we recognize in our own lives.
Born a military brat, Gray attended ten different schools before his high school graduation, never staying anywhere long enough to call it home. That constant motion—the feeling of always arriving, always departing—taught him what aeronauts learn the hard way: that home is people, not places. Years later, as a U.S. Air Force veteran and distinguished technology leader, he watched people make the same wager—trading time for money, working certain hours for uncertain futures.
Airovale was born from a question that haunted him: What if time itself was the treasure we seek, disguised by the pursuits and decisions of the day? Would we later regret chasing wealth over experiences, or find comfort in the fortune we secured?
Gray mixed his interests in art, travel, and science to create a steampunk fantasy world woven from cultures and folklore across an archipelago of volcanic islands—a place where aeronauts fly zeppelins in pursuit of commerce, encounter fae creatures, and make choices paid for by time away from home.
Gray's lifelong fascination with language and culture led him to found the International Peace & Film Festival in 2015, driven by the belief that cultural exchange through art and science can respect borders while building connection for mutual benefit. Participation in the festival, through independent film, has reached 91 countries since it began. That same philosophy runs through Airovale's multicultural tapestry—Ukrainian blessings, fae magic, Russian, German, and Irish characters, mixed with American ambition in a world where time is worth more than coin.
When he's not writing, Gray creates micro-documentaries, plays guitar, and spends time with his two children in Orlando, Florida. He holds two applied science degrees, and a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from the University of the State of New York.
Airovale breaks traditional storytelling boundaries. Rather than relegating music to background or video to promotion, each format is a complete artistic expression—offering different entry points for different audiences while creating a richer whole when experienced together.
This multi-sensory approach reflects how stories exist in our world—we don't just read about music, we hear it; we don't just imagine cinema, we see it. Airovale invites you to experience fantasy the way life presents itself: through sound, sight, and imagination working in concert.
All episodes are free to watch. The book is available in paperback and ebook formats. The music lives on this site and streaming platforms. Choose your path into Airovale—or experience them all.
Step into a world where aeronauts navigate the skies, fae guardians enforce ancient laws, and time itself is the ultimate currency.