They say the world used to sing.
Long before cities were carved from stone and screaming metal birds ruled the sky, the world was soft and gentle. Magic thrummed through rivers. Forests whispered secrets. And in the highest peaks, dragons danced with the stars.
Dragons were not monsters. They were keepers of balance—guardians of wind, storm, and flame. They hoarded not gold, but stories. Memories. Warmth. Of all dragons, the silver-scaled were rarest. Born once every thousand years, they were not tied to destruction, but to healing.
In one forgotten age, there lived a silver dragon named Elira, born in the last frost of a dying winter. She was gentle, strange, and endlessly curious about humans. She would descend from her mountain to watch them dance in moonlit villages, drawn to their laughter and lanterns.
One night, she met him.
A soldier, lost and broken, bleeding beneath a tree. She should have left him. Instead, she shifted into human form and stitched his wounds with thread spun from starlight.
His name was Casian. And over a long, quiet winter, they fell in love.
She taught him the language of wind. He showed her how to cook eggs over the fire. She let him touch the scales beneath her ribs. He let her hear his heartbeat.
They were happy.
But love, in a world built on fear, is a dangerous thing.
When the High Court learned that a dragon had lain with a man, they called it a crime. The dragons were outraged. The humans, terrified. War followed—not noble, but bitter. Rumors curdled into laws. Empires promised safety from monsters. One by one, the dragons fell.
Casian was given a choice: serve his kind, or die beside hers.
He chose Elira.
He died in her arms, pierced by the sword meant for her heart.
Elira's grief scorched the battlefield to ash. But her magic, bound to love, burned away with him.
She vanished.
Some say she flew west with shattered wings. Others claim she turned to stone, waiting for her love to return. A few whisper she took a new name, cursed to live in human skin, hiding in the ruins of the world she once lit.
And some believe she wasn't the only one who survived.
Because even now, when stars fall in winter and the wind smells like old fire, some say the last dragon still walks among us.
Still searching.
Still waiting.
The story came to her in dreams.
Not whole—never whole—but in flashes. A silver dragon spinning through snow. A man reading poetry by firelight. Blood on flower petals. Heat in her chest. The sting of betrayal sharp as frostbite.
She didn't know if it was memory or myth.
She'd heard the tale once, maybe twice, from an old storyteller with a crooked nose who traded mushrooms for stories. "The Last Flame," he'd called it. A love story. A warning. A lie.
It sounded too romantic to be true.
But in sleep, it always felt real.
The soldier had a name. A smile. A way of looking at her that made the war feel far away.
And then—always—he was gone.
She would wake curled around empty air, grasping for the memory like it could stop slipping. But dreams fade fast.
Grief fades more slowly.
That morning—if it could be called morning, with the sun barely whispering over the mountains—she stirred with a grunt and a twitch.
One eye opened. Then the other.
The silver dragon blinked.
Her breath caught.
The hoard was light.
Too light.
She shot up, neck twisting, wings creaking. Her tail lashed against the stone. Dust billowed into the air. She reared back with a hiss that echoed through the cave.
Gone.
Everything. Her buttons. Her yarn. The chipped kettle. Even the ugly porcelain squirrel she used as a paperweight.
"Wh—where—"
Her voice cracked like dry leaves.
She staggered to her feet, joints stiff from sleep. A few buttons slid off her flank. Her metal wing dragged behind her with a soft, pitiful clank.
She stumbled toward the cave mouth and squinted into the light.
And froze.
The world had changed.
No smoke from village chimneys. No griffons circling mountain peaks. No scent of firewood or magic.
Towers of glass now clawed at the sky. Roads of black stone split the earth below. Strange metal beasts roared and hissed as they zipped past in glowing streams.
And humans.
So many humans.
Too many.
She turned and bolted into the forest.
She crashed through the trees, twigs snapping beneath her claws. Her prosthetic wing scraped roots and snagged branches. She didn't stop until the trees thickened and the land dipped toward water.
That's when she saw them.
Two humans. Naked, laughing, splashing in a sunlit pool. Oblivious. Carefree.
And on a boulder nearby, they had left their clothes.
She crept forward, belly to the ground, leaves caught between her claws. She squinted. Tilted her head. Darted left. Then right.
Stealth.
A bra. Underwear. Denim pants. A cotton shirt with words she couldn't read.
She snatched the pile and bolted.
Behind her, someone screamed, "What the hell?!"
She laughed. Loudly, for the first time in decades. It came out sharp and unhinged, a wheezing sound between triumph and madness.
Behind a thicket, she stopped. Her chest still shook from breathless, delighted wheezing.
There, hidden from view, she let go.
Silver scales shimmered, folding away into skin. Horns sank. Tail vanished. Her prosthetic wing twisted, folding in on itself until it snapped snug around her wrist as a worn silver bracelet.
She was naked.
Muddy.
Giggling.
She stared at the clothes.
Pants were a mystery. Shirts are less so.
The bra she gave up on immediately.
Ten minutes of trial, error, and aggressive grunting later, she emerged from the brush looking like a very disoriented young woman in a band tee two sizes too small and baggy jeans that barely clung to her hips.
Her hair stuck out wildly, like she'd lost a fight with a raccoon. Her face was average. Her posture, awkward. Her feet, bare.
She looked almost normal.
And she had no idea what she was doing.
She stumbled out of the forest, following the sound of cars and the scent of exhaust. Everything felt enormous: the buildings, the signs, the sky itself. Everything shimmered, too fast and too loud.
She stopped to watch a vending machine light up and tried to talk to a mailbox. She nearly fell off the curb trying to pet a sewer grate.
People stared.
Phones came out.
Someone asked if she was okay. She smiled too widely and said, "Do you still offer sacrifices?"
A child screamed. A woman called 911.
Then, as she wandered into a crosswalk, blinking up at the changing lights—
The car didn't stop.
The world turned to metal and pain.
She heard shouting. Sirens. The buzz of something plastic near her ear. And then, black.
Her name was Iris. She thought she whispered it. Maybe she dreamed it.
But no one would believe she was once a dragon.
Not in this world.
Not anymore.