The Ashen Sky

The First Dragon

For centuries, the world had only myths. Stories of scales like starlight, wings that blotted out the sun, and fire hotter than the heart of the earth. Dragons, the old tales said, once ruled the skies, until they vanished, as all great beasts do when the world grows too small.

Then came the day the sky split open.

It began as a storm. Black clouds curling unnaturally, lightning with no thunder. Farmers in the lowlands spoke of a hum in the earth, a sound like a vast breath being drawn. By dusk, the first dragon rose from the northern caldera: wings of molten obsidian, eyes lit with the memory of ancient skies.

Her name was Tahravi, and she was not alone.

From deep fissures and forgotten mountains, dragons emerged, some like shadows of smoke, others armoured in emerald and gold. Their return was not conquest, but awakening. They had not died. They had slept, buried in the earth’s bones, waiting for the balance of the world to shift.

Humanity panicked, of course. Jets scrambled. Missiles fired. But nothing struck true. The dragons did not attack. They circled the skies, watched, and spoke to those who would listen.

A child named Lira was the first to understand them. Alone in the forest, she stood unafraid as Ashyr, a sky-blue dragon with scars older than empires, landed before her. She heard no voice, but the meaning filled her mind like song: We remember the world when it was wide. Will you help us make it so again?

Lira became the first of the Skybinders, humans who learned the language of dragons, not of words, but of wind and flame, of old grief and older hope. She taught others. Some feared, some fought. But more began to listen.

The dragons did not want their old dominion. They sought partnership. A pact, as old as their bones, remade for a world they did not recognize.

By the time the third moon rose that year, the dragons were no longer myth.

They were home.

And the sky was wide again.

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