The Last Lunewyrm

The Last Lunewyrm

In the cold silence of the Evernight Peaks, where even the stars seemed too distant to care, the last Lunewyrm stirred.

It was said the Lunewyrms had once ruled the sky, drifting like silver comets through the velvet night. They drank moonlight, fed on forgotten dreams, and whispered to the tide. Now, there was only one.

Her name was **Miralume**, though none alive remembered it. Her body shimmered with translucent scales that flickered like dew-laced cobwebs, and her eyes held the sorrow of a thousand vanished constellations. She had slept for centuries in the Hollow Spire, curled beneath layers of frost, while the world forgot her kind.

But something had awoken her.

A scent. A dream. A sound.

She emerged into a sky tainted with ash. The stars were dimmed, cloaked behind the creeping fingers of smog and war. The moon, once her sovereign, hung pale and sickly. Miralume tilted her head, listening. It came again — a cry, faint and brittle, not of her kind, but laced with magic all the same.

It came from below.

In the valley below the Peaks, a boy stood in the ruins of a burned-out village, clutching a broken lyre. His name was **Kael**, and his music had always been strange — notes that made flowers bloom out of season or coaxed the wind to dance. People had feared him for it. When the Empire came with torches and chains, no one stopped them.

Now he was alone. Cold. Hungry. And desperate.

He didn’t know why he played, only that something inside him needed to be heard. So he plucked the last unbroken string of his lyre and hummed a tune older than language — a lullaby his mother once sang, though he couldn’t recall her face.

As the final note faded, the wind shifted.

Something vast and luminous descended from the sky, coiling like smoke yet more solid than any cloud. It landed silently, though it was the size of a cathedral. Miralume regarded the boy with one enormous eye, her gaze filled with ancient sadness and unreadable thoughts.

Kael dropped his lyre and stumbled back. “Are you going to eat me?” he whispered.

Miralume did not speak with words. Instead, her thoughts poured into his mind like moonlight on still water: **No. I came because you called. You are the last dreamer.**

“I’m just a boy.”

**All magic begins with someone small who believes in something big.**

Kael approached hesitantly. “Are you... real?”

She lowered her head until her breath stirred his hair. **Once, there were many like me. We danced with the auroras and hummed with the tides. But when belief faded, we faded too. Only I remain, and not for long.**

Kael’s heart ached. “Then don’t fade. I’ll believe in you. I’ll tell everyone.”

**It is not enough. The world must remember.** Her wings unfurled, vast and gleaming. **Come with me. I will show you how.**

They flew.

Over forests blackened by fire. Over cities wrapped in iron and choking fog. Over oceans turned sluggish and grey. Wherever they went, Kael sang.

He sang in taverns and alleyways, in towers and dungeons, of a creature made of moonlight and sorrow, of dreams that once guided sailors home. And people listened — at first in disbelief, then in wonder. Children dreamed of Lunewyrms. Painters etched her form into canvas. Old songs rose again, and magic flickered like embers under ash.

With every tale, every note, Miralume grew brighter.

But so did the Empire’s suspicion.

They called him a heretic. A liar. A rebel.

And when they caught him, they made him kneel in a square of stone and silence. The people watched with hollow eyes. Miralume circled above, invisible in the daylight, a shimmer of sorrow on the wind.

When the blade fell, the sky screamed.

She descended like a falling star, her cry shaking windows and memories alike. The soldiers fled, dropping steel that burned white-hot. Miralume curled her body around Kael’s broken form and sang — a sound like a mother’s hum, like midnight rain on an empty roof.

**One last dream. One final gift.**

A shockwave of light swept the land.

When it cleared, the boy was gone. So was the Lunewyrm.

They say the stars shine brighter now. That dreams come more easily, and sometimes, just before dawn, you can hear music in the wind.

Children speak of a great silver creature who guards the night, and a boy with a lyre of stardust who rides on her back. Scholars call it myth. Priests call it heresy.

But the dreamers — they know.

They light candles in their windows, hum forgotten tunes, and look up, waiting.

Because the Lunewyrm is not gone.

She waits in the dreams of those who remember.