Michael K. Eidson
Archmage
okay, so this thread has gotten me thinking about endings...and dragons. Both of which I have, but now I'm thinking it won't be satisfying. In chapter three, I introduce a legend about dragons, and in the first draft, they found the dragon in the end, and let it free. Bu that feels too predictable now, so I was going to do a bittersweet ending. They find the dragon, but it's dead. But there are three baby dragons among the corpse. They take the baby dragons and return them to a goddess who wanted the big dragon returned to her in the first place. Does that feel like a let-down?
Assuming I hadn't been misled by marketing to expect something wildly different, I could enjoy the ending you describe.
I read somewhere that when coming up with endings, you should discard the first two or three that you think of, as they are the most predictable ones. There may be threads in the story that you didn't think to draw on initially, which will lead you to a much more fitting and satisfactory story ending.