They say it happened on the edge of the fire season. When the trees stood crisp as tinder and the sky was low with storm breath. The boy was no longer just a boy then not quite a man, not quite a ghost. They called him Taranis Stormborne, though none dared speak it aloud after what he did that day.
He had been wandering for days with Boldolph limping and Morrigan stalking ahead like a shade. Hunger bit at them, sharp and constant. The streams were low, and even the birds had gone quiet. But it was not food that found them first it was smoke.
Taranis crouched low in the bracken and smelled it before he saw it: the reek of burning pitch, not wildfire. Deliberate. He motioned with his hand, and the wolves flanked him in silence. Through the underbrush, he saw it the den.
Nestled beneath the roots of an ancient yew was a she-wolf, panting, bloodied, and gravid with life. Around her lay ash and ruin. Two men not of Taranis’s tribe circled the den with torches and stone axes. Laughing. Taunting.
One of them stepped too close, and the she-wolf lunged. He clubbed her across the snout, and she crumpled, still breathing. Taranis felt something stir in his chest something hot and ancient, older than exile.
“She has done no wrong,” he muttered to the wind. “Then why do I burn?”
He rose from the bracken like thunder. The wolves ran with him, all teeth and fury. The first man turned and Taranis’s spear was already flying. It found flesh.
The second man screamed, torch raised but Morrigan leapt, black shadow, and his cry was cut short. The woods howled then, louder than wolves, louder than any storm. A torch dropped. The dry brush caught.
Flame leapt into the canopy.
Taranis didn’t run.
He tore the yew’s roots apart with bleeding hands and dragged the she-wolf to safety. Boldolph howled into the fire’s roar, guiding him. He covered her with his own cloak and stood between her and the blaze, smoke pouring into his lungs.
When the fire passed, the glade was scorched, the sky blackened and the she-wolf was alive.
She gave birth beneath the ashes, three pups whimpering in the smoldering earth.
One with a streak of red across its back. One with golden eyes. One with fur white as ash.
They say those pups were no ordinary wolves. They say the Phoenix’s line began that night the fire born. The storm guided, the ones who would follow only him.
But when Taranis rose from the ruin. His face black with soot and eyes like lightning, the people stopped calling him cursed.
They called him something else.
Stormfire.
Brother of Wolves.
Protector of the Ashborn.
© StormborneLore. Written by Emma for StormborneLore. Not for reproduction. All rights reserved.
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