The youngest of three lords, the only surviving heir before the word chieftain had even been carved into stone.
I was a protector, a trader,
a traveller to far shores… but above all, I was a husband and a father.
Morrigan.
She was everything. Three children had blessed our home and that was enough.
It was all her body can carry after the night she met the old crone in the woods.
The one whose words still haunt me. “The howl will return to your house, but not in the way you dream.”
I remember that day like thunder.
I had walked the long trail from the hunt., a wolf’s pelt across my shoulders, the carved head resting like a crown.
There was smoke above the village. And shouting.
An old woman beaten, clothes torn was being dragged toward my father’s cave.
“Wait!” I shouted.
I stepped ahead eighteen, tall, muscle-bound, burning with promise. They said I would one day unite the valleys.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I demanded.
A freckled, tattooed man stepped ahead, fury carved into every line of his face.
“This enchantress worked against us in the last battle,” he spat. “She betrayed us, Boldolph. We demand justice for our dead.”
My jaw clenched. I turned to her.
“You?” I growled. “You’re the reason my brothers now sleep the eternal sleep? The reason my mother weeps? The reason the blood of my people feeds the grass?”
She said nothing.
With a roar, I seized her hauled her high above the firepit, as if ready to cast her into flame.
But then “NO!”
A voice like wind cut through the rage.
Morrigan.
Only she reach me. Only she still the fire in my chest.
“This is not you, my love,” she said. “Let the chieftain decide. Please…”
And I listened. Because she was the one thing I would never fight.
I carried the woman into the cave.
The chieftain stood waiting. Red-haired, tattooed in victory and sorrow, wise beyond warriors.
“I have heard your crimes, Whitehair,” he said, voice like stone. “You drugged the warriors. You let the enemy pass through us like wind through grass. You gave our children to fire. You made the wombs of mothers empty.”
Still, the woman did not plead.
“Death is too easy,” he continued.
“You will be taken to the deepest part of the wood. Stripped of your name. Your hands will be marked so that the spirits do not recognise you. You will eat only what you can dig or steal. None shall speak your name, nor carve it. You will walk in silence until the earth swallows you. Or until the wolves forget your scent. So say the spirits. So says the tribe.”
And so she was cast out not as woman, not as witch. As nothing.
But my rage had not cooled.
“Father, banishment is too easy for one who knows these lands,” I said. “Bind her. Take her children. Take her tongue, and theirs,so none curse us again.”
And that’s when she finally spoke.
Her voice was dry like wind over bones. “I curse thee, Boldolph… son of Marnak. And thy wife Morrigan, daughter of Ayr. You shall be wolves until the day you meet a boy. a giant of seven feet, who befriends all animals and dragons. The house of your father will fall.”
The pain came instantly.
My darling wife and I we transformed, howling and breaking, before the entire tribe.
Thousands of years have passed since that day. Many cubs later, we have never seen each other in human form.
I bear black fur as dark as night. a golden five-pointed star on my head, a red crescent moon on my chest.
And my Morrigan… She is snow-white, with a red star between her eyes and a golden sun over her heart.
The women of the tribe had already begun preparing the celebration. Only the finest foods would be offered on this special night the night of my brother’s birth.
The birth of Taranis Stormborne.
In the woods, the younger children laughed as they filled baskets with berries, blackberries and raspberries, bilberries (wild blueberries). elderberries (cooked only), hawthorn berries, rose hips, crab apples, and sloes from the blackthorn.
Their chatter echoed with pride a new life meant strength for the tribe.
The women worked in quiet rhythm. Hazelnuts, acorns (leached to remove tannins), beech nuts, pine nuts, and the seeds. Young leaves of nettles were piled high beside bundles of wild garlic and sacred greens.
I saw my mother’s sister lay a sprig of rosemary at the fire. Not for seasoning but for blessing.
“Hey, young Lore,” someone called, grinning. “You coming hunting? Father says we’re after red deer and boar, fox, grouse, even river salmon. Only the finest meats for your mother and father. A new chieftain has been born!”
“Father’s naming him tonight? I’m coming!” I said, breath quickening. I tried to keep the smile off my face, but it broke through anyway.
I was seventeen — broad-shouldered, proud, still hungry to prove myself. I grabbed my spear and cast a glance back at my brothers and father.
our father, stood straight as an ash tree his expression unreadable. Part of him was already in the cave, beside my mother and the child. The rest of him… watched the woods.
I ran to join the others, my heart pounding. Together, we hollered and sprinted into the deep forest a forest older than memory.
But as our laughter faded behind us, a silence settled.
And then… that chill again.
Not the kind that comes with wind or storm. No, this cold was the kind that clung to your bones. The kind that made birds quiet and your breath feel too loud.
Something was watching. But nothing moved.
Still, we pressed on. The Naming Feast had to be worthy.
“I hope he survives,” I muttered, trying to sound casual but Nyx heard the worry in my voice.
“Drax is furious,” he said under his breath.“He thinks the prophecy’s come true.”
He didn’t say what the prophecy meant but we both knew the stories.
A child born under eclipse. A name written in fire. A brother… destined to break us or save us.
Suddenly, Nyx raised a hand. A deer just ahead.
I nodded once, crouched low, and let my spear fly. A perfect strike.
Nyx gave the bird-call whistle to alert his father. We hauled the carcass back to camp together.
The others returned soon after. The fire was lit. The meat laid out. Herbs were thrown onto the flames and their smoke curled skyward. in a spiral that reminded me of a dragon’s breath.
Tonight, my baby brother would be named. But even as the tribe gathered in joy. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming through the trees.
Father’s eyes had changed flashing a pale shade of red.
Thunder cracked as he stepped into the cave. Ready to lay eyes on Mother and the newborn she had fought to bring into the world.
We stood behind him in silence, all of us but one.
One brother, whose eyes held no joy. Only fear. Only the taste of blood.
“Thirteenth son of the thirteenth son,” he muttered. “Born during a storm… and an eclipse. Even the dragons have fallen silent. And the wolves, they’ve stopped howling.”
Just then, as if the forest itself heard hima sound split the trees in two.
Boldolph.
His howl rose like thunder turned voice, a cry so powerful the very air seemed to flinch.
Artistic depiction of Boldolph, the powerful wolf, alongside symbols of mythology and nature.
At his side stood Morrigan, his bonded mate white as new snow. She gave a low, haunting cry and pressed her head gently against his.
Then the dragon stirred.
It lifted its head, wings stretching wide like a storm reborn.
And with a roar that lit the sky, it rose.
Fire molten and blinding erupted from its throat, painting the clouds in gold and crimson.
And there, across the eclipsed heavens, the name appeared.
TARANIS.
Burning. Brilliant. Undeniable.
As if the stars, the storm, and the breath of the gods themselves had spoken as one:
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.
A hand-painted circular stone depicting a serene landscape, featuring trees and a bright sun, symbolizing a connection to nature.
They always said the Chase held secrets. Over the years rumors of ghost sightings, lost children, lights that danced just out of reach.
But Private Callum Hargreaves had grown up nearby. He’d run through these woods with scraped knees and muddy boots, long before he wore the army’s green.
He used to love the quiet, the peacefulness that the woods brought.
Tonight, it felt wrong.
The mist had rolled in fast, blanketing the forest floor. Dusk bled into night like ink in water. Callum’s breath fogged in front of him not from cold, but from the weight in the air.
His squad had finished training hours ago, but he hadn’t gone back. He couldn’t. Not yet. His thoughts were loud again memories knocking like fists on the inside of his skull.
“Just walk it off,” he muttered, his voice low. “Like always.” he told himself.
He followed an old deer track or maybe just instinct into the dense pines. The kind that made their own darkness even before sunset. The ground was soft, smelling of wet leaves and something older.
He paused.
There at the base of a gnarled tree was a stone. Half buried, bone coloured. Not shaped by nature. Carved. Faint, but deliberate.
Callum crouched. A breeze touched his neck, oddly warm.
“Someone put this here.”
A mysterious token featuring a swirl design, symbolizing the secrets of the woods.
He brushed aside the moss. A symbol. A swirl or a horn. Beside it a feather. White. Slightly scorched at the edge. When he reached out to touch it.
The air twisted.
Like the world held its breath.
He blinked. Once. The trees around him… changed.
Taller. Closer. Ancient.
No wrappers underfoot. No footprints. No signal bars. The forest felt closer, like it was listening.
Then came the whisper.
Not from behind him. Not from the side.
From below.
“He’s returned…”
The voice wasn’t human but it wasn’t wind either. It filled his ears like rising water. Callum staggered back, instinct flaring.
The stone was gone. The trail behind him, vanished. Even the smell was different no exhaust, no cordite, just wood smoke and something sharp: iron? sweat? blood?
“No. No, no what is this?”
He turned toward where the training grounds should’ve been.
Nothing.
Just trees. And silence. And the whispering louder now. Familiar. Calling him by name without speaking it.
And then… a howl.
Low. Echoing.
Not quite wolf. Not quite human.
Callum’s breath caught. He gripped the feather tight in his palm.
StormborneLore 