A vibrant, artistic depiction of a tree with colorful leaves set against a dark background, symbolizing the mystical elements of nature.
By E.L. Hewitt — StormborneLore
Dawn came slow over Cannock Chase, the sky still holding tight to the colours of night.
Mist clung to the ground, pale as breath on cold glass. The trees stood quiet as watchers in old cloaks.
Lore walked barefoot through the wet grass, collecting what the earth offered.
Yarrow first pale and feathery, growing in shy clusters where the sunlight would later reach. Good for blood and fever, and for protection against spirits that lingered too close.
He cut it gently, whispering, “For the ones who yet breathe.”
Rowan bark next, peeling in thin curls beneath his knife. The tree shivered, though no wind touched it.
Rowan remembers, the old women used to say and Lore believed them.
Last came the resin pine tears hardened in the bark of a fallen giant, still sweet, still golden.
He held it to his nose, breathing in the scent of memory. Smoke. Rain. Home.
Above him, the crows gathered.
Three at first. Then five. Then a dozen, their wings murmuring like pages turning.
They did not caw. They simply watched.
Lore did not fear them. The crows of the Chase were older than any Druid’s words. Older than Rome’s roads. Older even than the songs of the first tribes.
They followed him as he walked between the birches. Their trunks ghost-white, rising from the mist like bones of giants sleeping beneath the soil.
The air felt listening.
The trees breathed slow.
The old gods waited.
Lore spoke softly, almost too low to hear: “Stormfather. Bound-Brother. Wild King. I hear you.”
The leaves stirred, though the air was still.
And then
A whisper. Not with sound, but with bone and blood.
He rises.
Lore’s heart tightened. No fear only certainty.
The crows took flight at once, black wings cutting the dawn sky. They flew south, toward the marsh track near Landywood, toward the low birches where the Black Shields rested.
The river carried him through the marshes like an old friend whispering secrets of home. The oar bit into the brown water, steady, unhurried. Ahead, smoke rose in thin curls Roman campfires. His brother’s camp.
Taranis smiled faintly. Drax always did love his rules and rituals.
He pulled the boat onto the bank, the mud sucking at his boots, and paused to listen. The faint clang of armor, the laughter of children. The low murmur of Latin prayers so out of place in this land of bog and stone.
Then he saw him. Drax, standing by the fire, cloak draped in perfect folds, a soldier carved out of duty itself.
“Hello, brother,” Taranis called, his voice light but carrying weight enough to stir the air.
Drax turned, hand on his sword. Typical.
“Taranis. Show yourself.”
“Why?” he asked from the shadows. “So you can look at me and scowl like the Roman you’ve become?”
The words were easy, but his chest ached as he stepped ahead. He had dreamed of this moment through a hundred lonely nights on the island his brother alive, unbroken.
“I see you have sons,” he said softly. “And a fine uniform. Praefect now, are we? Rome’s loyal hound.”
Drax’s eyes hardened. “You acknowledge their law, then?”
“I acknowledge survival,” Taranis said. “But I bow to no empire.”
His gaze flicked toward the boys—curious, brave, full of questions. One of them smiled at him, and for a moment, the years fell away. He saw his brother laughing beside him on the cliffs above Letocetum. Before the legions came, before blood was traded for banners.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Drax said.
“I didn’t come for Rome.” He met his brother’s eyes. “I came for what’s left of us.”
The words hung between them, raw and quiet.
The youngest boy tugged at Drax’s cloak. “He doesn’t look like a villain, father.”
Taranis almost laughed. “No, lad. Villains rarely do.”
Then thunder rolled, deep and distant, like memory returning.
Drax looked to the horizon, and Taranis knew he felt it too—the pull of storm and blood.
“The storm’s coming,” one soldier muttered.
Taranis turned toward them, eyes bright with mischief and grief. “No,” he said. “The storm’s already here.”
He stepped back into the trees, the forest closing around him. When the boy’s voice called after him—“How did you escape the island?”—he turned once more, smiling through the rain.
“I built a boat,” he said simply. “Remember that when the world tries to cage you.”
Then he was gone.
Behind him, the Roman camp crackled in the rain, and his brother’s name lingered on the wind.
The tide was retreating when they found the broken chains. The sight of melted iron through as if struck by lightning.
“Gods preserve us,” whispered one of the guards, stepping back. “No blade have done that.”
Tiberius knelt beside the scorched links. “He didn’t break free,” he muttered. “He shed them.”
The centurion barked orders.,Sending riders to the northern watch and ships to sweep the channel. But even as they moved, the sky began to darken. The wind shifted, dragging the scent of iron and rain across the water.
“He’s gone home,” Tiberius said at last. “Back to the place Rome never tamed.”
“To Britannia?” asked the young guard again, voice shaking.
“Aye,” said the older legionary. “And if the stories are true, every storm between here and there will answer his call.”
From the cliffs, they can see the faint shimmer of the sea calm for now, but seething beneath.
The Emperor’s standard flapped once, hard enough to snap its pole.
“Should we tell the mainland?” the centurion asked.
Tiberius stood slowly, eyes on the horizon. “Tell them nothing. Let them think he drowned. If the gods favour us, maybe they’ll believe it.”
But none of them truly did. Even as the orders went out, the men felt the pressure in the air, that strange stillness before thunder. Somewhere far to the north, in the heart of Britannia, the wind began to rise.
“What if he’s caught out there commander?”
Tiberius didn’t answer at first. His eyes stayed on the sea, the horizon split between light and shadow.
“If he’s caught,” he said finally, “then the sea itself will break first.”
The young guard frowned. “You speak as if he’s a god.”
Tiberius turned to him, his face hard. “You weren’t here when they brought him in chains. You didn’t see the storm that followed. The ships burned before they reached the harbour. No oil, no fire arrows, just lightning, and him standing in the rain, laughing.”
The guard swallowed, his knuckles white around his spear.
Another soldier older, scarred, voice low spat into the dirt. “Men like that ain’t gods. They’re reminders. Rome builds, Rome burns, and the earth keeps its own count.”
Thunder rolled far out to sea, deep and slow.
“Get word to the docks,” Tiberius ordered. “Seal the forges. Lock down the armoury. And if the Emperor asks…” He paused, eyes narrowing. “…tell him the storm never left the island.”
The men scattered to obey, but above them, the gulls were already fleeing inland.
The wind picked up again not from the west, but the north. And on the water, beneath a bruised sky, something vast and dark moved with purpose.
Taranis stood at the prow of the small boat, the sea hissing beneath its hull as if warning him back. He only smiled.
The wind carried the scent of earth his earth and beyond the mist. The cliffs of Britannia rose like the bones of old gods. Behind him, the island of exile vanished into shadow. Before him lay vengeance, memory, and the ghosts of his kin.
“Home,” he murmured. “Or what’s left of it.”
His brothers would be the first. Drax, bound by Rome’s gold and law; Rayne, lost between loyalty and freedom. Then the old comrades, the broken men who once bore the wolf upon their shields. The Black Shields would rise again not as soldiers. But as something Rome can not name and never kill.
He shifted his weight, watching the distant shoreline of Letocetum take shape through the fog.
Beyond that lay the salt pits of Salinae. The forests near Vertis, the villages that still whispered his name like a curse and a prayer.
“Word travels faster than ships,” he said to the empty wind. “By the time I step ashore, they’ll already know.”
Lightning rippled across the far horizon, faint but deliberate, as though the heavens themselves answered.
He gripped the tiller and laughed quietly to himself not with joy. But with the fierce certainty of a man who had waited too long to be mortal anymore.
When the first gulls circled overhead and the shore drew near, Taranis whispered the words that had haunted his exile.
“Rome fears the storm. Now it will remember why.”
The tide carried him in. Somewhere in the fort at Rutupiae Drax Stormborne turned toward the sea. With a feeling of dread, without knowing, that the storm had come home.
The sun stood high as Praefect Drax Stormborne lingered beside the fire, cloak folded tight against a thin breeze.
“Hello, brother,” a teen voice said, and Drax’s hand went to the hilt of his sword before he turned.
“Taranis, show yourself now,” he said, keeping his tone even.
“Why? So you can look at me and scowl?” Taranis’s voice came from the trees. “I’m fine here, where you can’t see me but I can see you. I see you have children now, and you look smart in the Roman uniform of their law-men.”
“I acknowledge,” Taranis replied, stepping from the shade with a faint smile. “but I do not bow not to you, my liege, nor to your Roman overlords. We all do what we must to survive.” He paused, then added, quieter, “But try anything and I’ll snap your men like twigs.”
A small boy tugged at Drax’s sleeve. “Father, who is he?” the child asked.
“Is he a barbarian, father?” another eight-year-old whispered, peering toward the tree-line.
“Julius that’s our uncle Taranis?” a smirking boy offered. “The legendary gladiator Lupus… wasn’t he exiled?”
Drax let the questions run off him like rain. He studied Taranis as if measuring a blade. Blood and oath pulled between them one brother in Roman order, the other a storm wearing man’s skin.
The campfire crackled, throwing sparks into the brittle afternoon air. For a heartbeat, the world held its breath two brothers standing on opposite shores of the same river.
Taranis tilted his head slightly, the ghost of a smile curving his lips. “Exiled, yes,” he said softly. “But storms don’t vanish, brother. They wait for the right sky.”
Drax said nothing. His men shifted uneasily, hands brushing spear shafts, glancing between the prefect and the outlaw.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Drax murmured finally. “Rome watches even the wind that bends near me.”
“I’m not here for Rome,” Taranis replied,. his gaze flicking toward the boys proud, uncertain, wearing their father’s steel in miniature. “I came to see what became of the man I once followed into the fire.”
“You followed because you had no choice,” Drax snapped, voice sharp enough to cut the air. “And you bowed because you wanted one,” Taranis countered.
Silence fell again. The forest around them seemed to lean closer, listening.
Julius, the youngest, tugged at Drax’s sleeve.
“Father… he doesn’t look like a villain,” the boy whispered. “No,” said Drax quietly, eyes still locked on Taranis. “That’s what makes him dangerous.”
Taranis laughed then, low and bitter. “Dangerous? I bled for this land before Rome knew its name. If danger is survival, then yes I am a danger.”
A faint roll of thunder trembled beyond the horizon. Both men turned toward it, instinctively.
“Storm’s coming,” said one of Drax’s soldiers.
Taranis met his brother’s eyes one last time. “No, soldier,” he said, voice like wind through iron. “The storm’s already here.”
He vanished into the trees before anyone move. leaving only the fading echo of his words and the scent of rain.
Drax stood long after he was gone, until his eldest spoke softly: “Will we see him again, Father?”
Drax’s jaw tightened. “If the gods have mercy or none at all.”
The thunder answered for him.
Julius started to run after his uncle.
“No, child,” Drax called, voice tight.
Taranis turned, the stormlight catching on the scars that crossed his jaw. He knelt so his eyes met the boy’s. “Your place is with your father,” he said softly. “He’s a good, honourable man.”
Julius frowned. “How did you get off the island?”
Taranis’s mouth twitched into a smirk. “I built a boat.”
He rose, cloak stirring in the wind as thunder growled again in the distance. “Remember that, boy when the world cages you, build your own way out.”
Then he was gone once more, the forest swallowing him whole.
Drax stood in silence, watching the trees sway. His men busied themselves with meaningless tasks tightening straps, banking the fire anything to avoid the weight in the air.
The prefect’s eyes lingered on the path his brother had taken. “Stormborne,” he murmured, the name a curse and a prayer all at once.
Above them, the first drops of rain began to fall.
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The moon shone in the darkest of nights as I gathered the herbs.Around my cave herbs of healing yarrow and nettle being the most used by our clan.
Only eight winters ago the leader of claw clan approached me. My son in custody I see him a bone chain around his neck.
“What do you want Clun?” I asked the small balding man dressed in simple furs .
“We promise no harm to the children,” said the tall man wrapped in makeshift coats. He thrust a small vial towards me “You’ll have your son by sunrise. Just brew a sleeping draft. Put Camp Utthar to sleep.”
I hesitated. The chief of Utthar had been good to us took my family in when no one else would. But River was my son. My blood. My only hope my future what else I do?
I nodded slowly but looked to my boy a sadness stirred in me. Ad i gathered berries, roots, sacred herbs and stirred them into the pot by firelight. That night, the warriors, the women, the children… all fell into deep, enchanted sleep.
So deep was the sleep that no one stirred when the men of Clun entered the encampment. As The Clun men crept in silent as shadow, savage as flame.
I watched from the trees as my eldest, Ryn, was dragged into camp forced to witness the massacre. His voice was broken when he turned to me:
“What did you do, Mother?!”Ryn cried
A silent attack killing women children and men who remained within the camp. Fifty men died that night warriors hunters their wives and children.
“You promised you’d leave the children” I cried
I was aware that utther wife had been taken to a local cave. A safe place where she would give birth when the time was right.
“Foolish old lady, why would we leave our enemies children? When they will grow to seek vengeance” Clun smirked riding away
I was left staring at the devastation . The next days passed and the Chief returned from battle, his warriors behind them. The chiefs horn was heard and his sons replied with the wolfs howl. But they ran with newborns in their arms Boldolph leading the charge.
Time froze the wind stilled as boldolph approached his father
“They came in the still of night no one would wake up. The claw killed all of then father and she helped” boldolph replied as if giving his report
Suddenly the screams came
“Take her! Bind her!” Raven shouted. “She betrayed the family! Everyone’s dead! Mother’s alive but in labour!”
One of the wounded men pointed at me with blood on his chest.
“We heard her whispering with the Clun. She brewed the sleeping draft… then brought death upon us.”
I turned and ran wishing for cover ducking from branches and jumping over roots from trees. The sound of hounds barking after me my heart racing beating like the drums. The hounds found me first. The men were not far behind.
They bound me in ropes and dragged me back to camp, fear pounding through my veins like war drums. Then he came…
Boldolph stood at seven feet tall. “Let me have her,” he growled but his eyes softened when they found Morrigan, his wife, weeping with in a cave
“Lox is dead she did it” morrigan said
“We have her,” a man spat, dragging me by the hair.i screamed trying to fight against the men holding me
The chieftain stood tall.
“Whitehair, you have betrayed your tribe. Look around you. This is your doing you butchered them in their sleep.” The cheiftan said “Take her to the rocks. Strip her name. Cut her nose and tongue. Then bind her and take her far from here.”
The punishment was swift.
The curse came faster.
Before they dragged me away, my final spell shattered the night:
“May your line suffer, May your form twist, Until one born cursed by storms, Breaks the wheel with mercy and fire.”
And then, the transformation.
As I was dragged out I could hear the howls of pain and anguish from boldolph and his mate morrigan. as Boldolph the giant, and Morrigan the gentle, were torn from flesh and given fur. Wolves. Forever cursed.
Later, bound and broken, I was dragged to the sacred stone. They beat me. Stripped me of sound. My nose. My tongue. My name.
Blindfolded, I was taken to lands unknown far beyond the reach of kin or mercy.
But my magic remains. So does the curse. And the storm is not yet done.
I could still taste blood.
The salt of my torn tongue. The copper of betrayal. The earth where they left me bound, blindfolded. my hands lashed with nettles so tightly i still bear scars decades later.
They called it mercy.
But mercy would have been death.
Instead, they gave me exile: cast beyond the sacred stones with only the breath in my lungs. The curse they feared more than her voice.
Ad i crawled for days dragging my broken body through marsh and thorn. Wolves circled but did not bite. Ravens flew overhead but did not cry. And the spirits… the spirits walked with me. I did not die i became something else.
Something older than their laws.
As i found shelter in the hollow of a tree once used by midwives. A place where blood had been spilled in both birth and death. There, pressed my palms to the bark, and for the first time in weeks, i did not feel pain.
Only power.
It rose from the roots. From the bones buried deep the old ones, the forgotten, the nameless. Their stories rushed into me like a storm tide.
And over time i remembered my own name.
Not the one they spat when they cursed me. Not the one the elders tore from the village scrolls.
But the one my mother gave me beneath the silvery moon.
As the Years passed more people feared me. As i walked among the bones now, barefoot and veiled. My form barely seen except by those on the edge of death or madness. Her tongue never healed. Her voice never returned. But her curse… her curse remained intact.
And more potent than ever.
For every 13th child born of her bloodline, a sign would come: A sickness no healer cure. Eyes the colour of stormlight. A voice that spoke truths no one taught.
The 13th of the 13th would be the end or the beginning.
She waits still. Her bones lighter now, her spirit heavier. Watching as the stories repeat, as her great-grandson walks into the same woods where she once crawled.
The fires in Emberhelm burned low, their glow tracing the hall’s carved beams in dull amber. Outside, wind howled through the moors, carrying the echo of the horn that had once called the clans to war. Now it was only memory.
Lord Drax Stormborne sat alone in the council chamber, a single goblet of wine untouched beside him. The maps and missives lay strewn across the oak table. Roman reports, messages from border scouts, pleas for grain from villages too frightened to send men to market.
He had not slept. Sleep meant dreams, and dreams brought Taranis.
His brother’s face haunted him not in death, but in defiance. Bound, bloodied, yet unbroken. There was strength in that memory, but guilt too.
“You always were the fire,” Drax murmured, voice low. “And I the stone that smothered it.”
A faint shuffle broke the silence. Caelum lingered at the doorway, unsure if he was welcome. “Father,” he said softly. “Marcos sent word. The Romans will move east toward the river forts. He says it’s only a patrol.”
Drax’s lips curved into something that have been a smile. “Marcos says many things to make Rome sound smaller than it is.”
He rose, the movement slow, heavy with sleepless weight. “Tell the men to prepare rations, but not weapons. We will not meet them with steel not yet.”
Caelum hesitated. “Uncle Taranis wouldn’t wait.”
“No,” Drax said, turning toward the window, where mist swirled over the dark moorlands. “He would burn the world to free one man. I must keep the world standing long enough for him to have one to return to.”
The boy nodded but did not understand. Few ever would.
Drax rested his hands on the cold stone sill, the wind tugging at his hair. Somewhere beyond the horizon, his brother still fought, still endured. And Drax the eldest, the anchor bore the burden of every storm that raged beyond his reach.
“Forgive me, brother,” he whispered to the wind. “I keep the hearth burning, not because I’ve forgotten you… but because I know you’ll come back to it.”
The storm had not yet left his veins. Even in exhaustion, Taranis’s breath came sharp as lightning through rain. The iron on his wrists bit deeper with each movement, the weight of Rome’s victory heavy, but not finished.
He heard them before he saw them the measured tread of Caelum and Marcos. The murmur of soldiers giving way as they entered the cell yard. The torches flared against the damp walls, shadows stretching long like reaching fingers.
“Uncle Marcos,” Caelum’s voice was quiet but edged with fear. “Can those chains come off him?”
Marcos paused beside the centurion who held the keys. His gaze lingered on Taranis, bloodstained and silent, the faint curl of defiance still etched into his mouth. “They can,” Marcos said slowly. “But they won’t. Not yet.”
Caelum’s jaw tightened. “He’s bleeding. If he dies”
“He won’t,” Marcos interrupted, eyes never leaving Taranis. “He’s too stubborn to die.”
Taranis lifted his head then, a slow, deliberate motion. “You sound almost proud, Marcos.” His voice was hoarse, roughened by sand and roar, but steady. “Tell me how does it feel, watching Rome chain another son of the storm?”
Marcos stepped closer, the metal of his own armour glinting in the firelight. “It feels like survival,” he said quietly. “A lesson you still refuse to learn.”
“Survival,” Taranis repeated, the word tasting like ash. “You call it that. I call it submission.”
The centurion moved between them, keys jangling. “Enough talk.” But Marcos lifted a hand not to command, but to stay him.
“Let him speak,” Marcos said. “Words weigh less than chains.”
Caelum’s eyes flicked between them, confusion and pain warring in his young face. “He fought lions, Uncle. Bears. He lived through what no man should. Why must you treat him like this?”
“Because,” Marcos
“You know they say deaths the final lesson?” Taranis grinned…Marcos’s eyes hardened, but not with anger with something closer to grief.
“Death teaches nothing,” he said. “It only silences the unteachable.”
Taranis laughed then a low, ragged sound that echoed off the stone like distant thunder. “Then maybe silence is what Rome fears most. A man who dies still defiant who doesn’t give them their spectacle.”
The centurion stepped ahead impatiently. “Enough of this.” He seized Taranis by the shoulder, but the bound warrior’s gaze did not waver.
“Do you see it, Caelum?” Taranis rasped. “Chains don’t make a man loyal. They only show who fears him most.”
Caelum swallowed hard, torn between the authority of his uncle and the raw conviction before him. “Uncle… he’s right. Rome fears him.”
Marcos turned sharply. “Rome fears no man.” Yet even as he said it, his voice faltered, as if the walls themselves disagreed.
A moment of silence fell the kind that breathes between lightning and thunder.
Then Taranis whispered, “You once said the blood of the storm can’t be trained. You were right. It can only be bound… for a while.”
The torches flickered, shadows dancing like spirits around the three men the Roman, the youth, and the storm-bound prisoner.
Marcos finally turned away. “Clean his wounds,” he said curtly to the centurion. “He fights again at dawn.”
As they left, Caelum lingered by the gate, his eyes locked on Taranis’s. “I’ll come back,” he said softly.
Taranis’s faint grin returned. “Then bring thunder, boy. Rome hasn’t heard enough of it yet.”
The cell door slammed shut, iron against stone but somewhere, deep beneath the fortress, thunder rolled.
A vibrant artistic depiction of a stylized object, blending intricate designs with bright colors, invoking themes of lore and magic.
The Quiet Flame
The wind that swept over Emberhelm carried no warmth, only the ghost of fire long spent. I stood where the circle had once been whole, where twelve stones still defied the weight of empire, and one lay split a wound upon the land.
The others had gone. Drax to fury, Draven to silence, Rayne to his choices, and Taranis to chains. I remained, bound not by steel but by memory. It was not courage that kept me here; it was knowing that something sacred had been broken and that it was not yet done with us.
The Romans called this valley conquered. They built their roads and forts as if they could hammer meaning from earth and stone. But meaning does not bow to empire. It whispers, it lingers, it waits. And I have learned to listen.
I knelt beside the thirteenth stone, tracing the crack with my fingers. The split hummed faintly, as though it still remembered the storm that birthed it. I could almost hear Taranis’s voice beneath the wind, a murmur of thunder too distant to strike.
“Brother,” I whispered, “if the storm is caged, does the sky mourn its silence?”
A shadow passed across the ridge perhaps a hawk, perhaps a sign. In the old days, I would have asked the druids for meaning, but now I was the only one left to ask.
Rayne’s betrayal still cut deep, though part of me understood it. He had always been the one to see the long game, the patient serpent coiled beneath the waves. I did not forgive him, but neither could I condemn him fully. Perhaps this is how the gods feel when they look upon men weary, knowing, endlessly disappointed.
Night crept over the hills. I lit no fire; the Romans watched for smoke. Instead, I watched the stars, the same constellations our ancestors had trusted when the world was still young. Somewhere beyond those lights, I felt the pulse of something waking old magic, stirring beneath stone and soil, called forth by blood and betrayal alike.
The Circle was broken, yes. But its power had not vanished; it had merely changed shape. The storm that once lived in Taranis’s heart now whispered through the bones of the earth. I could feel it gathering, quiet but sure, as if the land itself prepared to rise.
In that silence, I spoke the old words not prayer, not spell, but remembrance. A promise carved into breath:
“When the storm returns, it will not ask who was loyal. It will ask who remains.”
The morning broke pale and cold, a thin mist rolling across the fields like a ghost that had forgotten its name. My horse shifted beneath me, uneasy. The world felt quieter than it should have been not the quiet of peace, but the kind born from expectation. Something waited ahead.
I had traveled for weeks now, keeping to forgotten roads, trading false names and favours for shelter. Rome’s messengers had ceased for a time, and that silence was heavier than any command. I began to wonder if I had been released… or abandoned.
At night, when the campfire dwindled, I caught myself tracing the symbol of the Ring into the dirt a circle broken clean through. No matter how many times I erased it, my hand drew it again. Habit or guilt, I couldn’t tell. Perhaps both.
Rumours reached me in fragments: a rebellion rising in the north, whispers that Drax had taken to leading the scattered tribes, and that Lore had vanished into the mists of the west, chasing prophecies no man could name. Draven was silent. And Taranis… Taranis had become a legend again.
They said he had escaped Rome’s chains, that his eyes burned brighter than ever, that lightning followed where he walked. I did not believe all of it but I wanted to. The world is easier to bear when its ghosts refuse to stay buried.
One night, beneath a blood-red moon, I reached the edge of the marshlands near Ravenmere. The air there was heavy, each breath tasting of iron and old secrets. The ruins of an outpost stood crooked against the skyline Roman stones built upon older foundations. It felt… familiar.
Inside, beneath moss and dust, I found carvings of the Circle faint, half-effaced by time. Words I had spoken in another life echoed in my memory: “We are the Ring. Bound by oath, unbroken by fear.”
I knelt, running my hand over the stone, feeling the groove of each line. “I broke it,” I whispered. “But perhaps it was already breaking.”
Something stirred in the shadows not human, not beast, but presence. A warmth against the air, like breath drawn from memory itself. For the first time since Emberhelm, I felt the Ring respond.
A whisper, faint but unmistakable, rippled through the ruin. “The Circle is never broken, only divided. The storm remembers.”
I rose slowly, the hairs on my arms prickling. Whatever force had once bound us had not died it waited, fragmented, patient. And now, it was calling.
When I rode from Ravenmere at dawn, I carried no banner, no ally, no command. Only purpose.
The Ring was broken but not gone. And if Taranis still lived, if the others still walked their paths… then the storm was far from finished.
“Taranis is our baby brother, no matter what some think,” Drax growled, his voice low and edged with iron. His gaze locked on Rain across the firelight, sharp enough to cut stone. “You betrayed him when he was a child and you betray him now.”
Rain’s jaw tightened, but he did not speak. The silence stretched between them, thick with memory and regret.
The old priest, Maeron, lifted his hand gently. “He forgives you, Rain,” he said, his tone weary yet steady. “He wanted Drax, Draven, and Lore to know he will endure what they give him. So that you three will survive. He says to make choices that will keep you all safe and your people.”
Drax’s expression did not soften, though his eyes flickered with something that have been pain. “He forgives far too easily.”
Maeron inclined his head. “Forgiveness is not weakness, my lord. It is the weapon of those who can’t be broken. The Romans won’t rule forever. Prepare for what comes next.”
At the edge of the fire, Caelum shifted uneasily, his young face caught between fear and pride. “But what about my uncle’s meals?” he asked suddenly. “Uncle was exiled from the Circle years before they caught him. I was a baby then. Now I’m fourteen he shouldn’t be forgotten again.”
The words silenced the hall. Even Rain, for all his bitterness, not meet the boy’s gaze.
Drax rose slowly, the firelight glinting off his scars. “He will not be forgotten,” he said at last. “Not while the storm still bears our name.”
“But won’t they strip him of his name?” Caelum pressed, voice trembling now. “If Rome erases it, how will anyone know he lived?”
Drax looked down at his son the fire’s glow. Reflected in the boy’s wide eyes and placed a steady hand on his shoulder.
“Names can be taken,” he said quietly. “But legacies can’t. The Romans think power is carved in stone. Ours is carved in memory.”
He turned back to Maeron. “Tell him that. Tell him Emberhelm remembers.”
The priest nodded, rising to leave. But before he turned, his gaze swept the circle of men gathered in the hall. “When the storm returns,” he said softly, “I hope you are ready to stand beneath it.”
When Maeron’s footsteps faded into the night, the hall remained silent. The storm outside broke, rain hammering against the shutters like the echo of distant drums.
Drax stood by the window long after the others had gone. He could not see the fort from here, but he could feel it the iron cage that held his brother. The empire pressing closer each season. Yet as lightning flashed over the valley, he smiled grimly.
Because storms, no matter how long they’re caged, always find their way home.
The road to Viroconium was slick with rain. Drax rode beneath a low sky, his cloak heavy with water, the wind biting at his face. Beside him, Maeron’s hood was drawn deep, the priest’s silence carrying the weight of things better left unspoken.
When they reached the outskirts of the Roman fort, the air stank of smoke and iron. The rhythmic clash of hammers and the cries of soldiers echoed through the mist. But above it all, there was another sound low, strained, human.
Drax reined his horse sharply, his eyes narrowing.
At the edge of the square, raised above the mud and the murmuring crowd. Hung a man bound to a crude wooden cross. Blood streaked his arms, his body marked by lashes and bruises. His hair clung to his face in the rain. But the set of his jaw the defiant lift of his head was unmistakable.
Taranis.
Drax’s heart clenched as the legionnaire stepped forward, spear in hand. “He struck a guard and tried to run,” the man said stiffly. “By Roman law, the punishment is public display.”
“Law,” Drax echoed, his voice quiet, almost a whisper but Maeron flinched at the tone. “You call this law?”
The soldier hesitated, but before he could respond, Maeron laid a hand on Drax’s arm. “Careful,” he murmured. “The walls have ears.”
Drax dismounted, boots sinking into the mud. He walked forward until he stood before the cross, rain washing the grime from his face. Taranis raised his head slowly, eyes bloodshot but burning with that same inner fire that no empire could snuff out.
“Brother,” Drax whispered.
Taranis gave a faint, broken smile. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“And leave you to the crows?” Drax’s voice cracked like thunder. “Never.”
Maeron stepped forward, murmuring Latin prayers under his breath for the watching soldiers. Though his words were laced with druidic meaning ancient phrases meant to shield, not to save. His fingers brushed the iron nails that bound Taranis’s wrists. “These are not deep,” he said quietly. “They did not mean to kill him. Only to shame.”
Taranis’s laugh was hoarse. “They can’t shame what they don’t understand.”
The centurion appeared, cloak heavy with rain. “This man belongs to Rome,” he declared. “You will step back, Lord of Emberhelm.”
Drax turned slowly, the weight of centuries in his gaze. “And yet Rome forgets whose land it stands upon.”
The centurion stiffened. “Do you threaten?”
“No.” Drax’s tone softened to a dangerous calm. “I remind.”
The priest raised his hands quickly. “My lord only seeks mercy,” Maeron said. “Let him pray with his brother before the gods.”
After a pause, the centurion gestured sharply. “You have one hour.”
When the soldiers withdrew to the gatehouse, Drax knelt beside the cross. The rain had turned to sleet, stinging against his skin. “Hold on,” he murmured. “We’ll get you down when the watch changes.”
Taranis shook his head weakly. “No. Not yet. If you cut me down, they’ll know you came. They’ll burn Emberhelm.”
“Then let them come,” Drax growled.
But Taranis only smiled faintly. “Storms must wait for the right sky, brother.”
Maeron placed a hand on Drax’s shoulder. “He’s right. Endurance, not rage. That is his rebellion.”
Drax bowed his head, jaw clenched. He hated the wisdom in those words. He hated that Taranis could still smile through chains and nails.
As dusk fell, lightning cracked beyond the hills, white and wild. The storm gathered again over Viroconium.
And though Rome saw only a prisoner’s suffering. Those who remembered the old ways knew the truth: A storm had been crucified and still, it did not die.
StormborneLore 