The mist lay thick over Britannia’s hills, silver and cold in the dawn light. Drax Stormborne rode through it in silence, his cloak trailing behind his horse like a banner of shadow. The seal of his office a bronze wolf set in iron hung heavy at his breast. Praefect of the Western Marches.
Rome had granted him the title, but the people called him something older. The Lawkeeper. The Storm’s Hand. Sometimes, when whispers rose of rebellion or strange omens in the south. they spoke another name High Sheriff, as though the tongue of the future already sought him.
For weeks, Drax had heard the same rumours. A golden-eyed warrior training exiles in secret. Smugglers vanishing near the coast. Symbols carved in ash and stone a black shield marked by lightning.
He reined in his horse upon a ridge and looked east, where the mists thinned toward the sea. Somewhere beyond those waters, Taranis Stormborne still lived. His brother. His blood. His curse.
Duty demanded silence, but loyalty demanded truth. He not betray his oath to Rome, nor he ignore the storm rising beyond its borders.
“They call it rebellion,” he murmured, gloved hand tightening on the reins, “but it feels like fate.”
The wind rose, cold and sharp. Somewhere distant, thunder rumbled faint, like a memory.
“If this is the end of empires,” Drax said softly. “then let the Stormborne stand ready to shape what comes after.”
He turned his horse toward the fading sun, the wolf badge glinting on his chest. Law and blood would soon meet, and the legend of the Stormborne name would start anew.
The sea that carried him south was blood-red at dusk. The waves flecked with gold like the veins of a dying god.
Taranis stood chained at the bow . His eyes fixed on the horizon where Sicily’s black cliffs rose from the mist. Around him, soldiers whispered prayers, unsure if they guarded a man or something older.
Rome had sent for him again. The Emperor’s priests claimed the island’s fires would cleanse the gods’ anger. But that the immortal gladiator Lupus. The Storm of the North must walk in chains through their sacred flames to renew Rome’s favour.
They called it The Ceremony of Chains.
As the ship docked, the air thickened with incense and fear. Bronze masks watched from the shore senators, generals, augurs, all gathered to witness what none understood.
“Bring him forth,” ordered a centurion. Marcus obeyed, his jaw tight. He had seen Taranis survive pits that killed a hundred men, storms that tore stone apart. As he led him down the ramp, he murmured under his breath, “Don’t give them what they want, Lupus.”
Taranis smiled faintly. “I never have.”
They chained him to the altar of basalt, the metal glowing as the fire licked the air. The priests began their chants words of dominion, of empire everlasting.
But the wind shifted. Smoke twisted against their rhythm, curling into strange shapes wings, or storm clouds forming in defiance.
Then the first crack of thunder rolled across the sea.
The Emperor rose, hand trembling on the railing. “What is this?”
Marcus stepped back, eyes wide. “It’s him, sire. The storm doesn’t serve you. It never did.”
Lightning tore through the sky, striking the temple spire. The crowd scattered. Chains melted, ringing against stone like falling bells. Taranis stood midst the fire, eyes burning gold, his voice carrying across the chaos.
“Your empire fed on storms. Now taste one.”
When the smoke cleared, the altar was empty.
Only the scent of ozone and a single iron shackle remained cracked, blackened, and humming softly like a heartbeat.
The name Taranis Stormborne had long since faded from Rome’s records, but not from its whispers.
A hundred years had passed since the day the storm was chained. Yet still he fought beneath the sun not as a man, but as the empire’s curse.
They called him many things now. The Emperor’s Champion. The Storm Gladiator. To the slaves, he was The Unbroken One. And to Rome’s generals, he was a weapon too valuable to destroy, too dangerous to free.
Every emperor since his capture had ordered the same: “Keep him alive.” For his blood immortal, untamed had become Rome’s secret ritual. Each time the storm bled into the sand, their augurs said the city’s heart beat stronger.
Chains replaced chains. Iron became gold. He was moved from the pits of Britannia to the marble arenas of the south. A relic paraded before crowds who no longer remembered his rebellion only the spectacle of a god in man’s form.
Yet he remembered.
Every lash. Every fallen friend. Every whisper of his brothers Drax, Lore, Draven still echoing through the storm he carried in his veins.
And sometimes, when lightning forked across the horizon of the Mediterranean. The guards swore they saw him lift his face to the sky and smile.
“Not long now,” he would murmur, voice low and rough as distant thunder. “The empire will fall and I will still be standing.
A hundred years had passed since the storm was bound.
A hundred winters since Taranis Stormborne’s chains had sung beneath Rome’s hand yet still, his name whispered across the camps and the courts like a ghost too proud to fade.
In the hall of the Legion’s veterans, laughter rose among the embers. Drax, Draven, and Lore sat together with old friends, all bound by immortality, all marked by the centuries. The world had changed around them Rome had fallen, risen, and reshaped itself but some wounds did not age.
“They want to see how far they can push him before he dies,” one of the legionnaires said, swirling wine dark as blood in his cup. “The Empire’s still obsessed with him. Calls him champion now.”
Draven’s brow arched. “Champion?” he repeated, half with scorn, half with disbelief. “The Emperor’s champion? Then he’s no prisoner he’s a prize.”
Another man leaned closer, the firelight cutting sharp lines across his face. “Word is they’ll grant him exile. An island of his own. Somewhere the storms never touch.”
Lore laughed softly though there was no warmth in it. “Exile,” he said. “Rome’s mercy always comes wrapped in iron.”
Marcos older than them all, though untouched by time raised his cup. “Your brother’s no man anymore,” he said quietly. “He’s a story they can’t kill. A weapon they don’t understand.”
The hall fell silent. Only the fire spoke a low hiss, a breath of smoke curling upward.
A woman’s voice, cool as silver, broke the quiet. Calisto, immortal like the brothers, leaned against the pillar’s shadow. “Calisto owns your brother now,” she said. “Gladiator. Slave. Sold to noble women to keep their beds warm and their secrets buried.”
Draven’s hand tightened on the table. “You speak lies,” he growled.
Marcos shook his head slowly. “Not lies. Rome believes a man can be broken if he’s humiliated long enough.” His eyes darkened. “They never understood what blood he carried.”
Drax stared into the fire, jaw set like stone. “Then they’ve forgotten what happens when storms remember,” he murmured.
Outside, thunder rolled faintly over the hills distant, but coming closer.
Artistic representation of Lore Stormborne, featuring intricate patterns and vivid colors, symbolizing his connection to ancient powers and storms.
Rain fell soft upon Emberhelm not in sheets, but in threads, weaving through the night like strands of memory. Each drop whispered against the walls, tracing paths down stone carved before empires rose. The air smelt of iron, damp moss, and prophecy.
Lore moved through the Hall of Echoes with deliberate silence. The torches burned low, their flames bending in strange rhythm, as though swayed by unseen breath. Beneath the central arch lay the dais of oath and upon it, the gold ring.
It shimmered faintly in the half-light, a pulse of life within metal. Not the glow of firelight, but of something older.
Lore hesitated before it. His reflection warped in its surface his eyes darker, sharper, his face marked by the faint runes of bloodline and burden. “The ring of storm and oath,” he murmured. “The bond of the five.”
He reached out. The moment his fingers brushed it, the hall sighed.
A low hum filled the air not from stone or wind, but from within.
Then came the voice.
“Brother…”
The word was barely sound more vibration, more memory. It coiled through him like smoke through glass.
“Taranis…” Lore whispered, his voice trembling. The name itself seemed to awaken something. The torches guttered. The shadows around the walls began to move not randomly, but with purpose, forming the faint outlines of chained figures, of men bowed beneath lightning.
The ring pulsed again, once, twice. Gold bled to storm-grey.
“Show me,” Lore said. “Show me where he walks.”
The pulse deepened and suddenly, the hall was gone.
He stood in mist. Iron gates loomed before him, slick with rain. Beyond them, sand bloodstained and torn an arena. He heard the roars of lions, the clash of blades, the chanting of a foreign crowd. And there, in the centre, Taranis bare-armed, chained, and unbroken. His eyes like stormlight.
“Still he stands,” Lore breathed.
The vision shattered like glass beneath a hammer. He was back in the hall, gasping, knees to the stone floor. The ring still glowed in his palm, its pulse slowing to match his heartbeat.
He knew then: his brother lived but the bond between them had stirred something greater. The old powers beneath the land the ones the druids had whispered of were waking again.
A new sound reached him. A voice, aged as winter bark.
“The ring calls the storm again,” said Maeve, the seer. She stepped from the shadowed archway, her staff crowned with raven feathers and iron charms. “You’ve felt it too the pulse of the deep earth, the cry of the stones.”
Lore rose slowly. “He lives. I saw him. Rome cannot hold him.”
Maeve’s gaze was sharp, knowing. “No but when the storm returns, it will not come gently. Bonds such as yours were not forged for peace. The land remembers its oaths, Lore Stormborne. The blood remembers. And blood always calls for blood.”
He turned toward the open window, where thunder rolled faintly beyond the hills. The storm clouds were gathering again not yet upon them, but coming.
“Then let it come,” he said softly. “We are Stormborne. We do not kneel to the Empire. We endure… and when the sky breaks, we rise.”
The gold ring flared once more, bright as lightning and somewhere far to the south, in a Roman cell slick with rain, Taranis felt it too.
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.
The clang of steel echoed across the Roman training yard. The sun was still low, its pale light glinting off helmets and polished shields. Taranis moved like shadow and storm, his chains rattling as he fought against three centurions in succession.
Every strike he gave was measured, precise but every parry cost him pain. The iron bindings cut into his wrists, leaving a thin red line that deepened with each movement. He refused to yield.
Caelum stood at the edge of the sand pit. His tunic far too fine for this place a youth of maybe sixteen, bright-eyed and restless. His gaze never left Taranis.
“uncle Marcos,” he said quietly, turning to the older man beside him. “Can those chains come off him?”
Marcos didn’t answer at once. His face was lined from years in service, his eyes as sharp as the swords he trained with. “Chains are the only reason he’s still alive, Caelum,” he said finally. “Without them, some fool would call it fear instead of discipline.”
“But he’s fighting for us now.” Caelum’s voice carried, defiant. “For Rome, at least.”
In the pit, Taranis struck low, sweeping a soldier’s legs out from under him. Before turning the momentum into a twist that sent the next centurion stumbling backward.
The last one hesitated, shield raised, watching the way. Taranis breathed steady, like a man waiting for the storm to break.
The chain coiled once, twice then snapped out, wrapping the shield edge and dragging it down. The sound of the soldier hitting the ground was followed by silence.
Caelum took a step ahead. “He’s more Roman than half your men.”
Marcos shot him a warning look. “Careful, boy. You sound like your mother.”
The youth smirked faintly. “She says the same.”
When the training was done, the soldiers dispersed, muttering under their breath half respect, half fear. Taranis knelt in the dust, hands bound before him. Marcos approached, tossing him a canteen.
“You could have killed them,” Marcos said.
Taranis drank, the water streaking through the dust on his face. “You didn’t tell me to.”
Marcos grunted, half a laugh, half frustration. “One day, that mouth of yours will get you killed.”
“Maybe,” Taranis replied. “But not today.”
Caelum stepped closer, watching the bruised wrists, the marks the chains left behind. “You’re not like the others. You don’t fight for their gods.”
Taranis looked at him not unkindly. “No. Mine are older. And they don’t care who wears the crown.”
The boy tilted his head. “If I asked you to fight for me instead of Rome?”
Marcos snapped, “Enough!” But Taranis only smiled slow, deliberate, dangerous.
“Then, little wolf,” he said softly, “you’d better be ready to pay the price.”
Above them, thunder rolled faintly in the distance, though the sky was still clear.
Chains clinked like faint echoes of the arena’s roars, and the scent of iron still clung to the air. Taranis Storm lay awake in the half-darkness, eyes open to the stone ceiling, counting the rhythm of the guards’ boots. Rome slept, but the storm within him did not.
He had won his life for another day, but victory came at a cost. He had shown them what he was. Not a beaten barbarian, but something far more dangerous a man who learned.
At dawn, Marcos appeared at his cell door, shadowed by two guards. “You’ve made them talk,” Marcos said quietly. “The governor himself wants to see you.”
Taranis said nothing. The chains around his wrists jingled as he stood.
They led him through the inner halls of the fortress, where Roman banners hung stiff and silent. Soldiers stared as he passed some curious, others wary. A man who defied lions and bears without breaking was not easily forgotten.
In the governor’s chamber, incense burned thick. Maps of Britannia sprawled across a marble table, marked with red ink and small figurines of silver legions.
The governor, Decimus Varro, was not a cruel man by Roman standards merely pragmatic. “You are a spectacle,” he said, voice calm. “A man who fights like the gods themselves favour him. Tell me, Briton what drives you?”
Taranis met his gaze. “The same thing that drives Rome. Freedom.”
Varro smiled faintly. “Freedom is an illusion. Order is what endures.” He leaned forward. “Serve Rome, and you’ll live well. Defy us again, and your death will be remembered only as noise in the sand.”
Silence stretched between them, thick as the smoke that coiled from the brazier. Then Taranis spoke, slow and deliberate.
“I have no wish to be remembered. Only to finish what began in the storm.”
Varro frowned not in anger, but thought. “Then we understand each other.” He gestured to Marcos. “Train him. Watch him. If he can be tamed, he’ll fight for Rome. If not…”
Taranis was taken to the training grounds. Men waited there gladiators, soldiers, slaves who had survived too long to be careless. The air rang with the sound of iron on iron. Marcos tossed him a blade, better balanced than the last.
“Your real trial starts now,” Marcos said. “In the arena, you fought to live. Out here, you’ll fight to learn what Rome fears most a man they can not own.”
For the first time since his capture, Taranis smiled. The storm had found a new horizon.
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.”
StormborneLore 