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:
The moon hung low over the marshlands of Cymru, a pale and silent witness to all that stirred beneath. Mist curled along the ground like ghost-breath. Threading through reeds and thorns, cloaking the land in a hush that even time dared not break.
Morrigan stood at the water’s edge, her white fur shimmering with silver dew. The red pentagram upon her brow pulsed faintly with memory not magic, not prophecy, but something older still loss.
She remembered the laughter of her children, once. Their small feet dancing on stone, their breath warm against her skin when she had a face and a name.
That was long before the curse had sealed her fate. A punishment for defying death, for choosing the path of protector instead of prey.
She had not been seen in her human form by another soul in centuries.
The wind carried the scent of heather, salt, and far off fire. It shifted, and she turned her head sharply. From the west, a presence stirred. Not prey. Not predator. Something… remembered.
Her mate, Boldolph, emerged from the shadows. A black wolf with eyes like fire and a gold sigil carved into the fur of his brow. The mark of the king of wolves. He towered beside her, but even he did not speak.
Boldolph, the king of wolves, with glowing red eyes and a mystical sigil on his brow.
They not speak.
They had not touched in human form since the binding.
And still, their silence said more than words ever.
A sudden cry pierced the stillness not a howl, but the breathless whimper of cubs. Morrigan turned. Nestled in the hollow of a fallen tree, her children stirred, sensing the shift in the wind. She padded over, nose to fur, and breathed them back into slumber.
Her heart, once burned hollow by grief, beat now for them.
But the forest would not rest.
Tonight, something ancient woke.
Chapter 1
The Scent of a Storm.
The first rain came softly a warning more than a downpour. Tapping gently against the heather and bracken as dusk bled into the marshes. Morrigan crouched low on a rise of dry stone, her pale red eyes scanning the windswept valley below.
Somewhere to the north, a herd of deer was shifting. Their hooves left trembles in the ground. Their scent curled up through the fog.
But Morrigan wasn’t hunting tonight.
She was waiting.
Beneath her, in the hollowed belly of a mossy yew, three wolf cubs whimpered and stirred. Her children not the kind born of curse or storm, but of blood and memory. The youngest one, all white save for a copper ear, squeaked for her warmth. Morrigan tucked her body closer, curling like a shield around them.
Above her, the clouds began to crackle with unnatural colour. A shade of light not seen since…
Not since the last time the veil split.
The Shape of the Wind A sudden gust brought a foreign scent.
Not prey.
Not predator.
Something old.
Something… broken.
Her hackles rose.
Across the ridge. Boldolph stood, silhouetted against the sky like a god of the old wilds. His black fur glistening with rain, red eyes aflame with alertness. He hadn’t seen her in human form for hundreds of years. Neither had she seen him. The curse did not allow it.
But she felt him now that familiar gravity, that fierce ache of loyalty and loss.
“Do you feel it?” her voice stirred the wind, though no one else hear it.
He gave no answer, only turned his head westward toward the forests. Vasts woodlands of what would one day be called Cannock Chase.
Chapter 2
The boy in the trees
They saw him before he saw them.
A shadow moving through the trees. Too small to be a warrior. Too slow to be a deer.
He was staggering. Starving. But the flame in his eyes refused to die.
Morrigan stepped ahead, paws silent on the stone. The cubs whimpered behind her. Boldolph moved to block her path, lips curled, teeth bared but not at her.
At fate.
At what it meant.
At what it would cost.
Another child. Another risk. Another ache that never leave.
She looked again.
Not a warrior. Not yet.
Just a boy.
But storms followed him.
She turned back to her cubs. Nestled, safe for now. She licked each one gently, then closed the hollow with fallen bark. The marsh would protect them. She whispered an old name into the soil to guard them a name she hadn’t used in centuries.
Then, she stepped into the mist.
Boldolph growled low, a warning.
She brushed against him as she passed her head beneath her head beneath his muzzle, a gesture older than language. Boldolph did not move, but the tension in his shoulders eased. Just for a moment. Enough.
The storm scent was growing stronger.
Morrigan slipped into the trees, her paws silent against the mulch of leaf and root. Branches clawed at her fur like hands from a forgotten dream, but she did not flinch. She knew these woods. She had bled in them. Breathed in them. Hidden in them.
The boy was not far.
She found him collapsed beside a fallen trunk. his arms wrapped around his ribs as though trying to hold himself together. Dirt and blood streaked his face. His feet were bare, blistered, and blue with cold. He had a stick in one hand sharpened crudely, but not recently used.
Even in sleep, his jaw was clenched. Even in pain, his spirit did not bend.
Morrigan circled him in the shadows, one silent loop, then two. She tilted her head. A vision stirred fleeting and broken of a campfire once lit in the hollows of men’s hearts. A voice crying in a tongue lost to fire and flood.
A name.
Taranis.
It did not belong to this boy yet.
But it would.
She drew closer.
The Unseen Form had she still worn her human face, she have wept. But wolves did not weep. They watched. They endured.
Still, some griefs slipped through the fur.
She lowered herself beside the boy, her body a wall against the wind. Carefully, she placed her muzzle against his shoulder. His skin was fever-hot, but beneath it pulsed a stubborn rhythm.
He lived.
From the trees behind, Boldolph appeared, silent as the dusk. He said nothing, but his stare asked everything.
“What are you doing?”
She answered without words.
What we once promised what the old ways demand.
Another life. Another orphan. Another soul cast out by fear and ignorance.
The forest whispered around them voices of old gods and buried secrets. Morrigan raised her head and howled, low and haunting, a call only the wild would understand. It wasn’t a summoning.
It was a vow.
For three days, they watched over the boy.
She hunted while Boldolph guarded. He fetched water from the shallows, carried in his great jaws. She chewed softened bark and nettle, placing it near the boy’s lips. He drank in his fever-dreams, whispering names not yet earned, warnings not yet understood.
On the second night, he opened his eyes.
Just a sliver.
And saw her.
Not as a wolf. Not as a monster.
But as something else.
He reached a hand out. Weak. Trembling.
She did not pull away.
On the third morning, he stood.
Not steady. Not tall. But standing, nonetheless.
And behind him, the sky split with light.
Stormborne
He walked between them then between Boldolph and Morrigan as though he had always belonged.
The name passed once more through Morrigan’s mind like a wind returning home:
Taranis.
Storm-born. Marked. A child of prophecy and exile.
She didn’t yet know the shape of his story. Only that it would be vast. Only that it had begun.
And that somewhere in its ending, her curse would find its purpose.
The bond between Taranis and Morrigan, symbolizing the awakening of ancient legacies in ‘StormborneLore’.
Diolch am ddarllen. Os gwnaeth y stori hon eich cyffwrdd, eich ysbrydoli, neu aros fel sibrwd yn y coed ystyriwch hoffi, rhannu, neu danysgrifio i ddilyn y daith.
💬 Got thoughts, theories, or echoes of your own? Drop a comment and join the legend.
🌩️ The storm remembers every soul who listens.
A moment of connection between Tanaris and two mystical wolves under a full moon, symbolizing a bond forged by destiny.
Authors note: Unfortunately I needed to use Google Translate for the Welsh so appologise if I got any of it wrong.
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 painted circular stone depicting a serene landscape with trees and a sun, contrasting the eerie atmosphere of the forest.
The air was wrong.
Callum Hargreaves opened his eyes to silence so deep it pressed against his chest. No engines in the distance. No birdsong. No radio crackle.
Only the trees. And the damp earth beneath him.
He sat up slowly, wincing. His body felt heavier, like the atmosphere itself had thickened. The forest wasn’t just quiet it was ancient. The trunks were massive, rough with moss and lichen, and the undergrowth twisted in ways he didn’t remember. Even the colours seemed muted. More… real. Older.
His phone was dead. No signal. Not even a flicker of battery life.
The feather was still in his hand.
White. Burnt at the edge.
He stood, breath visible in the still air. The mist clung low to the ground, like it was trying to hide something.
The stone was gone. The path was gone.
He turned full circle. No trails. No signs. Just forest. Endless.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself. “Get your bearings. Pick a direction. Stay calm.”
But as he moved ahead, he noticed something.
There were no footprints. Not his. Not animals. No trash. No broken branches. Nothing that said people had ever been here.
Except one thing.
A shape in the clearing ahead barely visible in the haze.
It was another stone. Taller. Deeper carved. The same symbol as before a spiral, or a horn, or… something.
At its base, a small pile of bones. Clean. Arranged in a ring. And at the centre, an ash-blackened tooth.
A vibrant painted stone featuring a spiral design, symbolizing mystery and connection to nature.
Callum backed up a step.
A low growl rippled through the silence.
His eyes snapped up.
A wolf stood across the clearing.
It wasn’t moving. Just watching.
Eyes like molten gold. Fur dark and matted. Muscles tensed, but not ready to strike.
Behind it… a second figure. Not a wolf.
Human.
Massive. Silent. Cloaked in furs. A silhouette against the trees.
Callum couldn’t breathe.
He blinked. And they were gone.
Just trees again. Just mist.
But the whispering had changed.
Not words anymore.
A name.
One he didn’t know. One he couldn’t pronounce.
But it curled in his head like smoke: Taranis.
To be continued…
From the Author
I grew up visiting the Chase, walking the woods and hearing the stories. Have you experienced anything unusual in woods? The whispers among the trees?
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.
The fire crackled low, licking the belly of a fresh kill. A young deer brought down by patience and precision. Its scent mingled with pine resin, wood smoke, and the dry musk of wolf-fur.
Taranis sat cross-legged near the embers, his gray eyes fixed on nothing.
He had not spoken aloud in days. The wolves Boldolph, silent and alert. Morrigan, fierce-eyed and restless watched him as they always did, as if tethered not by duty, but by knowing.
He tore the meat with his fingers, chewing slowly, not tasting. Hunger had long become a ghost he ignored, like the grief that gnawed behind his ribs.
Then came the rustle. Too light for bear. Too soft for storm.
He didn’t move. But the wolves did.
A man emerged from the trees, thin, mud-streaked, crouching low not with confidence, but desperation. He made for the meat as if pulled by instinct stronger than fear. But the moment his hand reached toward the platter of bark and stone…
A low growl stopped him.
Morrigan’s teeth shone like bone in firelight. Boldolph blocked his retreat. And Taranis finally looked up.
Their eyes met. One pair hollowed by loss, the other by starvation.
“I thought you would kill me,” the stranger whispered.
“I have,” Taranis replied, “for less.”
He stood slowly, towering over the man a figure carved by exile, his face painted with ash and time. But there was no rage in him now. Only silence. And a slow understanding.
He broke the meat in half. Handed the larger piece to the thief.
The man hesitated, then took it with shaking hands.
“What’s your name?” Taranis asked.
The man blinked. “Rhonan.”
“No longer a thief,” Taranis said, sitting again. “Tonight, you eat with me. Tomorrow, you hunt beside me. And if you run…” He glanced to Morrigan. “You’ll not outrun the black one.”
Rhonan gave a breath that was a laugh, or a sob.
And for the first time in many moons, Taranis chewed his meat and tasted it.
From the author:
This story bridges two truths: that hunger drives desperation, and that mercy can be stronger than fear. Taranis’s decision not to punish the man reflects a deeper shift. one from raw survival to the beginnings of community, yet small.
If you’ve ever chosen kindness when the world expected cruelty this story is for you.
A vibrant, stylized tree under a dark sky, adorned with colorful leaves and a glowing moon, symbolizing the intertwining of nature and mysticism.
Taranis had wandered for three days since his exile. Taranis wore no furs now., just the old stag-hide wrap and the necklace his mother had pressed into his palm with shaking fingers.
He ate roots and river water,. Asheand slept like a fox with one ear open and his back to a tree.
That night, a full moon watched the world from behind broken cloud. The forest lit with silver veins. Taranis crouched low near a hollow oak, flint blade across his lap. He had not lit a fire. Fire betrayed you. Fire drew eyes.
But still eyes found him.
Two pairs.
One black, one white.
Both wolves. Both silent. Both watching from the mist beyond the briar.
He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.
The white one larger, its coat matted with burrs stepped ahead. A long scar dragged across its eye, but the eye still burned red. Not the red of rage, but of knowing. Of memory.
The smaller wolf circled left. Her coat was black as smoke and moved like shadow even under moonlight.
Still, Taranis did not move. This was not a hunt. Not a threat. This was a test.
When the white wolf sat, the black one joined him.
They stared.
And then they spoke.
Not aloud not in the way people do but in the marrow of his bones. In the beat of his pulse. In the dreams he hadn’t yet had.
“You carry the storm. Not all storms destroy.”
He blinked. He gripped the flint tighter.
“We are not what we seem. Nor are you.”
A striking depiction of a black wolf howling at the moon, surrounded by vibrant blues and purples, evoking a sense of mystery and wilderness.
Then, the black wolf Boldolph moved first. He stepped to the base of the hollow tree and pawed at the ground. When he pulled back, there was something in the soil. A ring of old stones. A feather. A scrap of iron, ancient before iron had names.
The white wolf Morrigan touched it with her snout.
And in a moment that split the world like thunder, they changed.
Two wolves became two people. Not naked, not fully human, but forms caught between part smoke, part bone, part memory. She bore a crow’s wing in her braid. He had a jaw shaped not by age, but by sorrow.
Taranis did not flinch. The storm inside him had seen worse. Had survived worse.
Morrigan reached ahead and laid the feather at his feet.
“Blood forgets. But stone remembers. You are carved already.”
Boldolph raised his hand, three fingers missing. Still, he gestured not in threat, but in oath.
“This forest sees you. You are not alone.”
And just like that, they were wolves again.
Gone into the mist.
Only the feather remained.
And the storm inside Taranis? It no longer howled alone.
A painted stone representing fire hitting the earth near standing stones – abstract art.
The Fire That Ran from the Sky.
Long before the clans gathered,
beneath the Roaches ridge, before the stones were marked with names, the sky itself betrayed the earth.
It began as a night without stars. A quiet so deep the wind dared not breathe.
Then flames tore across the heavens.
The elders called it the Fire That Ran from the Sky. A burning serpent of light and death that raced faster than the eyes follow.
From the hills near what the future would call Staffordshire,. the clans watched in horror as the blazing serpent descended, striking the land with a terrible force. Trees exploded into firestorms; rivers steamed and boiled.
Smoke curled upward, blotting out the moon.
When the fire touched the great wood, the earth shook and cracked. A great chasm opened, swallowing whole herds and warriors alike.
In the days that followed, the sky rained ash. The air was thick with the scent of burning flesh and ancient sorrow.
But from the ruins, life stirred anew.
The clans, scattered and broken, gathered under a new oath to honor the fire that had destroyed and forged them.
They built great stone altars on the hills. Each year they held a vigil, lighting fires that mirrored the serpent’s dance across the sky.
It was said that those who dared to look into the flames see the fire’s spirit a fierce. ever-burning heart that chose the worthy and cursed the false.
And so, the Fire That Ran from the Sky became legend, a warning, and a blessing.
A story whispered by those who survived the night. Those who vowed never to forget the power of the storm that shapes all things.
When the fire’s fury faded, the world was silent and broken.
The great wood once thick with ancient oaks and whispering leaves lay scorched and blackened, its heart beaten by flame.
Smoke still curled from the ground, and the air tasted of ash and sorrow.
The clans that survived wandered through the ruin, their footsteps heavy on the brittle earth.
Marak Storm Eye, then a young warrior, knelt beside a fallen tree stump. Its bark cracked and bleeding resin like tears.
“We must live,” he said, voice raw but fierce. “This fire has taken much, but it has not taken our will.” he said looking to his people.
Those around gathered roots and herbs. As they began learning which plants heal scorched flesh and which cleanse the bitter smoke from their lungs.
Around him, others nodded, their faces grim. From the ashes, they hunted the beasts that had fled or died.
At night, they huddled close to small, careful fires. The warmth giving comfort. While their new altars whispering prayers to the sky and earth, asking for mercy and strength.
It was in this time of hardship that the first whispers of the Thunder Child were born. For some said the fire had marked the land, and the clans, with destiny.
And so, from ruin, the storm-wrapped promise of a new age began to stir.
Colorful hand-painted stones depicting various abstract and natural scenes.
After Taranis’s Exile
The wind mourns,
through the ancient trees, Whispering tales of broken kin, A son cast out beyond the flame, Where shadows dwell and wild beasts grin.
The fire we built,
Now cold and dim, The bond once strong,
now stretched and torn. I sent you forth, my blood and bone, To face the night, alone, forlorn.
Yet in the stars, your name still burns, A flicker bright against the dark. Though exiled from the hearth’s warm heart, You carry still our family’s mark.
Run swift, my son, through storm and stone, May strength be yours when paths grow rough. The wolf still howls within your blood, And I, your father, watch from dusk.
One day the earth may shift again, And bring you back where you belong. Until that time, beneath the sky, I sing this lonely, bitter song.
StormborneLore 