The sky over Emberhelm was the colour of old iron, restless with the promise of rain.
Drax stood on the outer wall, eyes on the valley below, where the last of the summer haze clung to the river. Beside him, Taranis rested both hands on the stone, watching the horizon as though it might bite.
“You’re quieter than usual,” Drax said.
“I’m listening.”
“To what?”
“The wind,” Taranis murmured. “It changes when something’s coming.”
A raven cut the sky, wings beating hard against the weather. It landed on the wall, a thin strip of leather tied to its leg. Drax caught it, untied the strip, and read the message aloud:
Strangers on the ridge. Armed. Not raiders. Moving slow.
Taranis’s jaw flexed. “Slow means they know we’re watching.”
“Could be traders.”
“Could be worse.” His gaze didn’t leave the valley. “Tell the scouts to shadow them. No contact. Not yet.”
Drax nodded, but his eyes caught something else his brother’s hand, hovering near the hilt of his sword even now, when there was no battle to fight.
The Sacred Grove
The grove smelled of damp earth and crushed mint where the rains had touched the leaves. Nessa sat with Caelum in the shadow of an ancient oak, rocking the carved crib gently with her boot.
“You were born into a dangerous world,” she whispered to the child. “But so was I.”
The voice came from behind her, thin as wind through reeds. “Danger shapes the strong, girl.”
Nessa turned. An old woman stood between two leaning yews, her green cloak patched and frayed, her hair a braid of white and ash. Her eyes were the pale grey of morning frost.
She stepped forward without asking, bent low over the crib, and traced the runes with a fingertip.
“Sky-born,” she murmured. “Storm-blessed. He will outlive his father’s crown… but not his father’s shadow.”
Nessa’s hand closed over the dagger at her belt. “What does that mean?”
The woman only smiled a sad, knowing curve of the mouth and stepped back into the trees. By the time Nessa reached the grove’s edge, she was gone.
The Council Stones
The gold circle gleamed beneath a bruised sky. Thirteen seats. Twelve filled.
Rayne’s voice carried first. “We should send the child away. Somewhere safe.”
“Safe?” Drax’s tone was a low growl. “You mean hidden.”
“Hidden is alive,” Rayne countered. “And alive is better than lying in the earth when prophecy catches him.”
Draven shifted in his seat, eyes down. “He’s a spark in dry grass. If the wrong hands reach him”
Lore’s voice cut through. “If fear writes the next chapter for us, we lose the right to call ourselves the Ring. Better we strengthen our walls than scatter our own blood to the winds.”
“You speak like someone who’s never buried a child,” Rayne said flatly.
Drax’s hand tightened on the stone armrest. “And you speak like someone who’d rather be rid of a burden than bear it.”
The silence that followed was sharp enough to bleed.
Rayne’s Quarters
Taranis didn’t knock. The door slammed against the wall as he stepped inside.
“You think I won’t hear what you say about my son?”
Rayne looked up from his table, unbothered. “Your son? Or your weakness?”
Taranis’s hand hit the table hard enough to rattle the cups. “If you move against him”
“If I wanted him gone,” Rayne interrupted, “he would be gone. I don’t need the Ring’s blessing for that.”
Taranis’s eyes narrowed. “Then you’re waiting.”
Rayne leaned back, smiling without warmth. “You’ve already faltered, brother. All I have to do is let the sky finish the work.”
The Outer Gate
The scouts returned at nightfall, mud on their boots and rain in their hair.
“They’ve reached the lower valley,” one said. “Twenty of them. And they’re asking for the Stormborne child by name.”
The Ring gathered in the torchlit hall, arguments sparking like flint. Some called for parley, others for steel.
Taranis stood apart, Caelum in his arms, the boy’s small hand gripping the edge of his father’s cloak.
“They will not take him while I breathe,” he said, and there was no room for doubt in his voice.
Final Beat
As orders rang through Emberhelm, Rayne stood in the shadows of the hall, Draven at his side.
“The warlord has chosen love over reason,” Rayne murmured. “Now we wait for the sky to fall.”
Outside, lightning flashed over the valley once, twice before the rain came.
The morning mist clung to the earth like breath held too long.
Taranis stood barefoot in the frost-hardened dirt, his cloak wrapped tightly around his shoulders. Before him, the children the eleven pulled from the pit stood in an uneven line. Some shivered. One held a stick like a sword. Another clenched it like a club.
“Not to hurt,” Taranis said. His voice was calm but carried weight. “To protect.”
He walked along the line, placing his hand gently on each child’s shoulder. Their eyes were wide. Some still flinched. But none ran.
Boldolph sat at Taranis’s right, silent and unmoving, a guardian of the moment. Morrigan circled the clearing with the patience of a winter wind, occasionally brushing a child’s ankle with her tail when their stance faltered.
Solaris stood at the edge of the clearing, arms folded. He watched Taranis with an unreadable expression.
“They’re too small,” he said quietly.
Taranis turned.
“So was I,” he replied.
He took a staff from the ground and twirled it with precision, the end cutting the air in a slow arc.
“If we wait for them to grow, it will be too late.”
That evening, the fire burned low. The children huddled close to its warmth, whispering stories they were beginning to remember stories Taranis had told them about the wolves, the fire, the storm.
Solaris sat apart from them, alone with the thoughts that had haunted him for weeks.
He rose when all were asleep. He moved through the shadows, past the bones of old tents and the ghosts of gallows, until he reached the western tree line.
From inside his tunic, he pulled a strip of black cloth, worn thin and embroidered with a single red claw.
He tied it to a crooked branch. Then he whispered.
“Tell them the storm is coming.”
His voice cracked.
“Tell them… it’s Taranis.”
He turned, vanishing back into the mist.
It happened at dawn.
Taranis led a scouting party through the ashwoods Boldolph at his side, two scouts ahead, three boys from the training ring carrying supplies. The fog was thick, the silence heavier than snow.
They never saw the first spear.
It took one of the scouts through the chest. Another cried out and was silenced. The boys ran or tried to but two were taken by horsemen bearing the sigil of the Black Claw.
Taranis fought like a storm obsidian pendant flashing in the smoke, staff and blade spinning but by the time the sun broke the treetops, four were dead, two missing, and the forest was soaked in blood.
He returned on foot, armour torn, a wound above his eye leaking down his face.
Grael met him at the gates.
“They were waiting for us,” the warlord said grimly.
Taranis nodded.
“They knew we were coming.”
“Someone told them.”
The circle was cleared at dusk. Warriors formed the ring. The children watched from behind Morrigan’s flank. The fire crackled but did not comfort.
Solaris stood in the centre, unbound. He didn’t run. He didn’t plead.
Taranis entered last, blood still dried in the cracks of his skin.
“You warned them,” he said flatly.
Solaris bowed his head.
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because they would have killed my children,” Solaris said softly. “I was trying to stop a war.”
Taranis stepped closer, gaze unwavering.
“You started one.”
The words were quiet. Measured. Final.
From a wrapped bundle at his belt, Taranis pulled a collar carved bone, etched with runes. Not the iron of chains. Something older. Something sacred.
“You are not my enemy,” Taranis said. “But you are no longer free.”
“You will serve. You will teach. You will live in the light of what you did and what you chose not to.”
He placed the collar around Solaris’s neck. It locked with a soft click.
Solaris did not resist. He simply whispered, “Thank you for letting me live.”
Taranis didn’t answer.
Days passed. The air grew colder. But the children trained each dawn, and the wolves stayed close.
Solaris taught them how to cook, how to read the skies, how to find warmth when the earth turned bitter. Taranis taught them how to fight but more than that, how to stand. How to speak without fear. How to remember.
“We were broken,” he told them. “But we are still here.”
A council formed. Not by title. By oath.
Grael stood with arms crossed, nodding at the children now sleeping beside the fire. Morrigan lay curled with the youngest boy against her ribs. Boldolph prowled the border like a guardian carved from ash and stone.
Taranis drew three sigils in the dirt.
A flame. A storm. A shadow.
“We are not a camp anymore,” he said. “We are Caernath.”
The Seer who had first named him stepped forward, voice wind-carried.
Told from Morrigan’s point of view. Lyrical, sorrowful, protective.
They buried him where the roots run deep, beneath a sky that would not speak. No stone, no name, no parting word just silence where the storm once stirred.
But we are not gods, nor men who flee. We are wolves, and wolves still see.
I smelled his blood. I heard his cry. I knew the truth, he did not die.
They called him beast, then cast him low but ash does not forget the glow.
So we dug with fang, with heart, with howl, we marked the traitors, bone and soul.
The trial fire still burned in the hearts of the warriors long after the flames had faded.
They left the stone circle at sunrise, the air thick with silence. Taranis walked unbound now, but still marked the collar firm around his neck, his wrists bruised, the pendant of obsidian pressing warm against his chest beneath the tunic Solaris had given him.
No one spoke of the dragon.
They didn’t need to. Its shadow had burned itself into every man’s memory.
By midday, they reached the edge of a sprawling war camp carved between high ridges and pine forest. Smoke rose from scattered fires. Grael dismounted first and gave the order for rest and supplies. Taranis stood nearby, posture straight, though his limbs ached from the days of trials and visions.
A hush followed him wherever he moved. Some men nodded. Others turned away.
One older warrior spat at his feet and muttered, “Dragon-kissed freak.”
Taranis didn’t respond. But Grael saw and said nothing.
Inside the central tent, the tension grew.
“You should exile him,” said Kareth, a clan captain with blood on his hands and ambition in his eyes. “Or bind him again. The men are talking.”
“This boy walks free after breaking formation, defying orders, and drawing the attention of beasts older than the gods?”
Grael looked up from the war map.
“Exactly. He walked through fire and survived. He fought off Clawclan while half my guard bled out in the dirt. He was named by a Seer. You want to leash him again? You do it.”
Kareth hesitated. “If he leads a rebellion, it’ll be your head.”
“No,” Grael said. “It’ll be his. If he earns death, he’ll find it. But if he earns something more, I won’t stand in the way.”
That night, Taranis sat near the outer fire, the pendant warm against his chest again. Solaris approached with a fresh poultice and a torn piece of roasted meat.
A growl echoed in the hills not wolf, not wind. Something deeper. Some warriors looked up. A few rose to check their weapons.
A young scout came running from the ridge.
“Smoke! North side. Something’s burning!”
They scrambled toward the hill’s edge and saw it.
A rival clan’s border camp was ash and ruin. No screams, no survivors. Only smoldering black earth and claw marks in the rock.
“Raiders?” Solaris asked.
“No,” Taranis said quietly. “It’s a warning.”
Grael joined them, silent, jaw tight.
Kareth was already shouting. “This is what he brings! The dragon follows him. Death follows him!”
“No,” Taranis said. “The dragon doesn’t follow me. It watches.”
“Same thing.”
Grael raised a hand. “Enough. We return to Emberhelm. There, the chieftains will decide what happens next.”
The journey to Emberhelm took two days. The stone fortress carved into the mountains stood stark against the dawn ancient, proud, watching the valley like a sentinel.
When they entered, the whispers turned to stares.
Children peeked from behind barrels. Elders crossed their arms. A group of shieldmaidens flanking the gate parted only after Grael rode forward and gave the sign.
Taranis dismounted, cloak billowing slightly behind him. No chains. No mask. Only the obsidian pendant.
In the Great Hall, the Five Voices of the War Council sat in a semi-circle.
Old warriors. Mothers of fallen sons. Leaders of lesser clans.
One stood Sern, a matriarch with fire in her eyes and silver in her braid.
“We saw the storm,” she said. “We saw the dragon’s wings. We heard the Seer’s cry.”
Another voice cut in a young man named Fenric, blood cousin to the boy Taranis had crippled.
“He’s cursed. He bled our kin, broke our laws, walked with beasts. Now you bring him here unbound?”
Grael stepped forward. “I bring you a warrior.”
“Not yet,” Sern said. “Not until the rite is finished.”
“What rite?” Taranis asked.
She pointed to the firepit at the centre of the chamber.
“You were bound by man. Now let the flame judge if you are bound by fate.”
They handed him a staff and stripped him to the waist. The collar remained. So did the pendant.
The fire was lit with dried hawthorn, wolf hair, and elder root.
He stepped into the circle.
“Do you claim name or no name?” Lady Sern asked.
Taranis raised his head. “I claim the storm.”
A gust of wind blew through the open doors behind him.
“Then speak your vow.”
Taranis closed his eyes.
“I was chained as beast. I was broken by man. But I rise not to rule only to walk free. I serve the flame, the wolves, the storm. If I break my word, may the dragon turn from me.”
He thrust the staff into the fire.
It did not burn.
Instead, the flame spiraled into the air and far above, the sky answered with a distant roar.
The hall went silent.
Lady Sern bowed her head.
“Then you are no longer beast. Nor slave. Nor tool.”
She placed her hand on his collar.
“From this day, you are Stormborne.”
She broke the collar with a hammer of bronze.
The pieces fell to the stone floor like the last chains of a life left behind.
Does that mean he’s free?” Solaris asked.
Taranis placed a hand to his neck, fingers brushing the worn ridge where the collar had once pressed deep.
“Or am I to be exiled?”
A hush fell again, broken only by the wind rustling through the pine above.
“Exile him,” came a voice from the gathered crowd, “and I will hunt him myself.”
All heads turned.
It was not Grael who spoke, nor one of the regular warband. It was a man cloaked in dark fur, standing apart from the others near the treeline scarred face, sun-dark skin, hair braided with bone. A chieftain from another clan.
“He bears the storm’s mark. He’s no beast. No slave. And not mine to cast out.” His voice was low, graveled with age and fire. “But if you send him away, don’t expect him to come back.”
Taranis didn’t flinch. His eyes locked on the stranger’s. He neither bowed nor raised his head. Just… endured.
Grael stepped forward.
“He’s not exiled,” the general said. “Nor is he yet free. The trial burned away the mask, but chains leave scars longer than flame.”
“And what is he now?” Solaris asked.
Grael looked to the warriors, the gathered villagers, the scouts and wounded men who had seen the dragon descend.
“He is Stormborne,” he said. “Named not by man, but by thunder. And while I draw breath, that name will be honoured.”
There was a ripple in the crowd not agreement, not rejection. Just change. Unease becoming belief.
Taranis turned to Solaris. “Then I stay?”
Solaris nodded. “If you want to.”
“I don’t know what I want,” the boy admitted. “I only know I’m still breathing.”
Beside him, the black scale the one left by the dragon was now strung on a simple leather thong, hanging from his belt like a forgotten relic. He touched it once, gently.
A woman stepped forward from the watching crowd. She carried no weapons only a clay bowl filled with ash and herbs.
“I came from the ridge when I heard the trial fire was lit,” she said. “If the dragon marked him, then his wounds must be sealed properly. Not with chains. With earth.”
She knelt before Taranis and dipped two fingers into the bowl. Ash and sage stained her fingertips. She reached up and slowly touched each side of his jaw where the mask had pressed hardest.
“You have walked through smoke,” she whispered. “Now rise through flame.”
Taranis stood, a little taller than before.
Grael gave a curt nod. “We break camp tomorrow. Clawclan still stirs in the lowlands. But the boy rides his own horse now. No packs. No tether.”
“And the collar?” Solaris asked.
Grael glanced at it now lying in the dirt.
“Leave it where it fell.”
As the crowd began to scatter, a new chant rose quietly from the younger warriors near the fire.
I did not choose the chains, but I learned their shape. Learned the weight of silence, the taste of hunger, the way rope sings when it bites through bone.
They thought the collar would teach me stillness. But stillness is not silence, and I was never empty.
I remember the wolves beneath moonlight, the breath of frost against my skin, the old songs in my blood that no blade can carve out.
I am not the boy you cast away. I am not the beast you tried to break. I am the howl that returns when you think the dark is done with you. I am the storm that waits beneath your quiet sky.
Let the mask bite. Let the tether burn. I do not beg. I endure.
StormborneLore 