The Storm Beneath the Cradle
The fires of the Ring had long since burned low. Smoke and judgment still clung to the stones, but the voices were gone scattered into the dark like leaves. The echoes of debate, of accusations half-spoken and oaths half-broken, were swallowed by wind.
Only Taranis remained.
He stood at the centre of the stone circle, not as a warlord or seer or storm-marked legend, but as a man uncertain of what to do next.
At his feet, a small crib newly carved, rough-edged but lovingly made sat in the shadow of an ancient standing stone.
Runes spiralled along its frame like protective thorns. Inside, the child slept, his breath barely stirring the wolfhide blanket that covered him.
Taranis stared. Watched. Listened to nothing but the sound of his son’s heartbeat soft, fragile, real.
“He’s mine,” he whispered.
The words fell like an oath.
He hadn’t spoken them aloud until now. Not to the Ring. Not even to himself. But the moment he looked into the child’s eyes, he had known.
There in that small, storm-dark gaze was the same flicker that had burned in his own since birth. A fire that would not die, even when beaten. Even when left in chains.
“I wasn’t sure,” he said, as if the child could hear him. “But now I am.”
Footsteps approached quiet but familiar. He didn’t turn.
Drax entered the ring with Aisin beside him. Her dark braid caught what little moonlight remained. She wore no armor, no crown but her presence always arrived like both.
They stood silently for a while, watching him.
“We thought you’d already gone,” Aisin said gently.
“I couldn’t,” Taranis replied. “Not yet.”
He gestured toward the crib, voice taut.
“I know what you’re thinking. That I’m out of character. That I’ve gone soft.”
He turned toward them now. His eyes were storm-lit, ringed with exhaustion. But beneath that a rawness neither of them had ever seen.
“He’s mine,” Taranis repeated. “There’s no denying it now.”
Aisin moved to the crib. She looked down at the child with the quiet reverence of a priestess before a sacred flame. One hand reached out, slow and certain, to brush the boy’s brow.
“He’s strong,” she said. “But quiet. Like he already knows too much.”
Taranis exhaled hard. His voice wavered a rare thing.
“If it’s too much… if he’s too much to carry…”
“We’re not strangers to raising children,” Drax said.
“This one isn’t just any child,” Taranis replied. “He’s my child. And I was no angel.”
He looked to Aisin, then Drax his oldest brother, his iron pillar.
“I can take him elsewhere. To a quiet place. Far from the weight of prophecy. Far from the Ring. Just say the word.”
Drax frowned.
“You’d give him up?”
“I’d shield him,” Taranis corrected. “From this. From me.”
Aisin turned to him, calm and sharp all at once.
“You fear yourself more than your enemies?”
“Yes,” he said. “Because I dream of betrayal, but never the face. I wake with my hand on my blade. I feel hunted in my own mind.”
He swallowed.
“I don’t trust myself near him. Not like this.”
Drax stepped forward and gripped his brother’s arm.
“Then trust us.”
Aisin nodded. “He stays. He is blood. That’s enough.”
Taranis closed his eyes. A moment of stillness passed between them.
Then he whispered, “His name is Caelum.”
The name rang like truth in the circle.
Drax smiled faintly. “Sky-born. Storm-blessed.”
“Let’s hope he lives to become more than that,” Taranis murmured.
Later – The Grove Beyond Emberhelm
Rayne stood in the dark, half-shrouded by the charred remnants of an old grove. Draven hovered nearby, shoulders hunched.
“So. He’s claimed him,” Rayne said, not asking.
“He named him Caelum,” Draven replied.
Rayne smiled thin, sharp.
“That’s dangerous. Naming something is binding it to fate.”
“He’s a child, Rayne.”
“No,” Rayne said. “He’s a threat. A future. A soft spot waiting to be pierced.”
Draven said nothing. He looked at the ash, not the stars.
“You said we’d only observe,” he whispered.
Rayne stepped closer, boots silent against the earth.
“And we are. But sometimes watching is how you choose the moment. Let the warlord get sentimental. Let him love.”
He leaned in, voice silk-wrapped iron.
“Love makes good men hesitate. And hesitation… kills kings.”
© 2025 EL Hewitt. All rights reserved.This story and all characters within the StormborneLore world are the original creation of EL Hewitt. Do not copy, repost, or adapt without permission.
Further Reading
StormborneLore 