The last of the rain had faded, leaving the courtyard of Pennocrucium slick with light. Drax stood with his men, issuing orders for the road north, when a shout broke the morning calm.
A boy no more than ten came running from the treeline. Bare-foot and wild-eyed, his breath tearing in the cold air. The guards moved to intercept, but Drax raised a hand.
The child stumbled to a halt before him, clutching a scrap of parchment tight against his chest.
“He said to give you this,” the boy gasped.
“Who?” Drax asked.
The boy only pointed back toward the woods. “The man with the scars. He said you’d know.”
A chill heavier than the rain settled over the praefect. Slowly, Drax took the parchment. The wax seal bore a spiral mark the Ring of the Stormborne.
He turned the seal over in his palm, the crimson wax cracked and flaking like old blood.
“Did he say anything else?”
The boy shook his head. “Only that the sea’s not where he’s coming from anymore.”
Drax looked up, scanning the mist beyond the walls. “Go home, lad,” he said quietly. “And tell your mother to keep her doors barred tonight.”
When the child was gone, Drax broke the seal. The message inside was written in a firm, weathered hand one he had not seen since the exile.
Brother, If Rome still owns your heart, it will soon own your sons. The storm has left the sea. Meet me where the law ends and the wild begins at Cnocc. — T.
Drax folded the letter and slid it into his cloak. Around him, his men watched, waiting for orders.
“Mount up,” he said finally. “We ride before sunset.”
“Sir?” his aide asked. “The boy”
“Forget the boy.” Drax’s gaze lingered on the northern horizon, where thunderclouds gathered over the hills. “Remember the name.”
The road north was half-swallowed by mist. The horses hooves splashed through the puddled ruts. The sound muted beneath the weight of silence that followed them from Pennocrucium.
Drax rode ahead, the sealed parchment still heavy in his cloak. Each mile drew him closer to the hill he had sworn never to see again Cnocc. the place Rome had called untamed and his people had called sacred.
Behind him, his men rode uneasily. They had fought rebels, pirates, and ghosts of empire. But none of them knew what to do with silence that breathed like a living thing.
“Sir,” Maren said quietly, drawing level with his father. “We’re far past the patrol lines. There are no markers, no forts… not even smoke from farms.”
“There used to be farms,” Drax replied. “Before the Empire burned them.”
The boy said nothing more.
They reached the crest by dusk. The land opened out before them rolling forest and wet moor. Scattered with standing stones like broken teeth in the earth. The wind smelled of peat and lightning.
A movement caught Drax’s eye a flicker among the stones. A man watching, cloaked and hooded.
Drax reined in. “Hold.”
The riders stopped. The watcher didn’t flee. Instead, he raised a horn old, carved from a blackened ram’s horn and blew once, low and deep. The sound rolled through the mist like thunder in a cave.
Within moments, others appeared half a dozen figures stepping from the treeline. The shields blackened, armour mismatched, but each bearing the spiral mark upon their arms.
The Black Shields.
Maren’s hand went to his sword. “Father”
“Wait.”
Drax dismounted slowly, his boots sinking into the wet soil. He walked ahead alone until the leader stepped out a woman. Tall and scarred, with iron rings braided through her dark hair.
“Praefect Drax Stormborne,” she said, her voice low and steady. “Or do you answer to Rome only now?”
Drax studied her face. “I answer to my blood when it calls me by name.”
She nodded once. “Then the storm welcomes you home.”
From behind her, two men carried something between them a bundle wrapped in oilcloth, heavy and dark. They laid it at Drax’s feet.
He knelt, unwrapping it. Inside lay a Roman helm scorched, the crest torn away and beneath it. A bronze medallion marked with the eagle of the Twelfth Legion.
Maren’s breath caught. “That’s”
“Proof,” Drax said softly. “That my brother isn’t bluffing.”
The woman met his gaze. “Taranis waits at the standing circle by dawn. He says he’ll speak to you not the Praefect, not the lawman. The brother.”
Drax rose slowly, rain dripping from his cloak. “Then he shall have both.”
Thunder rolled again closer this time, echoing through the hollow hills.
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They call him the storm, the unbroken one, but they do not see the cracks beneath the surface. I do. I have always seen.
From the shadows of Rome’s streets to the secret alleys where whispers become currency, I move like a shadow with purpose. The Black Shields rise under Taranis, but they are not invincible and I am patient. One misstep, one flicker of hesitation, and the scales will tip.
My brothers do not trust me nor should they. Loyalty is a chain, and I have never been bound. Drax enforces law. Lore watches omens. Taranis commands storms. And I… I navigate the spaces in between, sowing discord where it will serve me best, testing their strength, and waiting for the moment the tide shifts in my favor.
Rome believes in its security, its arenas, its chains. Let them. I move unseen, the quiet question mark, the shadow that unsettles even the bravest hearts.
“Every storm has a fissure. Every chain a weak link. And I will find them.”
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Artistic representation of the Grimoire’s quaternary knot, symbolizing protection and balance within the Stormborne legacy.
The Grimoire lay open before me, its pages whispering in the flickering torchlight. Symbols, long forgotten by men, danced across vellum knots, spirals, and sigils that spoke of storms, of blood, and of the unseen threads that bound the Stormborne brothers.
I traced my fingers along the quaternary knot etched into the parchment, feeling its pulse beneath my skin. Four directions. Four elements. Protection. Balance. The old magic hums beneath the empire’s walls, forgotten by generals and augurs alike, but I remember.
Outside, the world churns armies march, fires burn, and Rome believes itself eternal. But I know the storm waits, patient, unyielding. Each spell, each word, each calculated gesture draws the threads tighter. Taranis trains men in secret. Drax moves through the law like a shadow of justice. And Rayne… I watch him, always a question mark, a traitor lurking in plain sight.
And I, the chronicler, the mystic, record all. For when the time comes, the Grimoire will speak, and the empire will remember the Stormborne name or regret it.
“Power is not given, it is woven. And I will weave it carefully.”
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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 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.
Boldolph the Wolf brother, shield, spirit of the wild. Painted on clear acrylic, one of a kind. Part 11 of The Chronicles of the Gold Ring is now live where the wolf walks again in the trees.”
The Wolf in the Trees
The rain had not stopped since the hill. It drummed on oak leaves, hissed across the ash of the fire, slicked every blade of iron until the men and women of the Black Shields looked like shadows burnished in oil. The night smelled of wet earth and smoke, of wounds bound with linen that would not stay clean.
Storm slept little. When he closed his eyes, the hammer fell, and the nails drove, and he woke with the sound of iron in his skull. So he stayed upright with his back to the birch, watching the drip of water through branches, listening to foxes bark and owls call, waiting for morning.
At dawn, a shape lingered beyond the edge of the fire’s reach. Low, black, moving between trunks with the patience of hunger. Storm’s hand went to the haft of his knife before he realised what he saw.
A wolf.
Not the lean carrion-pickers that shadowed armies, but broad in the shoulder, thick in the ruff, eyes burning with a colour no dog had ever worn. It did not growl. It did not flee. It stood in the bracken and watched him.
“Boldolph,” Storm breathed, though he knew the beast before him was no man, no brother, no shieldmate returned. But something in the tilt of the head, in the way it lifted its nose as if to scent not flesh but memory, made his chest tighten.
The others woke one by one. Cadan saw it first and rose with his knife ready. “Leave it,” Storm said. His voice was rough with the weight of command. Brianna squinted through the rain. “Is it a sign?” Storm shook his head. “It is a wolf. That is enough.”
But when the wolf turned and padded into the thicket, Storm followed. He did not tell the others to stay; they knew.
The trail wound between dripping ferns and stones slick with moss. Once, the wolf vanished altogether, and Storm thought he had been chasing a ghost but then the shape appeared again on a rise of ground, waiting. Guiding. Testing.
At last they came to a hollow ringed with oaks older than any fort or cross. Their roots knotted together like clenched fists. At the centre lay a cairn of stones blackened with age.
The wolf set its paws upon the mound, lifted its muzzle, and gave one long, shivering call. Not to the pack for there was no pack—but to the world itself. Then it was gone, as if the trees had folded and swallowed it whole.
Storm touched the cairn. Cold. Wet. His fingers came away with lichen and soil. And something else. A groove cut deep, filled with rain. A mark he knew from chalk scratched on gateposts and painted on stolen shields. A ring.
The Gold Ring.
He knelt, pressing his forehead to the stone. For a breath he smelled not wet earth but smoke from a hall long gone, heard not rain but the laughter of those who had died before him. Nessa. Morrigan. Boldolph. Rayne.
The voices came like wind through hollow wood: Hold fast. The story is not done.
Storm rose. His wrist throbbed where the nail had kissed bone, but his grip was steady when he returned to the camp.
Brianna looked at him, sharp-eyed. “What did you find?” “A place,” Storm said. “A promise buried under stones.” Cadan spat into the fire. “More promises.” “Not words,” Storm answered. “A mark. The old ring. It waits for us.”
The rain eased then. Just enough to let the fire breathe.
That night, when the Black Shields moved again, they did not march as hunted rebels, but as something else. A rumour clothed in rain, a shadow given teeth. And always at the edge of the path, in the corner of sight, Storm thought he saw the wolf pacing them between the trees.
The wind rolled down from the mountain like a warning.
Three days had passed since the Trial by Fire. Taranis had been seen walking beside Grael’s warhorse, the shattered collar left behind, and the obsidian pendant still warm against his chest. But not everyone had accepted his transformation.
Some called him storm-marked. Others, cursed.
In a low tent near the edge of camp, whispers brewed.
“He defied the gods,” one said.
“Walked through flame and came out smiling,” said another.
“Flame tricks the weak. It blinds.”
The men gathered around the edge of the fire, cloaks pulled close against the creeping mist. They weren’t Grael’s most loyal, nor Solaris’s brothers. They were wolves without a pack mercenaries who had once served the Clawclan, now waiting for coin and chaos.
They didn’t wear Stormborne colours. Not yet.
“Tonight,” muttered Kareth, his eyes gleaming with spite. “We do what fire could not.”
A few nodded.
“He should’ve died in chains. He’s no warrior. He’s a beast.”
“And beasts don’t get reborn.”
They struck after moonrise.
Taranis had gone to the stream to refill his waterskin, alone as he often did, choosing solitude over celebration. The camp had begun to sleep. The guards were half-drunk from fermented berry wine.
They came from the trees six of them. Faces covered, blades drawn.
The first blow caught him across the shoulder, sending him to the ground.
“Traitor,” one hissed. “Freak.”
Taranis fought back with bare fists, striking like the wolf they feared but it was too many. A second dagger found his ribs. A club broke across his spine.
He fell to one knee.
They kicked him until he stopped moving.
Until his breathing went quiet.
Until he bled into the moss and stones.
They dragged the body to the far side of camp, past the standing stones, into a hollow in the woods where no firelight reached.
They left no markers. No words. Just dirt over his body and a curse on their breath.
“He walks no more,” Kareth said. “The storm dies in silence.”
And they returned to camp, blades clean, alibis ready.
No one would find him.
No one would weep.
They believed the gods had finally corrected their mistake.
But Taranis was not dead.
He dreamed of fire.
He dreamed of wolves.
He dreamed of the black dragon watching from above not with pity, but with fury.
And beneath the soil, his fingers twitched.
The early morning sin rose and grael could be heard hollering
“STORMBORNE WHERE ARE YOU?” grael shouted looking around for taranis
“He fled, he’s a coward” one of kareths men said smirking Wolves circled where his body lay leading them to discover taranis body still and cold.
Two days passed “we will find him tether him again no escape this time.” A warrior said as the wolves circled a piece of land “Hes dead grael” a Saris said “He deserves a real burying ” another said
The earth did not keep him.
Not on the first day, when silence reigned. Not on the second, when the wolves came. But on the third the wind changed.
At first, just a shift. A stillness. Then, a scent.
Morrigan arrived first. White fur gleaming against the ash-darkened trees. She paced in a wide circle around the hollow. Then came Boldolph, the black wolf, teeth bared, hackles raised.
They howled.
A low, haunting sound not grief. Warning.
Grael rode at once, followed by Solaris and half the guard. When they reached the hollow, they found the wolves digging. Claws tearing through dirt, paws flinging soil like rain.
Grael dismounted. Something in his chest cracked.
“Taranis…”
Solaris dropped to his knees beside the wolves, hands trembling.
“Help me dig!”
No one moved until the first scrap of cloth was exposed. A torn edge of tunic, blood-black, crusted to the earth.
Then the digging began in earnest.
It took three men and two wolves to drag the body out.
He was pale. Lips cracked. Blood dried to his skin. The obsidian pendant still hung around his neck, dirt pressed into the ridges.
One eye was swollen shut. Bruises ran like vines across his chest and arms.
But he was breathing.
Shallow. Ragged. But alive.
Solaris shouted for the healer. Grael stared at the boy like he was seeing a ghost.
“No burial mound,” he said softly. “No cairn. Just a shallow grave… and a storm too stubborn to die.”
The healer worked in silence, hands quick and firm. Crushed pine and fireweed were pressed into the wounds, stitched with thread made from gut and hope. Taranis didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. Each time the wind shifted, the wolves growled low in their throats, sensing the old power flicker just beneath his skin.
By nightfall, they had moved him to a guarded hut near the heart of camp. Four warriors stood watch. Grael gave orders that anyone who tried to enter unbidden would be struck down no questions asked.
Solaris sat beside the boy, wiping dried blood from his temple.
“You stubborn bastard,” he whispered. “Even the grave gave up on you.”
Taranis didn’t reply. But his eyes opened barely and fixed on the obsidian pendant now laid upon his chest.
Grael returned before moonrise.
“Speak if you can,” he said.
Taranis’s voice was a thread. “They buried me.”
“I know.”
“They didn’t even check.”
“I know that too.”
“Will you punish them?”
Grael paused. “I already have.”
He tossed something at Solaris’s feet a piece of fur, torn and bloodied.
“Kareth?”
“Gone,” Grael said. “Dragged into the trees by Boldolph. I don’t expect him back.”
Silence settled between them again.
“I should be dead,” Taranis murmured.
Grael nodded slowly. “You were.”
That night, as the wind moaned through the valley, a scout returned from the northern ridge.
“There’s smoke again,” she said. “Not ours. Not Clawclan. Something… older.”
She hesitated before finishing.
“There’s no fire. But trees are blackened. Stones cracked. Something passed through.”
“What kind of something?” Grael asked.
The scout swallowed.
“The kind that flies without wings.”
By dawn, word had spread. Taranis had survived. Taranis had risen.
They called it impossible. Witchcraft. Proof of corruption.
But some whispered another name.
Stormborne.
He stood the next morning.
Not for long, and not without pain, but he stood.
Morrigan watched from the doorway. She did not enter only nodded once, her red eyes gleaming.
“Even the wolves thought you were lost,” Solaris said.
“I was,” Taranis replied, voice raw. “But I heard them. In the soil. Calling.”
He stepped out into the morning light slow, stiff, but upright. The warriors turned to look. One dropped to a knee. Another stepped back in fear.
Grael met him near the edge of the camp.
“We’re riding soon. There are still wars to fight.”
Taranis nodded. “Then I’ll ride.”
“No packs,” Grael said. “No chains.”
Solaris handed him his cloak. “And no grave can hold you.”
Taranis turned to the standing stones, where birds now circled. Thunder echoed in the far hills.
He placed his palm against the earth the earth that had tried to hold him.
“Not today,” he whispered. “I am not done.”
In Emberhelm, the elders would speak of that day for generations.
The day the Stormborne rose from the grave. The day the wolves howled not for mourning but for warning.
And from that moment on, no one dared bury him again.
The campfire had burned low when Solaris approached the general.
Taranis knelt nearby, his wrists loosely bound, the bone collar still tight against his throat. The punishment mask lay beside him, waiting.
“Sir?” Solaris said cautiously. “Are we binding him again?”
Grael didn’t answer immediately. He watched the boy the blood-crusted bruises, the unspoken tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes never stopped scanning the shadows.
“He walks beside the horse now,” Grael said. “Not behind it. That’s earned.”
“But he’s still tethered?” solaris said
Grael nodded. “Until he earns trust with more than fire.”
Solaris stepped closer, lowering his voice. “And the food? He eats with us now?”
“He eats what he earns. No more. No less.” grael said
Taranis stirred then, lifting his head. His voice cracked as he spoke.
“Now I’ve got one foot in both worlds… the world of a chosen, and one of an outcast.” He looked at them both. “One move and I could be executed. The other move, and be honoured.”
Solaris winced as the mask was fitted back over the boy’s face.
“Why the mask again?” he asked.
“To remind him,” Grael said. “And to remind us.”
“Of what?”
“That chains and power aren’t opposites. They’re a balance.”
Taranis tried to move from grael and the other warriors tried to move his head so the mask wouldn’t go on as a dragon flew over head
“Put it on” grael ordered
“No I’m human just like you”
Taranis jerked back, blood still dried in the corners of his mouth. The dragon’s shadow passed again overhead, and something ancient stirred in his chest not rage, not fear, but refusal.
“I said no!” he growled, voice muffled but defiant.
Solaris stepped between him and the other warriors. “Wait. He’s not”
Too late.
One of the guards lunged forward, grabbing the mask. Taranis shoved back, throwing his shoulder into the man’s chest. The warrior stumbled, caught off guard by the boy’s strength.
Another grabbed his arm but Taranis twisted, slammed his elbow into the man’s face.
Blood sprayed.
Chaos erupted.
Three warriors tried to restrain him now. Grael did not move. He watched.
Taranis fought like a cornered wolf. Wild. Desperate. Silent.
The mask hit the ground and cracked in two.
When they finally wrestled him down, he was bleeding from the nose and lip, panting like an animal. His wrists were raw, eyes wild.
But he was smiling.
“You see me now?” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m not yours.”
Solaris stood frozen. The broken mask lay at his feet.
Grael finally stepped forward.
“Enough,” he barked.
The warriors pulled back.
Taranis didn’t rise. He waited.
“Let him up,” Grael ordered. “And don’t touch him again tonight.”
“But sir” a guard started.
“I said don’t.”
Grael looked down at the broken mask, then at the blood on Taranis’s knuckles.
“You broke it,” he said flatly.
“I’d break a hundred more,” Taranis spat.
Grael didn’t respond. Instead, he knelt.
“You want to be seen? Fine. Then let the clans see what you are.”
He picked up the shattered halves of the mask.
“You’ll wear no disguise. No shield. Not until you earn a new one.”
Taranis met his gaze. “Good.”
Grael stood.
“But remember this, boy there’s a cost to being seen. You can’t take it back.”
Taranis said nothing.
The dragon roared again in the sky.
Solaris knelt beside him later, whispering, “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
Taranis looked at the stars.
“Or freed.”
“What will it take for him to be freed?” Solaris asked
“Freedom for him? He crippled your brother, he killed a farmer, used by the gods themselves, stories say he killed a bird as a child and his village was killed before his exile freedom is a long way off. What do you say grael ?” A warrior asked
Grael remained silent for a long while. The fire crackled. Embers danced. “I say,” he murmured, “we’ve seen men freed for less… and killed for more.”
He tossed the shattered mask into the flames.
“If he was sent by the gods, then they’ll test him again. Until then, he walks. He bleeds. He earns.”
A warrior scoffed. “And when the next village sees that face?”
“Then let them decide,” Grael said. “Fear him. Pity him. Curse him. But they’ll see him without the mask. And so will we.”
Taranis didn’t flinch. He stared into the fire, as if daring it to speak.
Grael remained silent for a long while.
The fire crackled between them. Sparks drifted upward into the night, like fleeing ghosts. Taranis sat still, blood streaking his jaw, the collar tight around his throat. The broken mask lay shattered near the flames.
He stepped forward and tossed the mask into the fire. It hissed as it cracked deeper, flames licking the black bone.
A warrior scoffed. “And when the next village sees that face? He crippled a boy. His own kin say he’s cursed. What do we tell them?”
“Tell them the truth,” Grael replied. “He wears no mask because he broke it. He walks unchained because I said so. And if that offends them, they can challenge it by trial.”
Another man spat. “The Seer warned us he carries the fire without flame. You think a prophecy makes him safe?”
“I think,” Solaris said quietly, “he didn’t run when he could’ve. He fought. He stood. He bled beside us.”
Silence settled again.
Then Grael turned to his men, sweeping his eyes across the ring of warriors.
“Fine,” he said. “Let the clans decide. Those who want him gone, speak now.”
A few murmurs, but none stepped forward.
“Those who would test him, not as a slave, but as a warrior raise your blades.”
One sword lifted. Then another. And another.
Not all.
But enough.
Taranis watched them. His chest rose and fell slowly. The embers reflected in his eyes.
“So be it,” Grael said. “Tomorrow at first light, he joins the line. No chains. No mask. One trial. If he survives the boy becomes flame.”
A hush fell across the camp.
Solaris leaned down beside him. “You’ve got one shot.”
Taranis looked up, a flicker of defiance in his eyes.
“Then I’ll make it burn.”
The company reached the ancient ruins just after dusk.
Twisted trees clawed at the moonlight, their roots entwined with blackened stones. Smoke drifted from old hearth pits, and torches lined the perimeter of what once had been a stronghold now just skeletal walls and broken pillars.
They called it the Bones of Fire, where traitors, exiles, and monsters were judged in the old ways.
Taranis was unshackled but flanked by two guards. His collar still bit into his skin, and dried blood streaked his jaw. He walked unbound, but every step echoed like thunder. Warriors lined the central circle, murmuring. Some remembered his defiance. Others remembered the dragon.
At the heart of the ruins stood a black stone altar scorched by lightning, older than the clans themselves. Grael waited there, sword at his side, expression unreadable.
A Seer stood beside him the same woman from the fire, robed in bone and shadow.
“This place,” Solaris whispered, stepping beside Taranis, “is where they test souls.”
“I thought I already failed,” Taranis said, not looking at him.
“No. This is where they see if you can rise.”
The crowd hushed as Grael raised his hand.
“Taranis of no clan. Slave by judgment. Exile by blood. Chosen by storm or cursed by fire,” the general said. “You stand here not as a man, but as a question. The people demand an answer.”
The Seer stepped forward, her voice like wind through hollow bones.
“You are accused of rebellion, violence, and breaking the old order. But the gods remember your name. So the trial shall be by the elements by Fire, by Bone, and by Storm.”
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
Grael gestured, and three warriors brought forth the tools: a flame bowl carved of obsidian, a bone blade wrapped in cords of sinew, and a weathered spearhead struck once by lightning.
“You will face each,” the Seer said. “If you fall, your death is justice. If you rise, you walk reborn.”
Solaris stepped forward. “He saved us. He held the line”
“And still the trial stands,” Grael said. “This is not for you, Flamekeeper. This is between him and the gods.”
Taranis stepped into the circle.
“I’m not afraid,” he said.
“You should be,” the Seer whispered.
They began with Fire.
Taranis knelt before the obsidian bowl. Flames danced without smoke. The Seer extended her hand.
“Reach into the fire. Take the coal. Speak no sound.”
He did.
Pain erupted, white and total, but he did not scream. The coal branded his palm. Smoke curled from his clenched fist but his jaw never broke. When he stood, the mark glowed faintly.
Next came Bone.
He was handed the blade and told to carve a single rune into his chest a mark of truth.
“Only the worthy know which symbol to choose,” the Seer said.
Taranis hesitated.
Then slowly, he pressed the blade to his chest and etched a spiral. Not of chaos, but of growth the same symbol the Seer had once placed in his hand. Blood streamed down his ribs. Still, he stood.
Then came Storm.
They placed him at the peak of the ruin, where the wind screamed like a thousand dead warriors. He had to face the sky and remain standing until the gods answered or until the storm broke him.
Lightning gathered. Thunder rolled.
The dragon came.
Not with flame, but with presence a black silhouette circling high above.
The courtyard had long emptied. The ash of the fire pits still glowed faintly, casting soft light on stone walls and weary limbs.
Taranis sat alone, legs stretched, a jug of broth in one hand,. the other flexing and sore from the clash with Boldolph.
The crack of staffs still echoed in his bones.
Footsteps approached not boots, but clawed paws. Heavy, padded, unmistakable.
Boldolph.
Without a word, the old wolf-man knelt beside him, a strip of clean linen in hand. He took Taranis’s wrist and began to bind the bruises, slow and methodical, like a ritual done a hundred times.
“You didn’t hold back,” Taranis said after a moment.
“You didn’t ask me to.”
The silence between them was old, familiar. Like the stillness before a storm. Or the hush before a boy became a warlord.
“I needed them to see I bleed too,” Taranis muttered, wincing as the linen tightened. “That I fall. That I get back up.”
Boldolph grunted.
“They already know you bleed,” he said. “They just needed to see you still feel it.”
Taranis looked toward the sky. Smoke trailed like threads into the blackness. One dragon circled high above, a quiet sentinel.
“I keep thinking,” he said, “about when I was exiled. Alone in the wilds. All I had was that storm inside me and the promise that no one was coming.”
He looked down at the staff beside him.
“And now… now there’s you. Solaris. Lore. Drax. Rayne. Even Draven. I have everything I never thought I would. And I don’t know how to hold it without crushing it.”
Boldolph didn’t speak at first. Just poured a second jug of broth and handed it to him.
Then he said, low and hoarse: “Every beast that’s ever bared teeth knows fear. Not of pain. Of losing what it’s fought to protect.”
He paused, eyes distant.
“I was exiled once too. Long before you were born. I clawed through snow and silence, not knowing if I was cursed or chosen. I still don’t.”
Taranis turned to him.
“You stayed. Even cursed. Even as a wolf.”
Boldolph nodded.
“Because someone had to. And because I believed that one day, the one I guarded would understand the weight of the fire he carried.”
The flames crackled beside them. Taranis took a slow sip of broth.
“I understand it now.”
Boldolph gave a grunt soft, almost approving. Then he stood, stretched, and turned toward the shadows.
“You’re not alone anymore, High Warlord,” he said. “Stop trying to fight like you are.”
Then he was gone, back into the night, tail flicking behind him like a whisper of old magic.
Taranis sat a while longer.
Then he smiled.
Not like a warlord. Not like a weapon.
Like a man who had bled, fallen, and been lifted again by the hand of a wolf.
StormborneLore 