The dawn broke pale and brittle over the Western Marches. Mist clung to the hillsides like the remnants of a long-forgotten battle. The scent of wet earth hung thick in the air.
Drax Stormborne rode alone, the wolf badge at his breast glinting faintly in the weak light. Each hoof beat a steady rhythm against the quiet of the land.
Reports had come from the southern villages. Whispers of movement along the coast, smuggled supplies disappearing into the night, and the black shields stirring in secret. Rome called it rebellion. Drax called it preparation.
He paused at the ridge, scanning the valley below. The smoke curled from chimneys, thin and innocent. Yet he saw in it the same threads of tension that had always followed his family. Every glance, every movement, was a calculation an unspoken war between loyalty, law, and blood.
A courier approached, riding hard across the hill track. Drax reined in his horse. The rider’s eyes were wide with urgency, breath steaming in the cold morning.
“High Sheriff,” the courier gasped, bowing slightly. “The exiles… they’ve moved. South, toward the old Roman fort. But there are… signs. Traps, and sentries placed where none should be.”
Drax’s jaw tightened. He dismounted slowly, brushing mud from his cloak. “And our men?”
“Silent,” the rider said. “They wait, as you instructed. Patient. Watching.”
Drax nodded, feeling the familiar weight of responsibility press upon him. Patience, observation, action the long game. His thoughts flickered to Taranis, chained in distant Rome. Memories of the oath that bound him not just to the Empire, but to family. To storm.
He turned to the courier. “See to it that no one moves without my signal. Keep the villages safe. Let Rome believe all is still. But let our shadow fall across the fort when the time is right. The storm will not wait forever.”
Lightning fractured across the distant sky, a whisper of thunder rolling over the hills. Drax lifted his gaze and felt it stir through him, golden and alive. The storm was patient, and so would he be.
For when the winds finally tore through the land, nothing not even Rome would withstand it.
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.
“Mother, Father,” Caelum said quietly, his small hands trembling as he stepped into the firelight. “I saw him. My uncle chained in every way. I gave him the bowl of food.”
The words fell like stones into still water. Even the fire’s crackle softened, as if the hearth itself held its breath.
Lady Maerin rose from her chair, skirts whispering against the flagstones. “You saw him?” she whispered. “How, Caelum? How did they let a child so near?”
Caelum swallowed hard. “The guards… they didn’t care. Uncle Marcos said it would ‘toughen me.’ He said I should learn what happens to men who defy Rome.” His gaze darted to Drax. “But Uncle Taranis he wasn’t broken, Father. Not like they said.”
Drax’s jaw tightened. His hands curled into fists against the edge of the table. “Go on,” he said, voice low.
Caelum’s eyes glistened in the glow of the fire. “He was hurt… bleeding. But he looked at me and smiled. He told me not to cry. He said” the boy’s voice faltered, “he said you’d come for him. That you’d want to. But he warned me… he said if you launch a rescue, they’ll make everyone suffer. If he escapes, they’ll make us all suffer. He said” Caelum’s voice broke. “He said to play the long game.”
A silence followed that seemed to swallow the world.
Lady Maerin’s breath hitched. “He’s thinking of us, even now,” she whispered. “Even in chains.”
Drax rose slowly, the fire casting bronze and gold across his face. He moved to the window, where the mist pressed thick against the glass. Outside, thunder murmured faintly across the hills. He stared toward the south toward the Roman fort where his brother sat in chains.
“The long game,” Drax repeated, the words rasping like steel drawn from a scabbard. “He means patience. Observation. Wait… and strike when the empire’s eyes are elsewhere.”
Caelum nodded, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “He said storms don’t break, Father. They change the sky.”
A small, aching smile ghosted across Drax’s lips. “Aye,” he murmured. “That sounds like him.”
Behind him, Maerin’s voice was brittle as frost. “And what will you do, my lord? Wait… while they bleed him dry?”
Drax turned, shadows shifting across his face. “I’ll do what he asks. For now.” His eyes hardened. “But when the storm comes when it truly comes not even Rome will stand in its path.”
Lightning flashed through the mist. Illuminating the valley below and for a heartbeat, the clouds took the shape of wings unfurling above Emberhelm.
Caelum hesitated before speaking again. “Father… are they poisoning Uncle Taranis?”
Drax turned sharply. “What?”
Caelum’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He’s not eating what they give him. He said the food tastes wrong.”
The fire crackled louder then, as if stirred by an unseen wind. Drax’s gaze darkened.
“Then Rome has already begun its slow killing,” he said softly. “But storms, Caelum…”
He looked toward the thunder rolling in the distance.
“…storms have a way of purging poison from the earth.”
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.”
They say the stones at Emberhelm still whisper when the wind moves right a low murmur that rises from the earth like the breath of something ancient, waiting.
Farmers avoid the place now. Shepherds drive their flocks wide, and children dare each other to touch the outer ring, laughing until the laughter falters. Only the old remember that once, before Rome, before even the clans, the stones were not dead things.
Each one bore a mark storm, fire, tide, and light carved by hands that no longer walk the world. Together they formed a circle, a promise between the gods and those who spoke their tongue. The Circle of the Gold Ring.
When the brothers swore their oaths there, thunder split the air. The eldest spoke of wisdom, the youngest of freedom, and the middle ones of strength, loyalty, and truth. But the sky heard more than words it heard pride. And pride is the chisel that breaks all stone.
Now, when lightning rolls across Cannock’s high fields, some claim to see figures between the stones. Not ghosts, not living men something between. They say one wears chains that sing when he moves, another bears a sword that hums with the weight of unspoken guilt, and one more walks with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the storm as though it answers to him.
The villagers leave offerings there still a bowl of salt, a coin, a lock of hair just in case the whispers are not only echoes, but memories listening for their name.
“Taranis is our baby brother, no matter what some think,” Drax growled, his voice low and edged with iron. His gaze locked on Rain across the firelight, sharp enough to cut stone. “You betrayed him when he was a child and you betray him now.”
Rain’s jaw tightened, but he did not speak. The silence stretched between them, thick with memory and regret.
The old priest, Maeron, lifted his hand gently. “He forgives you, Rain,” he said, his tone weary yet steady. “He wanted Drax, Draven, and Lore to know he will endure what they give him. So that you three will survive. He says to make choices that will keep you all safe and your people.”
Drax’s expression did not soften, though his eyes flickered with something that have been pain. “He forgives far too easily.”
Maeron inclined his head. “Forgiveness is not weakness, my lord. It is the weapon of those who can’t be broken. The Romans won’t rule forever. Prepare for what comes next.”
At the edge of the fire, Caelum shifted uneasily, his young face caught between fear and pride. “But what about my uncle’s meals?” he asked suddenly. “Uncle was exiled from the Circle years before they caught him. I was a baby then. Now I’m fourteen he shouldn’t be forgotten again.”
The words silenced the hall. Even Rain, for all his bitterness, not meet the boy’s gaze.
Drax rose slowly, the firelight glinting off his scars. “He will not be forgotten,” he said at last. “Not while the storm still bears our name.”
“But won’t they strip him of his name?” Caelum pressed, voice trembling now. “If Rome erases it, how will anyone know he lived?”
Drax looked down at his son the fire’s glow. Reflected in the boy’s wide eyes and placed a steady hand on his shoulder.
“Names can be taken,” he said quietly. “But legacies can’t. The Romans think power is carved in stone. Ours is carved in memory.”
He turned back to Maeron. “Tell him that. Tell him Emberhelm remembers.”
The priest nodded, rising to leave. But before he turned, his gaze swept the circle of men gathered in the hall. “When the storm returns,” he said softly, “I hope you are ready to stand beneath it.”
When Maeron’s footsteps faded into the night, the hall remained silent. The storm outside broke, rain hammering against the shutters like the echo of distant drums.
Drax stood by the window long after the others had gone. He could not see the fort from here, but he could feel it the iron cage that held his brother. The empire pressing closer each season. Yet as lightning flashed over the valley, he smiled grimly.
Because storms, no matter how long they’re caged, always find their way home.
The road to Viroconium was slick with rain. Drax rode beneath a low sky, his cloak heavy with water, the wind biting at his face. Beside him, Maeron’s hood was drawn deep, the priest’s silence carrying the weight of things better left unspoken.
When they reached the outskirts of the Roman fort, the air stank of smoke and iron. The rhythmic clash of hammers and the cries of soldiers echoed through the mist. But above it all, there was another sound low, strained, human.
Drax reined his horse sharply, his eyes narrowing.
At the edge of the square, raised above the mud and the murmuring crowd. Hung a man bound to a crude wooden cross. Blood streaked his arms, his body marked by lashes and bruises. His hair clung to his face in the rain. But the set of his jaw the defiant lift of his head was unmistakable.
Taranis.
Drax’s heart clenched as the legionnaire stepped forward, spear in hand. “He struck a guard and tried to run,” the man said stiffly. “By Roman law, the punishment is public display.”
“Law,” Drax echoed, his voice quiet, almost a whisper but Maeron flinched at the tone. “You call this law?”
The soldier hesitated, but before he could respond, Maeron laid a hand on Drax’s arm. “Careful,” he murmured. “The walls have ears.”
Drax dismounted, boots sinking into the mud. He walked forward until he stood before the cross, rain washing the grime from his face. Taranis raised his head slowly, eyes bloodshot but burning with that same inner fire that no empire could snuff out.
“Brother,” Drax whispered.
Taranis gave a faint, broken smile. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“And leave you to the crows?” Drax’s voice cracked like thunder. “Never.”
Maeron stepped forward, murmuring Latin prayers under his breath for the watching soldiers. Though his words were laced with druidic meaning ancient phrases meant to shield, not to save. His fingers brushed the iron nails that bound Taranis’s wrists. “These are not deep,” he said quietly. “They did not mean to kill him. Only to shame.”
Taranis’s laugh was hoarse. “They can’t shame what they don’t understand.”
The centurion appeared, cloak heavy with rain. “This man belongs to Rome,” he declared. “You will step back, Lord of Emberhelm.”
Drax turned slowly, the weight of centuries in his gaze. “And yet Rome forgets whose land it stands upon.”
The centurion stiffened. “Do you threaten?”
“No.” Drax’s tone softened to a dangerous calm. “I remind.”
The priest raised his hands quickly. “My lord only seeks mercy,” Maeron said. “Let him pray with his brother before the gods.”
After a pause, the centurion gestured sharply. “You have one hour.”
When the soldiers withdrew to the gatehouse, Drax knelt beside the cross. The rain had turned to sleet, stinging against his skin. “Hold on,” he murmured. “We’ll get you down when the watch changes.”
Taranis shook his head weakly. “No. Not yet. If you cut me down, they’ll know you came. They’ll burn Emberhelm.”
“Then let them come,” Drax growled.
But Taranis only smiled faintly. “Storms must wait for the right sky, brother.”
Maeron placed a hand on Drax’s shoulder. “He’s right. Endurance, not rage. That is his rebellion.”
Drax bowed his head, jaw clenched. He hated the wisdom in those words. He hated that Taranis could still smile through chains and nails.
As dusk fell, lightning cracked beyond the hills, white and wild. The storm gathered again over Viroconium.
And though Rome saw only a prisoner’s suffering. Those who remembered the old ways knew the truth: A storm had been crucified and still, it did not die.
The morning mist hung low across the valley, veiling the lands of Emberhelm in silver. From the high balcony of his hall, Lord Drax Stormborne watched the world stir awake.
Smoke from hearths curling above thatched roofs. The faint clang of the smithy below, and the distant echo of a horn calling men to the fields.
The realm had been quiet these past weeks, though quiet was not peace. Rome’s presence had spread like frost silent, glittering, and deadly to touch. Their banners were seen on the roads again, their soldiers marching east toward the fort that caged his brother.
Drax’s hands rested on the stone rail. Scarred knuckles gripping the cold edge as if the granite itself were his only anchor.
“Uncle Taranis forgives us all, father.”
The small voice broke the silence. His son stood behind him Caelum, barely thirteen summers. But already bearing the solemn eyes of a man twice his age. The boy held out a folded parchment, its wax seal cracked, its edges smudged with soot.
Drax took it carefully. The writing inside was firm but uneven, written in haste. Forgive nothing. Remember everything. Below, a single mark a lightning bolt drawn in charcoal.
Drax’s chest tightened. His brother’s hand. His brother’s defiance.
“Who gave you this?”
“One of the Roman guards, father,” Caelum replied. “He said… he said Uncle still lives. He fights every day.”
Before Drax answered, boots echoed behind them. Roberto stepped into the chamber, his armour dull and unpolished, the scent of road dust still clinging to him.
“My lord,” he began, voice low, “I spoke with one of the centurions. They see him as a danger now too much influence, even in chains. They’ve moved him deeper into the fort. Isolation. Only the soldiers see him.”
“Do they mistreat him?” Drax asked, though he already knew the answer.
Roberto hesitated. “They tried to crucify him last week. He survived. Yesterday, they threw him to the lions chained, unarmed. He walked out again.”
The hall fell silent. The fire popped in the hearth, throwing orange light across the stone floor. Drax turned back toward the window. his reflection caught in the misted glass grey at the temples, lines of command etched deep across his brow.
“They can’t kill him,” Roberto said quietly. “So they make him suffer.”
Drax exhaled slowly, the weight of his station pressing like iron against his ribs. “Then we’ll keep him alive in every way they can’t stop. Food, silver, messages whatever can reach him, it will.”
He turned to his son. “Caelum, you will remember this. A lord’s duty is not to speak loudest, but to act where no one sees.”
The boy nodded, solemn and still.
That afternoon, Drax rode out beyond the keep. The fields of Emberhelm stretched before him. The broad plains that once echoed with the clash of blades when the Stormborne banners flew proud.
The Farmers bowed as he passed, and he nodded in turn. To them, he was not just a lord. He was the last shield between their freedom and Roman law.
At the river’s edge, he dismounted, crouching where the waters ran dark and cold. He saw his reflection distorted in the ripples older, heavier, but not yet broken.
He remembered when Taranis had knelt in that same river,7 years ago. Swearing an oath to the gods of wind and storm. “We are not born to yield,” he had said, the water lapping at his wrists. “Even if Rome takes the land, they’ll never take the sky.”
Drax closed his eyes. The oath still lived within him, though it had been buried under the weight of command.
When he returned to the hall, he found Aislin. Stood waiting by the hearth his wife, wrapped in a shawl of woven wool. Her hair touched by the faintest trace of silver.
“You’ve heard the news,” she said softly.
He nodded.
“Will you go to him?”
Drax’s jaw tightened. “Not yet. The fort is surrounded. My every step is watched. To move too soon would doom us all.”
“And if you wait too long?”
He met her gaze, steady and unflinching. “Then he dies a legend. And legends, my love, outlast empires.”
She said nothing more. She simply placed her hand over his, and for a moment, the storm in his chest calmed.
That night, the wind rose.
From the balcony, Drax watched lightning fork across the distant hills. He thought of his brother, chained and bloodied, standing alone beneath the roar of lions and the jeers of men. And he swore, silently and fiercely, that this would not be the end.
The Romans thought they had captured a man. They had not realised they had locked away a tempest.
And storms… always find their way home.
The council chamber was dim, lit only by the flicker of oil lamps. Shadows stretched long across the stone floor, dancing like restless spirits.
“Are priests allowed to see Taranis?” Lore asked the centurion, his tone calm but deliberate.
The Roman officer hesitated, eyes flicking between Drax’s advisor and the lord himself. “Only those sanctioned by command, sir. The prisoner is considered… volatile. Dangerous to morale.”
“Dangerous,” Drax repeated quietly . His gaze fixed on the parchment that still bore his brother’s mark a black streak of charcoal shaped like lightning. “That is one word for faith unbroken.”
The centurion shifted, uneasy beneath the weight of the lord’s tone. He had served Rome for years. But there was something about the Stormborne that unnerved him men who spoke softly yet carried storms behind their eyes.
“Tell your commander,” Drax said at last, his voice cool as the mist outside. “that Emberhelm’s temple will pray for Rome’s victory. And for the salvation of the condemned. It would honour the gods to have a priest available for confession before transport.”
The officer nodded stiffly. “I will… relay the demand, my lord.”
When the door closed, Lore exhaled, rubbing his temples. “You plan to send one of ours.”
“Of course.” Drax turned toward the hearth, watching the flames burn low. “If Rome bars us with iron, we’ll walk through with words. Find one of the druids who wears a Roman mask one who can keep silent under pain.”
Lore bowed his head slightly. “A dangerous game.”
“All games are,” Drax murmured, eyes still on the fire, “when the stakes are blood.”
Two days later, beneath a grey dawn, a solitary figure rode from Emberhelm. He wore the plain robes of a Roman cleric, his face shadowed beneath a hood. No weapon hung at his side, no coin jingled in his pouch.
With only a small satchel of herbs, a ring wrapped in cloth, and a wax-sealed blessing marked his purpose.
His name was Maeron. Once a druid of the old faith now known to Rome as Marcus. A man who had survived the purges by trading his oak staff for a prayer scroll.
The road to Viroconium wound through dead forests. The mist-shrouded valleys, the silence broken only by the clatter of hooves and the distant calls of crows.
When he reached the Roman fort, guards searched him roughly, tearing through his satchel and stripping him of his cloak. Finding nothing amiss, they granted him ten minutes with the prisoner.
The cell smelled of iron, straw, and old blood. Chains hung from the walls like spiderwebs.
Taranis sat in the corner, wrists bound, his head bowed. A thin cut traced his cheek, half-healed, crusted with dust. He did not look up when the door opened.
“You come to pray?” His voice was low, worn smooth like riverstone.
“I come to remind you,” Maeron whispered.
Taranis lifted his head slowly, and for a moment the fire in his eyes banished the gloom. Maeron knelt before him and drew from his sleeve a small gold ring. its inner band engraved with the sigil of storm and flame.
Drax’s mark.
“Drax?”
“He watches,” Maeron said softly. “He waits. He sends this so you’ll know you are not forgotten. Food and coin move under Rome’s banners carried by men who owe him debts. You will have what you need to endure.”
Taranis reached for the ring. The chains clinked, faint as falling rain. “Tell him I am no longer enduring. I am learning.” His voice strengthened, each word edged with iron. “They think they cage me. But they are teaching me their weaknesses.”
He leaned closer, his gaze sharp, unyielding. “Tell Lore, Drax, and Draven I shall endure so they are safe. Tell them… the storm remembers.”
Maeron bowed deeply. “The gods still listen, even in Rome’s shadow.”
Taranis’s lips curled faintly. “Then let them listen to thunder.”
Outside, as Maeron was escorted back through the gates, lightning cracked across the horizon. The guards muttered that the storm came early that season.
Drax, miles away, looked up from his balcony at the same flash of light. whispered beneath his breath “Brother… I hear you.”
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The rain had thinned to a whisper, though the earth still drank its memory. The camp at Viroconium lay beneath a pall of grey the banners limp. The fires low, the air thick with the scent of wet iron and trampled earth.
From the timber walls came the faint murmur of Latin, measured and precise, a language of order wrapped around conquest.
Taranis Storm knelt in the mud outside the command tent, wrists chained, head bowed. The iron bit deep, the skin at his wrists raw and darkened with rust and blood.
The mark of the Stormborne ring had already been scrubbed from his armour. He was no longer heir, no longer rebel merely a trophy of Rome.
But even stripped bare, even silent, there was something in his stillness that unsettled the soldiers. Some swore the air shifted around him, that the faint tremor of thunder haunted the edges of his breath.
Others avoided his gaze altogether, crossing themselves as they passed. A man broken should not look like that unyielding even in ruin.
Inside the tent, the light was dim, filtered through canvas streaked with rain. The scent of oil lamps mingled with the metallic tang of blood. He had been made to wait hours, until the flap stirred, and three shadows crossed the threshold.
Drax came first.
Older now, heavier in both body and soul. The broad shoulders that had once carried their people’s trust. Now bore the eagle of Rome, its gold thread dull in the half-light. He paused by the entrance, rain dripping from his cloak, his eyes lingering on Taranis longer than words fill.
Behind him, Rayne entered, slower. His face was pale with sleeplessness, the hollows beneath his eyes deepening the cold fire in his gaze. He did not meet Taranis’s eyes. The torchlight caught the edges of his features sharp, beautiful, worn.
Draven followed last. He moved like a shadow quiet, deliberate, almost ghost like. His cloak brushed the ground, damp from the mist outside. When his eyes lifted, they carried both sorrow and warning.
No one spoke at first. The silence was a living thing, heavy and raw, pressing between them like the weight of the storm itself.
Then, slowly, Taranis lifted his head. The light touched his face. Revealing the dark bruises along his jaw. The faint smear of dried blood across his temple and eyes. Eyes that still burned with the calm fury of the storm.
“Brother,” he rasped, voice rough but steady. “Have you come to finish what Rome began?”
Rayne’s jaw tightened. “I came to make sure you lived.”
“Lived?” A hollow laugh escaped him no warmth, no humour. “They’ll march me south in chains, Rayne. You traded the Circle for a collar. Don’t pretend it was mercy.”
Drax’s tone was even, but heavy. “Enough. You both know what’s done can’t be undone. I took the oath so the rest of us survive. So that our kin would not hang from Roman walls.”
“And what of honour?” Taranis’s gaze snapped to him. “Or do we trade that too for a few more winters of peace and a Roman coin to buy it?”
Draven shifted in the corner. “Peace doesn’t last, brother. It only changes its face.”
Rayne’s voice cracked through the air, sharp as the wind. “You think I wanted this? You think I didn’t bleed the same as you when the Circle broke? I saw no victory left to take I chose survival!”
“You chose fear,” Taranis said softly. “And fear has a longer memory than Rome. It will rot what’s left of you.”
Rayne turned away, jaw clenched, the lamplight trembling against his cheek. “You’d have doomed us all for pride.”
“And you’d damn us for obedience,” Taranis countered.
The space between them trembled with tension brothers bound by blood and broken by choice.
Drax broke it first, his breath slow, his tone heavy with command. “They take you south tomorrow. I can do nothing more without risking every name tied to ours. Whatever happens after this live. Find your chance.”
Taranis’s lips curved, a ghost of the old stormborn grin. “I will. And when I do…” His eyes rose, burning through the gloom. “I’ll remember who stood, and who knelt.”
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Only the rain, soft and relentless, filled the quiet between them.
Draven looked away first, eyes glinting with something close to grief. Drax’s shoulders sagged, his silence an admission. Rayne lingered his hand hovering at the tent’s edge, uncertain, trembling.
“Taranis…” he began.
“Go,” came the answer, quiet but final. “Before you remember what it means to be one of us.”
But as Rayne turned to leave, Taranis’s voice cut through the rain again lower, heavier, carrying the weight of prophecy. “You know what you’ve done, brother. You’ve condemned the poor those I sheltered, the villages I defended. Rome will use your choice to bleed them dry.”
His gaze flicked to Drax, then Draven. “Do what you must to live in my absence. Keep them safe if you can. But remember this the storm doesn’t die. It only learns patience.”
The words hung in the air like thunder before the break.
Rayne hesitated, his throat tight with something between guilt and defiance. “If you live to see freedom, Taranis… will you forgive me?”
Taranis met his eyes grey meeting grey — and said nothing.
Outside, a trumpet sounded the signal for the night watch. The guards were coming.
The brothers turned, one by one, each carrying their silence like a wound.
Drax’s heavy boots faded first. Draven followed, his steps ghost like. Rayne lingered, then vanished into the rain.
Alone again, Taranis knelt in the mud and closed his eyes. The iron dug deep, but his breath was steady. The storm was not gone merely waiting beyond the hills, patient and unseen.
And somewhere, far to the south, Rome’s banners rippled in the wind ready to claim the storm for themselves.
Rayne collapsed before the cairnfire, the thick iron collar still tight around his neck. Etched with the jagged insignia of the Black Claw. Solaris had rushed to his side. Morrigan gathered water from the well, whispering healing words she barely remembered. Lore cast protective wards. Boldolph paced, fuming, red eyes narrowed beneath a heavy brow.
“This is madness,” Boldolph snarled, watching the collar pulse faintly with some cursed sigil. “The boy’s half-starved, and that brand it reeks of shadow magic.”
“He’s not a boy anymore,” Drax muttered. “He’s seen things. Same as the rest of us.”
“No child should wear chains,” Solaris said, voice tight. “Not in Emberhelm.”
Lore knelt by Rayne’s side, laying fingers over the rusted iron. “It’s not just a collar. It’s a seal. A blood-binding rune carved into bone. They meant for him to die wearing it.”
“And yet he made it back,” Morrigan added, her hand resting gently on Rayne’s fevered brow. “That means something.”
Taranis hadn’t spoken since Rayne collapsed. He stood just outside the circle of firelight. Eyes locked on the far horizon where Black Claw lands stretched like bruises across the night. Pendragon shifted restlessly behind him, wings tight to his sides.
“They have Draven,” Rayne had rasped before falling unconscious. “They kept him… because of me.”
That had been enough.
Without another word, Taranis had mounted the black dragon and taken to the sky.
The wind screamed around him, colder than it should have been for summer. Taranis kept low over the ridges, scanning the burned-out lands for signs of encampments. Black Claw banners once flew here clawed glyphs torn into hides, marked with bone. Now, they hid in the ruins, like maggots beneath ash.
Pendragon dove suddenly, a cry bursting from his throat.
There a ridge of slate carved into makeshift battlements. A fortress not meant to keep armies out, but prisoners in.
Taranis landed hard, blade drawn before his boots touched the ground. He didn’t speak. He didn’t call out.
He moved.
Two guards fell before they could scream lightning dancing along the edges of his blade. A third tried to flee. Pendragon caught him mid-run and dropped him without effort.
Taranis moved through the ruined keep like a storm incarnate silent, swift, merciless. These were slavers, torturers, the kind who’d once held him in chains. He knew every sound of their cruelty.
He’d been trained in their darkness. Now he wielded it against them.
In the lower chamber, he found Draven.
Naked but for rags, wrists chained above his head, bruises blooming along his ribs. He lifted his face at the sound of boots.
“Taranis?” he croaked.
“I’m here,” his brother said.
“You came back…”
“I always come back.”
Taranis cut the chains in two strokes, catching his brother as he fell.
“Can you walk?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll carry you.”
He slung Draven over his shoulder and stormed out as the keep burned behind him.
Not once did he look back.
By the time Taranis returned to Emberhelm, Rayne was awake.
Solaris had removed the collar with Lore’s help shattering it against a carved cairnstone. It took three days of chanting, and a night of fire that refused to go out. Boldolph had offered to chew the thing apart. Morrigan declined the offer.
Rayne sat in the healing hall, bandaged and trembling. When Taranis entered carrying Draven, the boy’s face crumpled.
“You got him.”
“I said I would.”
Morrigan rushed forward. “Lay him here.”
Taranis set Draven down gently. Lore began his work, murmuring ancient words. Solaris lit the fire with a whispered flame. Rayne crawled forward and took his brother’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” Rayne whispered. “I told them everything. They used me. And I still couldn’t save him.”
“You survived,” Taranis said. “That was enough.”
Drax entered moments later, axe slung over his back.
“You went alone.”
“I didn’t need an army.”
“You’re lucky I like you, brother.”
Boldolph huffed from the doorway. “I told you not to go alone. Next time, I’m riding the dragon.”
Pendragon let out a soft growl as if agreeing.
“Next time,” Taranis said, “there won’t be a need.”
That night, they gathered in the Hall of Storms. The Three Houses stood beneath banners newly hung. The thunder-mark of Tempestras, the flame glyph of Ignis, and the silver eclipse of Umbra.
Rayne, still weak but standing, stepped forward.
“I was taken when I followed a shadow beyond the border. They said my blood would buy silence. But my silence almost cost a life.”
Taranis laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“It is not your shame to carry.”
“No,” Rayne said, looking around, “but I want to stay. I want to fight. I want to belong.”
Lore smiled. “Then choose your house.”
Rayne hesitated.
Then: “House of the Shadow.”
Umbra’s banner unfurled behind him.
Draven, barely upright, spoke next.
“I never stopped believing we’d meet again. Even when they broke my ribs and chained my hands. I clung to the howl of a wolf I couldn’t see. I thought it was memory. Now I know it was Boldolph.”
The great wolf-man stepped forward, placing a fist over his chest.
“You’re one of us.”
Draven smiled through broken teeth. “Then I choose House of the Storm.”
The warriors roared their approval.
Taranis turned to Solaris.
“We’ve brought them back. But we’re not finished, are we?”
“No,” Solaris replied. “Not until all chains are broken.”
Boldolph grunted. “I say we raise a hunt. Take out the last Black Claw den.”
Drax cracked his knuckles. “Been waiting for that.”
Lore added quietly, “We’ll need more than swords. The blood magic they used—it’s older than the cairnstones.”
Taranis nodded.
“Then we rebuild. We teach. We prepare.”
He turned to face the assembled tribes.
“The era of exile is over. The age of the Stormborne rises.”
And above them, Pendragon howled not in anger.
But in unity.
Later, as the fires dimmed, Boldolph stood outside the gates, leaning on his axe like a watchful father. Morrigan brought him stew.
“You stayed.”
“I always stay.”
“Still think about eating Taranis?”
“Not lately.”
They laughed quietly.
“Do you think they’ll ever stop fearing him?” Morrigan asked.
“No,” Boldolph said. “But that’s not what matters.”
The screams echoed off the stone walls of Emberhelm like the wind of old gods mourning. They weren’t screams of pain, but of release centuries of silence and curse unraveling into the night.
Morrigan collapsed first, the white fur shedding in great clouds that shimmered like frost. Her limbs twisted, reshaped. Bones cracked. Light laced through her as though fire ran in her veins.
When it was over, she knelt there, naked and human once more. Tall, slim, freckled, her long red hair cascading down her shoulders like the sun had kissed her into being.
Lore, standing nearby with his hands still outstretched from the spell, stumbled back, exhausted. His voice trembled.
“It is done.”
Boldolph did not scream.
He roared.
A roar that turned the blood of every warrior in Emberhelm cold. His black fur thickened, but did not fall away. His body bulged with new strength arms growing longer, spine broadening, but the wolf did not vanish. Instead, the man stepped ahead from the beast, and what remained was both.
A wolf-man. A warrior unlike any other.
Lore turned to his brothers. “Boldolph chose this. A warrior’s form. His path remains in the hunt, not the hearth.”
Taranis watched, silent, hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Morrigan, now fully clothed in a borrowed shawl, stepped across the courtyard to a waiting man her husband. They embraced without fear.
“She’s still loved,” Taranis muttered, half to himself.
Lore heard him anyway. “And no one fears them now. Not like they did you.”
Taranis smirked, eyes glinting. “If she wasn’t married, I’d have made her mine.”
“Careful,” Drax chuckled from behind, sharpening his axe on the stone steps. “You’re a warlord, not a poet.”
Taranis turned, expression softer now. “He screamed, you know. Our father. The night I was exiled.”
Lore nodded. “He didn’t know what to do. But he regretted not letting you stay. Mother wept for months. Still wore your wolf bone pendant long after we buried it in the cairn.”
“Did they know I was alive?”
“They did.” Lore crouched, drawing a symbol in the dirt. “Boldolph kept them informed. Something about the tribe’s elder being the only one who can hear his thoughts. Said our ancestor lived in you.”
Taranis gave a dry laugh. “Our ancestor, eh? Boldolph told me that too. Great-grandfather five times back, wasn’t it?”
Drax’s voice cut in. “Father called to Boldolph when you were exiled. Said the storm had swallowed you whole. What happened out there?”
Taranis exhaled, jaw tight.
“Adventure. Hunger. Despair. I was nearly dead when Solaris’s father found me, just beyond Blackclaw territory. They took me in. His father made me a slave, heavy work for little return. I treated his son in exchange for scraps. But Solaris he remembered me. He saw more than a starving boy.”
Lore rested a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“You survived.”
“I endured,” Taranis corrected.
He stepped ahead and raised his voice so all gathered hear.
“Boldolph. Morrigan. Solaris. You are free now. The chains of old curses, of blood debts, and oaths not chosen gone. But I ask you this…”
He paused, turning slowly.
“Will you stay?”
The fire pits roared to life, casting flickering gold over the three freed souls. Solaris stood tall, still bearing the ash-mark of Flamekeeper. Morrigan leaned into her husband’s side, eyes scanning the faces around her. Boldolph’s red eyes flared, unreadable.
Taranis continued, “There are three houses in Caernath now. The House of the Storm — for warriors and defenders. The House of the Flame for healers, lorekeepers, and seers. And the House of the Shadow for scouts, spies, and those who walk the forgotten paths. Each of you has earned a place, should you wish it.”
He looked to them, one by one.
“If you leave, so be it. With my blessing. With food. With horses so the fair lady no longer walks barefoot through bramble. know this: your path and mine will cross again. Whether as friend or foe… that remains to
A few chuckled.
“But if you stay…” he added, softer now. “then the food is yours to share, we shall ride and fight together as brothers and sisters.”
Lore stood beside him, arms folded. “Three houses. Three choices.”
Drax, ever the blunt one, added, “But don’t take too long to decide. Winter’s hunting season comes fast.”
Silence.
Then Solaris stepped ahead.
“I will stay.”
His voice was calm, like embers beneath ash.
“But not as a servant. As a Flamekeeper. As a free man.”
Taranis nodded once. “Then take your place in the House of the Ignis”
Boldolph came next, stepping ahead with thunder in his stride. His beast-form loomed, but he knelt low before Taranis.
“I stay,” he growled. “But not as man. Not as beast. As both. I fight with you. For Stormborne.”
Taranis placed a hand on the wolf-man’s brow. “House of the Tempestas then.”
Morrigan stepped ahead last. The crowd held their breath.
“I have known healing. And fury. And grief. But I choose to give life now, not chase vengeance. I will stay… as a healer.”
Lore smiled.
“House of Umbra welcomes you.”
The wind picked up. Overhead, Pendragon flew a wide arc above the fort, and the sky shivered with promise.
Taranis raised his voice once more.
“The Houses are chosen. The bonds are made. The future begins now forged in flame, bound by oath, tempered by storm.”
And far below, in the silent stones of Emberhelm, the echoes of curses past gave way to something new.
A howl not of sorrow.
But of belonging as a mysterious stranger approached.
“I know to well how brothers can turn on each other ” a voice behind them said one they vafukey recognised
Drax arched a brow “rayne? Little brother is that you? We thought you lost?”
Rayne Nodded a thick iron coller around his neck with black claw marking in
“Who did this ” Tanaris whistles for Pendragon as his brother collapsed through torture and starvation
“Black Claw they still have Draven”
“I going to wipe that clan out ” Tanaris said
“NO YOUNG ONE NOT ALONE” boldolph said
“Morrigan he’s doing it again can I eat him or Pendragon” Boldolph said seeing the young one Tanaris flying towards enemy land as if to rescue another brother
Morrigan looked over “he will return now Rayne”. she ordered as Solaris prepared food and she gathered healing herbs.
post script
Which House Do You Belong To? In the lands of Caernath, every soul has a path.
Do you crave thunder and battle like Boldolph? You belong to House Tempestras the warriors.
Do you heal with fire and memory like Solaris and Morrigan? House Ignis calls you the keepers of lore and flame.
Do you move in shadow, unseen yet ever watchful? Then step into House Umbra where secrets become power.
🧭 Tell us in the comments: Which house would you choose and why? Feel free to share this post and invite others to find their stormbound path.
StormborneLore 