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.”
Draven watched his younger brother with the quiet reverence of a man who had walked through fire. To find a home on the other side. Though the aches in his ribs still tugged at his breath, he laughed a genuine, full-throated laugh. as he caught Rayne peeking from behind a weathered oak near the feast.
Rayne’s cloak hung awkwardly over one shoulder, and though his hands were free. He held them stiffly as if still expecting chains.
Draven looked back to Taranis, who stood tall and proud. The firelight glinting off the rings etched into his forearms marks of every clan he’d freed, every vow he’d kept.
“You’re not the only one who can’t die, Taranis. The bards will call us the Eternal Lords. The Man of the Woods, the Warrior of the March… But what about you, brother? What will they say?”
Taranis grinned, but his eyes stayed on Rayne.
“The Lord with a Heart. The Flame that Walks. The Warlord who Wept.”
He turned to Draven. “What ails him, truly?”
Draven’s smile dimmed.
“He survived,” he said softly. “And survival… isn’t as easy to wear as a legend.”
Taranis nodded, the smile gone. “Then I’ll not offer him a title. Or a command. I’ll offer him what was once denied us all.”
He walked from the firelight and toward the shadows where Rayne stood alone, arms folded and eyes like flint.
“You Came Back.” Rayne didn’t speak as Taranis approached. His jaw twitched. He stepped backward out of habit until his heel hit a root and stopped him.
Taranis said nothing at first. He simply sat on the fallen log nearby, stretching his legs and sighing into the evening air.
“When I was your age,” he said, “I thought silence made me strong. That if I didn’t speak of the beatings, or the exile, or the hunger… then I had won.”
He picked up a small stone and turned it over in his hand.
“But silence doesn’t win. It buries. And buried things don’t stay buried, brother. Not forever.”
Rayne looked down, fists clenched.
“They said you were dead.”
“So did I,” Taranis replied. “And then I woke up… and realized I wasn’t done.”
Rayne’s voice cracked.
“Why didn’t you come for me?”
Taranis flinched not visibly, but somewhere behind the eyes.
He finally looked up, tears bright in his eyes. “And I believed them.”
Taranis didn’t speak. He rose slowly, walked the short distance, and pulled Rayne into his arms.
Rayne stood stiff as iron pthen broke. His head fell against Taranis’s shoulder, and the boy who had been a slave sobbed like the child he never got to be.
The Wolves Watched From the trees, Boldolph watched, crouched low, Morrigan beside him.
“He’s not ready,” the black wolf growled.
“He’s more ready than you were,” Morrigan said softly.
Boldolph grunted. “He’s not like Taranis. Or Draven. The fire isn’t in him.”
Morrigan smiled. “No. But the river is.”
Boldolph glanced at her, confused.
“Some of us are made for flame and rage. Others for healing and flow. Rayne… is the river that remembers every stone.”
Morning Comes to Emberhelm By dawn, the fires had burned low and the children were asleep in bundles of wool and bracken.
The warriors sat nursing sore heads and full bellies, and the dragons Pendragon and Tairneanach lay curled in silence, watching the horizon like guardians of an old dream.
Taranis stood before the gathering. His cloak flapped in the morning wind, and behind him the stone cairns of Caernath glowed faintly as if the ancestors were listening.
“Brothers. Sisters. Flamekeepers. Healers. Shadowwalkers and Stormborn alike. You have all walked through fire, through blood, through the turning of the old ways. Now it is time to choose.”
“Today we name the Three Houses of Caernath not for power, but for purpose. No longer shall bloodlines dictate loyalty. From now on, you choose where you belong.”
“Those who fight whose strength lies in blade and storm come to the House of the Storm.”
“Those who heal, protect, and serve who hold flame and lore come to the House of the Flame.”
“And those who walk between who guard the forgotten places, who speak to shadows, or carry wounds that cannot be seen come to the House of the Shadow.”
Rayne Steps Ahead The crowd murmured. Solaris stood tall near the Flame. Draven took his place beneath the storm banner. Morrigan stood beneath the flame, Boldolph beside her though his stance was still more wolf than man.
And then slowly, silently Rayne stepped forward.
All eyes turned.
He walked past the flame. Past the storm. And stood alone beneath the third banner, woven with deep purples and grey threads: the House of the Shadow.
Gasps rippled.
Rayne turned, voice calm but steady.
“I am not whole. But I am not broken.”
“I have walked in chains. I have worn silence like a second skin. I am no warlord, no healer, no dragon-slayer.”
“But I remember. And I will not let the forgotten be lost again.”
After the Choosing Later that night, Taranis found him by the cairnstones.
“The House of the Shadow,” he said. “I never thought someone would choose it first.”
Rayne smiled faintly. “Someone had to.”
“You know… I think it might be the strongest house of all.”
StormborneLore 