The fire still smouldered in the trial circle. Ash drifted across the camp like falling snow, silent and strange. But Taranis was already moving.
“There’s one more thing I need to do.”
Grael watched him from the shadows. He didn’t speak. He didn’t stop him either.
Boldolph padded beside Taranis in silence. Solaris followed, clutching a waterskin and a roll of cloth. Morrigan trailed at a distance, her red eyes glowing faintly.
They passed the old fletcher’s tent, the burned tree where whippings once took place, the bone pits that had once broken men.
“Where are we going?” Solaris asked quietly.
Taranis didn’t answer. He was listening not to voices, but to memory. He remembered a cough in the dark. A cry. The scraping of small fingers against stone.
“There’s a cage,” he said. “Near the quarry. They kept the youngest there. Said they were too small to work.”
The Pit They reached it just after dusk. The trees pressed tight around the stone hollow. At first, it looked abandoned broken boards, a slanted gate, silence.
Then a sound. A whimper.
Boldolph’s ears twitched.
Taranis crouched and pulled aside the brambles. A metal grate, rusted and choked with moss, covered a square hole in the earth.
“Help me,” he said.
Solaris held the torch. Boldolph tore at the frame with claws. Morrigan bared her teeth and bit through the last knot of rope.
Beneath, the darkness shivered.
A child peered up.
Eyes too wide. Bones too thin.
“We’re not guards,” Taranis said gently. “We’ve come to end this.”
There were eleven in total.
Some crawled. Some limped. One couldn’t speak. One clutched a half-rotten toy made from bark and wool. They emerged into the night like ghosts made of dirt and silence.
Taranis knelt before each one and touched their shoulders.
“No more pits. No more cages. I swear it.”
The eldest maybe ten looked at the wolves with fear. Then at Taranis.
“They’ll just chain us again.”
“Not if I teach you to fight,” he said. “Not if I teach you to speak.”
He turned to Solaris.
“They will need warmth. Names. A place.”
Solaris nodded.
“We will give them more than that. We will give them stories.”
A New Fire That night, Taranis did not return to his tent. He built a new fire at the edge of the camp. The children gathered near it, cautious, blinking at the light.
He laid out bowls of stew. He let them sit in silence.
Then he rose and spoke to the camp.
“They were buried alive in your shadows. Chained so young they forgot their own names.”
“This camp lives because of silence. But not anymore.”
“I will raise them. Feed them. Train them.”
“And one day, they will raise others.”
Grael stood from the back. He did not speak, but he gave a slow nod.
The Seer who had named Taranis walked to the fire and added herbs to it. The scent rose sharp rosemary and root. A symbol of memory.
“This fire,” she said, “is the first fire of the Order of Dawn.”
Taranis looked to Boldolph and smiled. There was fire behind his storm-grey eyes.
But he didn’t move.
Instead, he turned his gaze toward the centre of camp. A wide ring of bark and stone had been cleared where the warriors gathered in a hush that pressed against the skin. Grael stood tall at its edge, arms folded, flanked by his elite. One Seer stood silently with her staff grounded. Another stood beside her, cloaked in black and waiting.
Boldolph’s voice was low.
“You know this is bait.”
“I know,” Taranis said. “Let them bite.”
He raised his voice so all could hear.
“So where are the others, Grael? There were six of them. Six men who buried me alive. Are they here?”
Grael said nothing. His jaw clenched but no order came. The silence stretched like a drawn bowstring.
Taranis stepped forward. His torn cloak dragged behind him. Dirt still clung to his skin. The obsidian pendant swung from his chest, sharp as a blade and darker than the sky.
“You trained them. You gave them command. You stood idle when they dragged me from my fire and threw me in the earth like a beast.”
A ripple of movement stirred the crowd. Solaris moved silently to the left of Boldolph, his eyes alert. Morrigan circled the outer edge, her gaze sharper than any blade. The wolves were close, not quite in the circle, but near enough to strike.
The cloaked Seer stepped forward, her voice smooth and cold as river ice.
“And what are you now? A firewalker? A spirit in flesh? A wolf’s loyal mutt? You defied your masters. You broke laws. You call yourself marked as if it were a blessing. It is a curse.”
Taranis turned to face her. His tone was calm, but his voice carried like distant thunder.
“I am marked. Yes. Marked by flame and by fang. Marked by gods your kind no longer dare name.”
He looked across the ring, locking eyes with those who once saw him as nothing more than a chained boy.
“I wore the collar. I bore the mask. I bled into your soil and came back stronger. The dragon did not strike me down. It bowed.”
The first Seer the one who had first spoken of prophecy moved forward without a word. She laced her bone staff on the earth between them, the sound like a drumbeat in the dirt.
“Then let truth be spoken. Words before war. This circle is the law.”
The Circle Two lines formed. One stood behind the cloaked Seer and the old ways. The other stood in silence, eyes uncertain but shifting, behind the Seer who had named him Stormborne.
Grael remained between them all. He spoke nothing. But the weight of his silence was a blade in the dust.
The rival Seer raised her chin, her cloak fluttering as a sudden gust caught the air.
“Storms are sent as punishment. They do not crown kings. They drown them.”
Taranis stepped into the centre and lifted the obsidian pendant high.
“Then why did the storm not drown me?”
He turned slowly, meeting the eyes of warriors, elders, hunters, servants — and children.
“You speak of punishment. But where was your justice when a boy was chained for speaking truth? Where was your mercy when they threw me into a grave and danced over it?”
A murmur passed through the gathering, slow and spreading like rising smoke.
A healer stepped forward. She clutched a satchel of herbs, her hands trembling, but her voice rang clear.
“I stitched that boy once. His ribs were bruised. His wrists bled. I said nothing. I was afraid. But I will not stay silent again.”
Taranis gave her a solemn nod.
“Then speak now. Let every voice rise. This land will not be ruled by silence.”
The cloaked Seer opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came. She felt the tide turn and stepped back. The people had shifted.
A father stepped forward next, then a girl who’d once carried water to chained boys. An older warrior, limping from an old wound, nodded slowly. For the first time, Grael’s expression flickered — not with rage, but with understanding.
Verdict Grael finally stepped into the circle. The pressure broke like thunder in the air. He scanned the faces around him — warriors he had trained, people he had led. Then he looked to Taranis.
“The six who attacked you are dead or have run. That is not mercy. That is law. They broke it.”
He turned toward the Seers.
“But from this day, we follow one voice. Not the loudest. Not the oldest. The one the flame has not burned. The one the dragon did not kill.”
He turned his eyes on Taranis.
“The one who rose.”
From the back of the crowd, a girl no older than ten stepped forward. Her hair was matted but her eyes were bright with memory. She held a scrap of wolf-fur in her small hands.
“You pulled me from the pit. The dark place. I saw you in the fire. You held the sun in your hand.”
Taranis knelt before her, gently resting a hand over hers.
“Then keep that memory. Let it burn in you, not through you.”
He rose slowly, the firelight catching in his eyes. Then he turned to face the whole circle.
“No more collars. No more chains. No more silence. This is no longer a camp. It is a beginning.”
The wolves howled not out of hunger or fury, but in echo of a vow they once made long ago. A vow that now passed from wolf to man, and from man to child.
The first Seer stepped beside Grael and whispered a single truth.
“Stormborne.”
Solaris stepped closer, his voice a whisper only Taranis could hear.
“So what does that make you now?”
Taranis looked out at the crowd, at the firelit faces, the broken chains now lying in the dust, the wolves resting at the edge of the light. Then he looked to Solaris and smiled.
“A man. A friend. A warrior, if Grael will train me. Perhaps a healer. First in the line of the Order of Dawn.” He paused, gaze rising to the stars above. “Or maybe just someone who lived when he should have died.”
He turned back to Solaris, his voice soft.
“Who knows what tomorrow will give?”
And for the first time since exile, Taranis Stormborne laughed not out of pride, not out of pain, but because for once, the wind didn’t sting.
StormborneLore 