The mystical bond between the black and white wolves, symbolizing the intertwined fates of Boldolph and Morrigan.
Boldolph’s people wept for him and Morrigan.
As the cursed pair fled the stone cave. Their new forms heavy with shame and grief, they knew the truth they would yet be hunted. Death would almost be kinder than living on, watching their people unravel from the shadows.
From the tree line, they watched.
The enchantress Whitehair was dragged to the punishment stones. Her mouth forced open as the chieftain stepped forward.
“Bring me my grandchildren,” he commanded.
A line of children stood before him. The oldest, a thirteen-year-old girl, stared straight ahead as the wind lifted her dark hair.
“Gwyn,” the chieftain said, “you are the eldest of my blood. This honour is yours. Remove her tongue and nose.”
Without a word, the girl obeyed. She carried out the sentence without question her hand steady. Her eyes blank while Boldolph and Morrigan looked on from the trees.
“The youngest three,” the chieftain continued, “shall be raised among us. Spared. But the oldest, Ryn…”
A fourteen-year-old boy was dragged forward.
“…He will be cast out.”
“No! Please…” Ryn cried. “I was hungry she hadn’t fed me in weeks…”
“You’re old enough to hunt,” his father barked. “Old enough to fish. Old enough to gather. You chose to steal.”
As the blade was drawn, Morrigan gave a sharp growl.
Boldolph stepped from the trees not attacking, but shielding the boy with his massive black form.
“Morrigan? Boldolph?” the chieftain asked, surprised but calm. “Do you understand what is happening here?”
Boldolph gave a single nod.
“Do you agree with this judgment?” another tribesman called out.
Morrigan whimpered, then moved beside Boldolph, gently nosing Ryn toward the tree line.
“Boy,” the chieftain said, “how can we speak to the wolves?”
“My father knows a chant, sir,” Ryn answered softly. “I’ve heard him whisper it to the earth spirits.”
A moment later, the chant rose in the air low and trembling. The spirits stirred.
“It is done,” the seer confirmed. “The wolves may not speak through mouths, but they will speak through minds. A bond has been made between Boldolph and the tribe’s spirit.”
“Father,” Boldolph said in thought alone, “let the boy live. Morrigan wishes no harm.”
“If she could poison her own people, she may have cursed him too,” someone muttered.
But Morrigan white as snow, her eyes full of sorrow pressed her head into the chieftain’s hand.
“He has always seemed… touched by something,” she said. “Not cursed. But not untouched either. Let him go. For me.”
The chieftain knelt.
“Boy,” he said, “do you understand what this means?”
“No, sir.”
“It means my grandfather will spare your life,” Gwyn said, stepping forward. “But you must leave, Ryn. And never return. You will walk with the cursed wolves. And you will not bear a name. Not in any tribe. You will be the boy who walks in exile. The boy of silence.”
Ryn’s father added, “You will walk until you sleep. And when you sleep, you will not wake.”
Tears welled in Ryn’s eyes. “Can I say goodbye to my brothers and sisters?”
“Five minutes,” the chieftain said. “Then the exile begins. You’ll be given a spear, a stone knife. One day’s food for you. A week’s for my son and his mate.”
The children nodded.
The chieftain’s hand rested on Morrigan’s head, then Boldolph’s.
“You are not forgotten,” he whispered.
Boldolph’s mother stepped from the crowd, her eyes wet with love and regret.
“Boldolph,” she said, “you are always welcome at our fire.”
And with that, the wolves turned toward the deep forest and the cursed child walked beside them.
The youngest of three lords, the only surviving heir before the word chieftain had even been carved into stone.
I was a protector, a trader,
a traveller to far shores… but above all, I was a husband and a father.
Morrigan.
She was everything. Three children had blessed our home and that was enough.
It was all her body can carry after the night she met the old crone in the woods.
The one whose words still haunt me. “The howl will return to your house, but not in the way you dream.”
I remember that day like thunder.
I had walked the long trail from the hunt., a wolf’s pelt across my shoulders, the carved head resting like a crown.
There was smoke above the village. And shouting.
An old woman beaten, clothes torn was being dragged toward my father’s cave.
“Wait!” I shouted.
I stepped ahead eighteen, tall, muscle-bound, burning with promise. They said I would one day unite the valleys.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I demanded.
A freckled, tattooed man stepped ahead, fury carved into every line of his face.
“This enchantress worked against us in the last battle,” he spat. “She betrayed us, Boldolph. We demand justice for our dead.”
My jaw clenched. I turned to her.
“You?” I growled. “You’re the reason my brothers now sleep the eternal sleep? The reason my mother weeps? The reason the blood of my people feeds the grass?”
She said nothing.
With a roar, I seized her hauled her high above the firepit, as if ready to cast her into flame.
But then “NO!”
A voice like wind cut through the rage.
Morrigan.
Only she reach me. Only she still the fire in my chest.
“This is not you, my love,” she said. “Let the chieftain decide. Please…”
And I listened. Because she was the one thing I would never fight.
I carried the woman into the cave.
The chieftain stood waiting. Red-haired, tattooed in victory and sorrow, wise beyond warriors.
“I have heard your crimes, Whitehair,” he said, voice like stone. “You drugged the warriors. You let the enemy pass through us like wind through grass. You gave our children to fire. You made the wombs of mothers empty.”
Still, the woman did not plead.
“Death is too easy,” he continued.
“You will be taken to the deepest part of the wood. Stripped of your name. Your hands will be marked so that the spirits do not recognise you. You will eat only what you can dig or steal. None shall speak your name, nor carve it. You will walk in silence until the earth swallows you. Or until the wolves forget your scent. So say the spirits. So says the tribe.”
And so she was cast out not as woman, not as witch. As nothing.
But my rage had not cooled.
“Father, banishment is too easy for one who knows these lands,” I said. “Bind her. Take her children. Take her tongue, and theirs,so none curse us again.”
And that’s when she finally spoke.
Her voice was dry like wind over bones. “I curse thee, Boldolph… son of Marnak. And thy wife Morrigan, daughter of Ayr. You shall be wolves until the day you meet a boy. a giant of seven feet, who befriends all animals and dragons. The house of your father will fall.”
The pain came instantly.
My darling wife and I we transformed, howling and breaking, before the entire tribe.
Thousands of years have passed since that day. Many cubs later, we have never seen each other in human form.
I bear black fur as dark as night. a golden five-pointed star on my head, a red crescent moon on my chest.
And my Morrigan… She is snow-white, with a red star between her eyes and a golden sun over her heart.
The women of the tribe had already begun preparing the celebration. Only the finest foods would be offered on this special night the night of my brother’s birth.
The birth of Taranis Stormborne.
In the woods, the younger children laughed as they filled baskets with berries, blackberries and raspberries, bilberries (wild blueberries). elderberries (cooked only), hawthorn berries, rose hips, crab apples, and sloes from the blackthorn.
Their chatter echoed with pride a new life meant strength for the tribe.
The women worked in quiet rhythm. Hazelnuts, acorns (leached to remove tannins), beech nuts, pine nuts, and the seeds. Young leaves of nettles were piled high beside bundles of wild garlic and sacred greens.
I saw my mother’s sister lay a sprig of rosemary at the fire. Not for seasoning but for blessing.
“Hey, young Lore,” someone called, grinning. “You coming hunting? Father says we’re after red deer and boar, fox, grouse, even river salmon. Only the finest meats for your mother and father. A new chieftain has been born!”
“Father’s naming him tonight? I’m coming!” I said, breath quickening. I tried to keep the smile off my face, but it broke through anyway.
I was seventeen — broad-shouldered, proud, still hungry to prove myself. I grabbed my spear and cast a glance back at my brothers and father.
our father, stood straight as an ash tree his expression unreadable. Part of him was already in the cave, beside my mother and the child. The rest of him… watched the woods.
I ran to join the others, my heart pounding. Together, we hollered and sprinted into the deep forest a forest older than memory.
But as our laughter faded behind us, a silence settled.
And then… that chill again.
Not the kind that comes with wind or storm. No, this cold was the kind that clung to your bones. The kind that made birds quiet and your breath feel too loud.
Something was watching. But nothing moved.
Still, we pressed on. The Naming Feast had to be worthy.
“I hope he survives,” I muttered, trying to sound casual but Nyx heard the worry in my voice.
“Drax is furious,” he said under his breath.“He thinks the prophecy’s come true.”
He didn’t say what the prophecy meant but we both knew the stories.
A child born under eclipse. A name written in fire. A brother… destined to break us or save us.
Suddenly, Nyx raised a hand. A deer just ahead.
I nodded once, crouched low, and let my spear fly. A perfect strike.
Nyx gave the bird-call whistle to alert his father. We hauled the carcass back to camp together.
The others returned soon after. The fire was lit. The meat laid out. Herbs were thrown onto the flames and their smoke curled skyward. in a spiral that reminded me of a dragon’s breath.
Tonight, my baby brother would be named. But even as the tribe gathered in joy. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming through the trees.
Father’s eyes had changed flashing a pale shade of red.
Thunder cracked as he stepped into the cave. Ready to lay eyes on Mother and the newborn she had fought to bring into the world.
We stood behind him in silence, all of us but one.
One brother, whose eyes held no joy. Only fear. Only the taste of blood.
“Thirteenth son of the thirteenth son,” he muttered. “Born during a storm… and an eclipse. Even the dragons have fallen silent. And the wolves, they’ve stopped howling.”
Just then, as if the forest itself heard hima sound split the trees in two.
Boldolph.
His howl rose like thunder turned voice, a cry so powerful the very air seemed to flinch.
Artistic depiction of Boldolph, the powerful wolf, alongside symbols of mythology and nature.
At his side stood Morrigan, his bonded mate white as new snow. She gave a low, haunting cry and pressed her head gently against his.
Then the dragon stirred.
It lifted its head, wings stretching wide like a storm reborn.
And with a roar that lit the sky, it rose.
Fire molten and blinding erupted from its throat, painting the clouds in gold and crimson.
And there, across the eclipsed heavens, the name appeared.
TARANIS.
Burning. Brilliant. Undeniable.
As if the stars, the storm, and the breath of the gods themselves had spoken as one:
The moon hung low over the marshlands of Cymru, a pale and silent witness to all that stirred beneath. Mist curled along the ground like ghost-breath. Threading through reeds and thorns, cloaking the land in a hush that even time dared not break.
Morrigan stood at the water’s edge, her white fur shimmering with silver dew. The red pentagram upon her brow pulsed faintly with memory not magic, not prophecy, but something older still loss.
She remembered the laughter of her children, once. Their small feet dancing on stone, their breath warm against her skin when she had a face and a name.
That was long before the curse had sealed her fate. A punishment for defying death, for choosing the path of protector instead of prey.
She had not been seen in her human form by another soul in centuries.
The wind carried the scent of heather, salt, and far off fire. It shifted, and she turned her head sharply. From the west, a presence stirred. Not prey. Not predator. Something… remembered.
Her mate, Boldolph, emerged from the shadows. A black wolf with eyes like fire and a gold sigil carved into the fur of his brow. The mark of the king of wolves. He towered beside her, but even he did not speak.
Boldolph, the king of wolves, with glowing red eyes and a mystical sigil on his brow.
They not speak.
They had not touched in human form since the binding.
And still, their silence said more than words ever.
A sudden cry pierced the stillness not a howl, but the breathless whimper of cubs. Morrigan turned. Nestled in the hollow of a fallen tree, her children stirred, sensing the shift in the wind. She padded over, nose to fur, and breathed them back into slumber.
Her heart, once burned hollow by grief, beat now for them.
But the forest would not rest.
Tonight, something ancient woke.
Chapter 1
The Scent of a Storm.
The first rain came softly a warning more than a downpour. Tapping gently against the heather and bracken as dusk bled into the marshes. Morrigan crouched low on a rise of dry stone, her pale red eyes scanning the windswept valley below.
Somewhere to the north, a herd of deer was shifting. Their hooves left trembles in the ground. Their scent curled up through the fog.
But Morrigan wasn’t hunting tonight.
She was waiting.
Beneath her, in the hollowed belly of a mossy yew, three wolf cubs whimpered and stirred. Her children not the kind born of curse or storm, but of blood and memory. The youngest one, all white save for a copper ear, squeaked for her warmth. Morrigan tucked her body closer, curling like a shield around them.
Above her, the clouds began to crackle with unnatural colour. A shade of light not seen since…
Not since the last time the veil split.
The Shape of the Wind A sudden gust brought a foreign scent.
Not prey.
Not predator.
Something old.
Something… broken.
Her hackles rose.
Across the ridge. Boldolph stood, silhouetted against the sky like a god of the old wilds. His black fur glistening with rain, red eyes aflame with alertness. He hadn’t seen her in human form for hundreds of years. Neither had she seen him. The curse did not allow it.
But she felt him now that familiar gravity, that fierce ache of loyalty and loss.
“Do you feel it?” her voice stirred the wind, though no one else hear it.
He gave no answer, only turned his head westward toward the forests. Vasts woodlands of what would one day be called Cannock Chase.
Chapter 2
The boy in the trees
They saw him before he saw them.
A shadow moving through the trees. Too small to be a warrior. Too slow to be a deer.
He was staggering. Starving. But the flame in his eyes refused to die.
Morrigan stepped ahead, paws silent on the stone. The cubs whimpered behind her. Boldolph moved to block her path, lips curled, teeth bared but not at her.
At fate.
At what it meant.
At what it would cost.
Another child. Another risk. Another ache that never leave.
She looked again.
Not a warrior. Not yet.
Just a boy.
But storms followed him.
She turned back to her cubs. Nestled, safe for now. She licked each one gently, then closed the hollow with fallen bark. The marsh would protect them. She whispered an old name into the soil to guard them a name she hadn’t used in centuries.
Then, she stepped into the mist.
Boldolph growled low, a warning.
She brushed against him as she passed her head beneath her head beneath his muzzle, a gesture older than language. Boldolph did not move, but the tension in his shoulders eased. Just for a moment. Enough.
The storm scent was growing stronger.
Morrigan slipped into the trees, her paws silent against the mulch of leaf and root. Branches clawed at her fur like hands from a forgotten dream, but she did not flinch. She knew these woods. She had bled in them. Breathed in them. Hidden in them.
The boy was not far.
She found him collapsed beside a fallen trunk. his arms wrapped around his ribs as though trying to hold himself together. Dirt and blood streaked his face. His feet were bare, blistered, and blue with cold. He had a stick in one hand sharpened crudely, but not recently used.
Even in sleep, his jaw was clenched. Even in pain, his spirit did not bend.
Morrigan circled him in the shadows, one silent loop, then two. She tilted her head. A vision stirred fleeting and broken of a campfire once lit in the hollows of men’s hearts. A voice crying in a tongue lost to fire and flood.
A name.
Taranis.
It did not belong to this boy yet.
But it would.
She drew closer.
The Unseen Form had she still worn her human face, she have wept. But wolves did not weep. They watched. They endured.
Still, some griefs slipped through the fur.
She lowered herself beside the boy, her body a wall against the wind. Carefully, she placed her muzzle against his shoulder. His skin was fever-hot, but beneath it pulsed a stubborn rhythm.
He lived.
From the trees behind, Boldolph appeared, silent as the dusk. He said nothing, but his stare asked everything.
“What are you doing?”
She answered without words.
What we once promised what the old ways demand.
Another life. Another orphan. Another soul cast out by fear and ignorance.
The forest whispered around them voices of old gods and buried secrets. Morrigan raised her head and howled, low and haunting, a call only the wild would understand. It wasn’t a summoning.
It was a vow.
For three days, they watched over the boy.
She hunted while Boldolph guarded. He fetched water from the shallows, carried in his great jaws. She chewed softened bark and nettle, placing it near the boy’s lips. He drank in his fever-dreams, whispering names not yet earned, warnings not yet understood.
On the second night, he opened his eyes.
Just a sliver.
And saw her.
Not as a wolf. Not as a monster.
But as something else.
He reached a hand out. Weak. Trembling.
She did not pull away.
On the third morning, he stood.
Not steady. Not tall. But standing, nonetheless.
And behind him, the sky split with light.
Stormborne
He walked between them then between Boldolph and Morrigan as though he had always belonged.
The name passed once more through Morrigan’s mind like a wind returning home:
Taranis.
Storm-born. Marked. A child of prophecy and exile.
She didn’t yet know the shape of his story. Only that it would be vast. Only that it had begun.
And that somewhere in its ending, her curse would find its purpose.
The bond between Taranis and Morrigan, symbolizing the awakening of ancient legacies in ‘StormborneLore’.
Diolch am ddarllen. Os gwnaeth y stori hon eich cyffwrdd, eich ysbrydoli, neu aros fel sibrwd yn y coed ystyriwch hoffi, rhannu, neu danysgrifio i ddilyn y daith.
💬 Got thoughts, theories, or echoes of your own? Drop a comment and join the legend.
🌩️ The storm remembers every soul who listens.
A moment of connection between Tanaris and two mystical wolves under a full moon, symbolizing a bond forged by destiny.
Authors note: Unfortunately I needed to use Google Translate for the Welsh so appologise if I got any of it wrong.
A mystical wolf howls under a glowing moon,. Symbolizing the struggle of Morrigan, a character entwined with curses and ancient magic.A striking artwork of a red wolf howling against a crescent moon, embodying themes of transformation and magic.
There is a silence in the marshlands that swallows time.
It lies thick over the water, coiled like mist among the reeds. Soundless. Watching. Waiting. The trees bow not to wind but to memory. Beneath their branches, something moves not quite woman, not only wolf.
Her name is Morrigan, though no one dares whisper it aloud anymore.
She runs low across the damp ground, white fur streaked with ash, paws soaking in the moon reflected puddles. Her breath rises in short, sharp bursts. Red eyes flicker in the dark, not with anger but with ache. Older than rage. Older than words.
Once, she had hands. Fingers that braided herbs and soothed fevered brows. Once, she sang lullabies to babes with eyes like river glass.
But that was before the curse.
The Curse of the Moon-Mother She remembers the moment it fell upon her the oath she broke. The vengeance she vowed. She remembers fire and blood. The cries of her dying cubs. The sickle moon high above, silent as ever.
“You protect them,” the goddess had whispered, cold and cruel. “But never again shall a human see you in human skin.”
And so, she is wolf now. Always.
Except in dreams. Except in the lonely corners of the woods where magic still lives. Except when Boldolph her mate, her shadow. Her equal appears in her memory not as wolf, but as the man she once loved.
But even in dreams, they do not touch.
A striking depiction of Morrigan., the wolf-woman howling against the backdrop of a crescent moon, symbolizing her duality and the curse she bears.
🐺 A Shadow in the Marshes She walks with her last remaining cub. Ash tiny, limping, a remnant of fire. His coat has not yet thickened. He does not yet know how to hunt. But he follows her. And he watches.
Somewhere in the Shropshire hills, Boldolph lifts his nose to the wind. He feels it too. The pull of the past. The whisper of change.
For the first time in an age, Morrigan feels it stir: hope. Not for herself that is too dangerous but for something else. Something old waking up in the soil. Something waiting.
⚡ A Boy in the Distance In her visions, she sees him. A child exiled from his people. Alone in the woods, carrying wounds deeper than the bone. Grey eyes, like thunder behind mist. A storm within him.
He is too young to lead. Too wild to tame.
But he sees. He does not run from wolves. He does not scream when the trees whisper.
Morrigan felt it deep in her bones the presence of the young boy.
A Promise Made of Teeth and Fire She pauses at the edge of the marsh. Ash nuzzles her side. She looks up and for a moment, the stars seem closer.
She carves a spiral into the mud with one claw. The shape of cycles. Of beginnings.
Not far now. Staffordshire, they call the place now though in Morrigan’s memory, it had a different name. A name older than stone.
That is where she will go.
To the forest where the boy waits.
To the place where storms are born.
And there, she will decide whether this child is worth the breaking of old vows. or whether the curse will claim him too.
They say it happened on the edge of the fire season. When the trees stood crisp as tinder and the sky was low with storm breath. The boy was no longer just a boy then not quite a man, not quite a ghost. They called him Taranis Stormborne, though none dared speak it aloud after what he did that day.
He had been wandering for days with Boldolph limping and Morrigan stalking ahead like a shade. Hunger bit at them, sharp and constant. The streams were low, and even the birds had gone quiet. But it was not food that found them first it was smoke.
Taranis crouched low in the bracken and smelled it before he saw it: the reek of burning pitch, not wildfire. Deliberate. He motioned with his hand, and the wolves flanked him in silence. Through the underbrush, he saw it the den.
Nestled beneath the roots of an ancient yew was a she-wolf, panting, bloodied, and gravid with life. Around her lay ash and ruin. Two men not of Taranis’s tribe circled the den with torches and stone axes. Laughing. Taunting.
One of them stepped too close, and the she-wolf lunged. He clubbed her across the snout, and she crumpled, still breathing. Taranis felt something stir in his chest something hot and ancient, older than exile.
“She has done no wrong,” he muttered to the wind. “Then why do I burn?”
He rose from the bracken like thunder. The wolves ran with him, all teeth and fury. The first man turned and Taranis’s spear was already flying. It found flesh.
The second man screamed, torch raised but Morrigan leapt, black shadow, and his cry was cut short. The woods howled then, louder than wolves, louder than any storm. A torch dropped. The dry brush caught.
Flame leapt into the canopy.
Taranis didn’t run.
He tore the yew’s roots apart with bleeding hands and dragged the she-wolf to safety. Boldolph howled into the fire’s roar, guiding him. He covered her with his own cloak and stood between her and the blaze, smoke pouring into his lungs.
When the fire passed, the glade was scorched, the sky blackened and the she-wolf was alive.
She gave birth beneath the ashes, three pups whimpering in the smoldering earth.
One with a streak of red across its back. One with golden eyes. One with fur white as ash.
They say those pups were no ordinary wolves. They say the Phoenix’s line began that night the fire born. The storm guided, the ones who would follow only him.
But when Taranis rose from the ruin. His face black with soot and eyes like lightning, the people stopped calling him cursed.
They called him something else.
Stormfire. Brother of Wolves. Protector of the Ashborn.
A painted circular stone depicting a serene landscape with trees and a sun, contrasting the eerie atmosphere of the forest.
The air was wrong.
Callum Hargreaves opened his eyes to silence so deep it pressed against his chest. No engines in the distance. No birdsong. No radio crackle.
Only the trees. And the damp earth beneath him.
He sat up slowly, wincing. His body felt heavier, like the atmosphere itself had thickened. The forest wasn’t just quiet it was ancient. The trunks were massive, rough with moss and lichen, and the undergrowth twisted in ways he didn’t remember. Even the colours seemed muted. More… real. Older.
His phone was dead. No signal. Not even a flicker of battery life.
The feather was still in his hand.
White. Burnt at the edge.
He stood, breath visible in the still air. The mist clung low to the ground, like it was trying to hide something.
The stone was gone. The path was gone.
He turned full circle. No trails. No signs. Just forest. Endless.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself. “Get your bearings. Pick a direction. Stay calm.”
But as he moved ahead, he noticed something.
There were no footprints. Not his. Not animals. No trash. No broken branches. Nothing that said people had ever been here.
Except one thing.
A shape in the clearing ahead barely visible in the haze.
It was another stone. Taller. Deeper carved. The same symbol as before a spiral, or a horn, or… something.
At its base, a small pile of bones. Clean. Arranged in a ring. And at the centre, an ash-blackened tooth.
A vibrant painted stone featuring a spiral design, symbolizing mystery and connection to nature.
Callum backed up a step.
A low growl rippled through the silence.
His eyes snapped up.
A wolf stood across the clearing.
It wasn’t moving. Just watching.
Eyes like molten gold. Fur dark and matted. Muscles tensed, but not ready to strike.
Behind it… a second figure. Not a wolf.
Human.
Massive. Silent. Cloaked in furs. A silhouette against the trees.
Callum couldn’t breathe.
He blinked. And they were gone.
Just trees again. Just mist.
But the whispering had changed.
Not words anymore.
A name.
One he didn’t know. One he couldn’t pronounce.
But it curled in his head like smoke: Taranis.
To be continued…
From the Author
I grew up visiting the Chase, walking the woods and hearing the stories. Have you experienced anything unusual in woods? The whispers among the trees?
A hand-painted circular stone depicting a serene landscape, featuring trees and a bright sun, symbolizing a connection to nature.
They always said the Chase held secrets. Over the years rumors of ghost sightings, lost children, lights that danced just out of reach.
But Private Callum Hargreaves had grown up nearby. He’d run through these woods with scraped knees and muddy boots, long before he wore the army’s green.
He used to love the quiet, the peacefulness that the woods brought.
Tonight, it felt wrong.
The mist had rolled in fast, blanketing the forest floor. Dusk bled into night like ink in water. Callum’s breath fogged in front of him not from cold, but from the weight in the air.
His squad had finished training hours ago, but he hadn’t gone back. He couldn’t. Not yet. His thoughts were loud again memories knocking like fists on the inside of his skull.
“Just walk it off,” he muttered, his voice low. “Like always.” he told himself.
He followed an old deer track or maybe just instinct into the dense pines. The kind that made their own darkness even before sunset. The ground was soft, smelling of wet leaves and something older.
He paused.
There at the base of a gnarled tree was a stone. Half buried, bone coloured. Not shaped by nature. Carved. Faint, but deliberate.
Callum crouched. A breeze touched his neck, oddly warm.
“Someone put this here.”
A mysterious token featuring a swirl design, symbolizing the secrets of the woods.
He brushed aside the moss. A symbol. A swirl or a horn. Beside it a feather. White. Slightly scorched at the edge. When he reached out to touch it.
The air twisted.
Like the world held its breath.
He blinked. Once. The trees around him… changed.
Taller. Closer. Ancient.
No wrappers underfoot. No footprints. No signal bars. The forest felt closer, like it was listening.
Then came the whisper.
Not from behind him. Not from the side.
From below.
“He’s returned…”
The voice wasn’t human but it wasn’t wind either. It filled his ears like rising water. Callum staggered back, instinct flaring.
The stone was gone. The trail behind him, vanished. Even the smell was different no exhaust, no cordite, just wood smoke and something sharp: iron? sweat? blood?
“No. No, no what is this?”
He turned toward where the training grounds should’ve been.
Nothing.
Just trees. And silence. And the whispering louder now. Familiar. Calling him by name without speaking it.
And then… a howl.
Low. Echoing.
Not quite wolf. Not quite human.
Callum’s breath caught. He gripped the feather tight in his palm.
The fire crackled low, licking the belly of a fresh kill. A young deer brought down by patience and precision. Its scent mingled with pine resin, wood smoke, and the dry musk of wolf-fur.
Taranis sat cross-legged near the embers, his gray eyes fixed on nothing.
He had not spoken aloud in days. The wolves Boldolph, silent and alert. Morrigan, fierce-eyed and restless watched him as they always did, as if tethered not by duty, but by knowing.
He tore the meat with his fingers, chewing slowly, not tasting. Hunger had long become a ghost he ignored, like the grief that gnawed behind his ribs.
Then came the rustle. Too light for bear. Too soft for storm.
He didn’t move. But the wolves did.
A man emerged from the trees, thin, mud-streaked, crouching low not with confidence, but desperation. He made for the meat as if pulled by instinct stronger than fear. But the moment his hand reached toward the platter of bark and stone…
A low growl stopped him.
Morrigan’s teeth shone like bone in firelight. Boldolph blocked his retreat. And Taranis finally looked up.
Their eyes met. One pair hollowed by loss, the other by starvation.
“I thought you would kill me,” the stranger whispered.
“I have,” Taranis replied, “for less.”
He stood slowly, towering over the man a figure carved by exile, his face painted with ash and time. But there was no rage in him now. Only silence. And a slow understanding.
He broke the meat in half. Handed the larger piece to the thief.
The man hesitated, then took it with shaking hands.
“What’s your name?” Taranis asked.
The man blinked. “Rhonan.”
“No longer a thief,” Taranis said, sitting again. “Tonight, you eat with me. Tomorrow, you hunt beside me. And if you run…” He glanced to Morrigan. “You’ll not outrun the black one.”
Rhonan gave a breath that was a laugh, or a sob.
And for the first time in many moons, Taranis chewed his meat and tasted it.
From the author:
This story bridges two truths: that hunger drives desperation, and that mercy can be stronger than fear. Taranis’s decision not to punish the man reflects a deeper shift. one from raw survival to the beginnings of community, yet small.
If you’ve ever chosen kindness when the world expected cruelty this story is for you.
StormborneLore 