Artistic representation of Lore Stormborne, featuring intricate patterns and vivid colors, symbolizing his connection to ancient powers and storms.
Rain fell soft upon Emberhelm not in sheets, but in threads, weaving through the night like strands of memory. Each drop whispered against the walls, tracing paths down stone carved before empires rose. The air smelt of iron, damp moss, and prophecy.
Lore moved through the Hall of Echoes with deliberate silence. The torches burned low, their flames bending in strange rhythm, as though swayed by unseen breath. Beneath the central arch lay the dais of oath and upon it, the gold ring.
It shimmered faintly in the half-light, a pulse of life within metal. Not the glow of firelight, but of something older.
Lore hesitated before it. His reflection warped in its surface his eyes darker, sharper, his face marked by the faint runes of bloodline and burden. “The ring of storm and oath,” he murmured. “The bond of the five.”
He reached out. The moment his fingers brushed it, the hall sighed.
A low hum filled the air not from stone or wind, but from within.
Then came the voice.
“Brother…”
The word was barely sound more vibration, more memory. It coiled through him like smoke through glass.
“Taranis…” Lore whispered, his voice trembling. The name itself seemed to awaken something. The torches guttered. The shadows around the walls began to move not randomly, but with purpose, forming the faint outlines of chained figures, of men bowed beneath lightning.
The ring pulsed again, once, twice. Gold bled to storm-grey.
“Show me,” Lore said. “Show me where he walks.”
The pulse deepened and suddenly, the hall was gone.
He stood in mist. Iron gates loomed before him, slick with rain. Beyond them, sand bloodstained and torn an arena. He heard the roars of lions, the clash of blades, the chanting of a foreign crowd. And there, in the centre, Taranis bare-armed, chained, and unbroken. His eyes like stormlight.
“Still he stands,” Lore breathed.
The vision shattered like glass beneath a hammer. He was back in the hall, gasping, knees to the stone floor. The ring still glowed in his palm, its pulse slowing to match his heartbeat.
He knew then: his brother lived but the bond between them had stirred something greater. The old powers beneath the land the ones the druids had whispered of were waking again.
A new sound reached him. A voice, aged as winter bark.
“The ring calls the storm again,” said Maeve, the seer. She stepped from the shadowed archway, her staff crowned with raven feathers and iron charms. “You’ve felt it too the pulse of the deep earth, the cry of the stones.”
Lore rose slowly. “He lives. I saw him. Rome cannot hold him.”
Maeve’s gaze was sharp, knowing. “No but when the storm returns, it will not come gently. Bonds such as yours were not forged for peace. The land remembers its oaths, Lore Stormborne. The blood remembers. And blood always calls for blood.”
He turned toward the open window, where thunder rolled faintly beyond the hills. The storm clouds were gathering again not yet upon them, but coming.
“Then let it come,” he said softly. “We are Stormborne. We do not kneel to the Empire. We endure… and when the sky breaks, we rise.”
The gold ring flared once more, bright as lightning and somewhere far to the south, in a Roman cell slick with rain, Taranis felt it too.
“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.”
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.
The clang of steel echoed across the Roman training yard. The sun was still low, its pale light glinting off helmets and polished shields. Taranis moved like shadow and storm, his chains rattling as he fought against three centurions in succession.
Every strike he gave was measured, precise but every parry cost him pain. The iron bindings cut into his wrists, leaving a thin red line that deepened with each movement. He refused to yield.
Caelum stood at the edge of the sand pit. His tunic far too fine for this place a youth of maybe sixteen, bright-eyed and restless. His gaze never left Taranis.
“uncle Marcos,” he said quietly, turning to the older man beside him. “Can those chains come off him?”
Marcos didn’t answer at once. His face was lined from years in service, his eyes as sharp as the swords he trained with. “Chains are the only reason he’s still alive, Caelum,” he said finally. “Without them, some fool would call it fear instead of discipline.”
“But he’s fighting for us now.” Caelum’s voice carried, defiant. “For Rome, at least.”
In the pit, Taranis struck low, sweeping a soldier’s legs out from under him. Before turning the momentum into a twist that sent the next centurion stumbling backward.
The last one hesitated, shield raised, watching the way. Taranis breathed steady, like a man waiting for the storm to break.
The chain coiled once, twice then snapped out, wrapping the shield edge and dragging it down. The sound of the soldier hitting the ground was followed by silence.
Caelum took a step ahead. “He’s more Roman than half your men.”
Marcos shot him a warning look. “Careful, boy. You sound like your mother.”
The youth smirked faintly. “She says the same.”
When the training was done, the soldiers dispersed, muttering under their breath half respect, half fear. Taranis knelt in the dust, hands bound before him. Marcos approached, tossing him a canteen.
“You could have killed them,” Marcos said.
Taranis drank, the water streaking through the dust on his face. “You didn’t tell me to.”
Marcos grunted, half a laugh, half frustration. “One day, that mouth of yours will get you killed.”
“Maybe,” Taranis replied. “But not today.”
Caelum stepped closer, watching the bruised wrists, the marks the chains left behind. “You’re not like the others. You don’t fight for their gods.”
Taranis looked at him not unkindly. “No. Mine are older. And they don’t care who wears the crown.”
The boy tilted his head. “If I asked you to fight for me instead of Rome?”
Marcos snapped, “Enough!” But Taranis only smiled slow, deliberate, dangerous.
“Then, little wolf,” he said softly, “you’d better be ready to pay the price.”
Above them, thunder rolled faintly in the distance, though the sky was still clear.
Chains clinked like faint echoes of the arena’s roars, and the scent of iron still clung to the air. Taranis Storm lay awake in the half-darkness, eyes open to the stone ceiling, counting the rhythm of the guards’ boots. Rome slept, but the storm within him did not.
He had won his life for another day, but victory came at a cost. He had shown them what he was. Not a beaten barbarian, but something far more dangerous a man who learned.
At dawn, Marcos appeared at his cell door, shadowed by two guards. “You’ve made them talk,” Marcos said quietly. “The governor himself wants to see you.”
Taranis said nothing. The chains around his wrists jingled as he stood.
They led him through the inner halls of the fortress, where Roman banners hung stiff and silent. Soldiers stared as he passed some curious, others wary. A man who defied lions and bears without breaking was not easily forgotten.
In the governor’s chamber, incense burned thick. Maps of Britannia sprawled across a marble table, marked with red ink and small figurines of silver legions.
The governor, Decimus Varro, was not a cruel man by Roman standards merely pragmatic. “You are a spectacle,” he said, voice calm. “A man who fights like the gods themselves favour him. Tell me, Briton what drives you?”
Taranis met his gaze. “The same thing that drives Rome. Freedom.”
Varro smiled faintly. “Freedom is an illusion. Order is what endures.” He leaned forward. “Serve Rome, and you’ll live well. Defy us again, and your death will be remembered only as noise in the sand.”
Silence stretched between them, thick as the smoke that coiled from the brazier. Then Taranis spoke, slow and deliberate.
“I have no wish to be remembered. Only to finish what began in the storm.”
Varro frowned not in anger, but thought. “Then we understand each other.” He gestured to Marcos. “Train him. Watch him. If he can be tamed, he’ll fight for Rome. If not…”
Taranis was taken to the training grounds. Men waited there gladiators, soldiers, slaves who had survived too long to be careless. The air rang with the sound of iron on iron. Marcos tossed him a blade, better balanced than the last.
“Your real trial starts now,” Marcos said. “In the arena, you fought to live. Out here, you’ll fight to learn what Rome fears most a man they can not own.”
For the first time since his capture, Taranis smiled. The storm had found a new horizon.
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.
A vibrant artistic depiction of a stylized object, blending intricate designs with bright colors, invoking themes of lore and magic.
The Quiet Flame
The wind that swept over Emberhelm carried no warmth, only the ghost of fire long spent. I stood where the circle had once been whole, where twelve stones still defied the weight of empire, and one lay split a wound upon the land.
The others had gone. Drax to fury, Draven to silence, Rayne to his choices, and Taranis to chains. I remained, bound not by steel but by memory. It was not courage that kept me here; it was knowing that something sacred had been broken and that it was not yet done with us.
The Romans called this valley conquered. They built their roads and forts as if they could hammer meaning from earth and stone. But meaning does not bow to empire. It whispers, it lingers, it waits. And I have learned to listen.
I knelt beside the thirteenth stone, tracing the crack with my fingers. The split hummed faintly, as though it still remembered the storm that birthed it. I could almost hear Taranis’s voice beneath the wind, a murmur of thunder too distant to strike.
“Brother,” I whispered, “if the storm is caged, does the sky mourn its silence?”
A shadow passed across the ridge perhaps a hawk, perhaps a sign. In the old days, I would have asked the druids for meaning, but now I was the only one left to ask.
Rayne’s betrayal still cut deep, though part of me understood it. He had always been the one to see the long game, the patient serpent coiled beneath the waves. I did not forgive him, but neither could I condemn him fully. Perhaps this is how the gods feel when they look upon men weary, knowing, endlessly disappointed.
Night crept over the hills. I lit no fire; the Romans watched for smoke. Instead, I watched the stars, the same constellations our ancestors had trusted when the world was still young. Somewhere beyond those lights, I felt the pulse of something waking old magic, stirring beneath stone and soil, called forth by blood and betrayal alike.
The Circle was broken, yes. But its power had not vanished; it had merely changed shape. The storm that once lived in Taranis’s heart now whispered through the bones of the earth. I could feel it gathering, quiet but sure, as if the land itself prepared to rise.
In that silence, I spoke the old words not prayer, not spell, but remembrance. A promise carved into breath:
“When the storm returns, it will not ask who was loyal. It will ask who remains.”
The morning broke pale and cold, a thin mist rolling across the fields like a ghost that had forgotten its name. My horse shifted beneath me, uneasy. The world felt quieter than it should have been not the quiet of peace, but the kind born from expectation. Something waited ahead.
I had traveled for weeks now, keeping to forgotten roads, trading false names and favours for shelter. Rome’s messengers had ceased for a time, and that silence was heavier than any command. I began to wonder if I had been released… or abandoned.
At night, when the campfire dwindled, I caught myself tracing the symbol of the Ring into the dirt a circle broken clean through. No matter how many times I erased it, my hand drew it again. Habit or guilt, I couldn’t tell. Perhaps both.
Rumours reached me in fragments: a rebellion rising in the north, whispers that Drax had taken to leading the scattered tribes, and that Lore had vanished into the mists of the west, chasing prophecies no man could name. Draven was silent. And Taranis… Taranis had become a legend again.
They said he had escaped Rome’s chains, that his eyes burned brighter than ever, that lightning followed where he walked. I did not believe all of it but I wanted to. The world is easier to bear when its ghosts refuse to stay buried.
One night, beneath a blood-red moon, I reached the edge of the marshlands near Ravenmere. The air there was heavy, each breath tasting of iron and old secrets. The ruins of an outpost stood crooked against the skyline Roman stones built upon older foundations. It felt… familiar.
Inside, beneath moss and dust, I found carvings of the Circle faint, half-effaced by time. Words I had spoken in another life echoed in my memory: “We are the Ring. Bound by oath, unbroken by fear.”
I knelt, running my hand over the stone, feeling the groove of each line. “I broke it,” I whispered. “But perhaps it was already breaking.”
Something stirred in the shadows not human, not beast, but presence. A warmth against the air, like breath drawn from memory itself. For the first time since Emberhelm, I felt the Ring respond.
A whisper, faint but unmistakable, rippled through the ruin. “The Circle is never broken, only divided. The storm remembers.”
I rose slowly, the hairs on my arms prickling. Whatever force had once bound us had not died it waited, fragmented, patient. And now, it was calling.
When I rode from Ravenmere at dawn, I carried no banner, no ally, no command. Only purpose.
The Ring was broken but not gone. And if Taranis still lived, if the others still walked their paths… then the storm was far from finished.
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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