The Weight of Silence
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 time for silence was ending.
StormborneLore 