The fire cracked and spat, its glow painting the blood-stained earth in amber and shadow. Smoke curled into the sky, mixing with the iron-rich scent of blood, sweat, and scorched heather. Around the blaze, three brothers sat warriors of old blood, each marked by time, loss, and prophecy.
Taranis sat with his legs folded, sword across his lap. His great frame bent slightly ahead as if burdened by ghosts. At eighteen, he already bore the presence of a myth. His grey eyes, like the storm itself, reflected both silence and fury. He had not returned as a boy. He had returned as legend.
Beside him sat Drax, once the fiercest of the elder siblings. His frame scarred but unbowed, his voice deeper and darker than memory allowed. Across from them was Lore, the quietest of the three thinner. More thoughtful his staff carved with runes from the old tongue. His breath rose in the chill air like whispered scripture.
Drax poked the fire absently with a stick.
“Draven went missing,” he said finally, breaking the silence. “So did Rayne. Last we heard, a group of blackclaw warriors was seen not far from their camp. We hope they’re still alive.”
Taranis looked up sharply. “And Father?”
“Fever and war,” Drax answered, voice low. “Three winters past. But he saw the sky darken before he died. He knew the storm was waking. He knew you would return.”
Taranis stared into the fire, jaw clenched. “He died thinking I was a curse.”
Lore leaned ahead. “He died knowing you were the key. He just didn’t live long enough to see the lock.”
The wind passed softly through the broken trees around them, carrying the scent of rain and ash. The brothers sat in silence for a while longer. No one had the heart to speak of the others they’d buried. Too many names. Too few fires.
Drax rose slowly and raised his drinking horn to the stars.
“Now we step into a new age,” he said. “Brothers bow to the true leader of the Stormborne clan.”
Taranis blinked. “What?”
“You’re the High Warlord now,” Lore said, smiling faintly. “I stay the Flame keeper. Drax… he commands the Blood bound. These aren’t boasts. They’re burdens.”
Taranis stood, slowly, as if weighed down by every step. The firelight cast monstrous shadows behind him.
“Is there anyone left?” he asked.
Drax nodded. “Some. Hiding in the Wychbury caverns. Scattered through the old marshes. A few loyal to the name. Most think we’re dead.”
Lore lifted his staff and traced the air. Sparks flickered from the fire. “You carry the name now. You carry us all.”
Taranis exhaled. “Fights are breaking out around us. Tribes testing borders. Raiders from across the sea. This wasn’t my first battle since exile.”
Drax frowned. “What do you mean?”
Taranis smirked. “Did you ever hear of the boy who walked out of a siege. Leaving only one man alive to tell the tale?”
Lore narrowed his eyes. “That was you?”
“I was ten,” Taranis said. “Found myself in Pict lands. A village took me in bark bread and bone broth, but they gave freely. Raiders came. Painted in bone ash. Serpent fangs. I stood between them and the fire.”
“And you fought?”
“I didn’t just fight,” Taranis said quietly. “I became something else. They called me ghost. One man I spared to carry the tale. Word of a storm-child spread fast. I moved on before the dead were buried.”
“You fought like a god out there today,” Drax said, his voice softer now. “The storm moved with you. Boldolph and Morrigan at your side. Pendragon and Tairneanach overhead. You were prophecy.”
“I was survival,” Taranis replied. “I fought because I had no choice. The gods didn’t give me power. They gave me fire and asked me to burn for it.”
Lore’s eyes flicked upward. “And burn you did.”
Taranis nodded. “But now… now I need more than fire. I need people. A clan. A home.”
Drax drank deeply from his horn. “Then let’s build one. Three brothers. Three lands. One name.”
Taranis looked between them. “Where?”
“Where we once stood,” Lore said. “But different. You, in the east on the high hills of Malvern, where the sky remembers you. Drax, in the west near the marshes, to guard the old trails. I will hold the centre, near the stone circle. The fire will not die.”
Taranis slowly nodded. “Then we rebuild. Not as children of the stone but as fathers of the bronze.”
Lore smiled. “The Neolithic dies with tonight’s embers. From now, we shape flame and forge blade.”
“We become what they feared we would be,” Drax said. “Stormborne. Eternal.”
Taranis reached out and grasped their arms one brother to each hand. “We lead together.”
The fire roared.
Part II: The Storm Remembers Later, as the night deepened, Taranis sat with his back to a tree. Boldolph rested his head on Taranis’s leg. The great black wolf was still and watchful, his red eyes scanning the shadows. Morrigan curled near the fire, pale as snowfall, her ears twitching at every distant noise.
“Do you think they’re truly gone?” Taranis whispered.
Lore didn’t answer at first. He simply watched the flames. “No one is ever truly gone. Not in our line. Some names survive in flesh. Others in fire.”
“And the enemy?” Drax asked.
“Still out there,” Lore said. “Still watching. The Saxons come. The Romans return. But we… we will be ready.”
Taranis stared into the night. “I never wanted to be leader.”
“That’s exactly why you should be,” Drax said. “Those who crave the crown often destroy the land they wear it on.”
“We carve new paths,” Lore said. “Not in stone. Not in blood. But in memory and meaning.”
Morning light rose over the battlefield. The dead were buried, their names sung into the mist. Taranis, Drax, and Lore stood before the hill where they would build their future.
Three brothers.
Three keeps.
One storm.
“I’ll raise warriors,” Taranis said. “Not just fighters but those who stand for the forgotten.”
“I’ll raise shields,” Drax replied. “Those who know honour and vengeance.”
“I’ll raise stories,” Lore said. “And through them, we will never be lost again.”
Boldolph howled once deep and mournful. Morrigan joined in, her voice carrying across the valley like wind through bone.
Above them, high in the clouds, Pendragon and Tairneanach circled not as beasts of war, but guardians of legend.
And so, the Bronze Age of the Stormborne began. Not with kings or crowns, but around a fire, carved in blood and rebuilt in hope.
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.
StormborneLore 