The Last Storm-Bearer

From the Ledger of Lirian Ever-Weaver,
Chronicler of Mórradún
And the hush before the tale begins…

The whispers say the winds grow wild—that storms rise without warning, and the sky has forgotten its name.

Across the land, the names had faded.
Storm-Bearer became nothing more than a line in a half-burnt tale, or a sigil mistaken for decoration on a child’s toy.
No more songs. No more sentinels. Only weather—and fear.

But I have not.
And neither did he.
This is the tale of Talen—
Last of the Storm-Bearers.
The one who remembered what we let slip into silence.

It began with a quiet snowfall in the village of Newry in the land of Mórradún.

By noon, the snow had melted under an unnatural warmth. By dusk, the air had thickened—clouds frozen in place, the wind gone still. The elders stirred uneasily. Something old was waking.

When night came, it did not come alone.
Hail hammered rooftops. Rain lashed sideways. Then the wind rose—a howling pack of a thousand wolves let loose. Thatched roofs tore free. Villagers rushed to unshackle their livestock before the sheds collapsed.

The thunder did not crash—it rolled, ceaseless and low, like ten thousand bulls beneath the earth. Elders leaned mouth to ear to speak, and even then, their words dissolved in the storm.

Children clung to hearthstones, eyes wide, faces pale.
“Why is the storm angry?” asked little Tulla, voice barely louder than the rain.
Cormac of the Ridge, an old hunter who once knew the mountains by scent and sound, gripped the windowsill until his knuckles whitened. His mouth opened—then closed.
He said nothing.
But his silence was louder than the wind.

Then, from the far end of the hall, a voice began to rise.
Not strong. Not sure.
Siann of the Hollow-Eyes, once keeper of the Winter Rites, began to sing.

It was an old song, barely remembered.
A song of fear—and of hope.
Of the Wind-Bound. Of the Spiral Mark.
Of those who once stood between storm and sorrow.

They bore the Spiral not as a weapon, but as a wound.
A memory inked in flesh.
A vow that could not be spoken aloud—only heard by the storm.

Others turned to listen, but no one joined in.
Not because they did not know the words,
but because the storm had made them forget their own voices.

Outside, the gale howled.
But above it—barely above it—her voice held.

And in the distance, where the clouds swirled like a memory waking,
a figure moved toward the village.

This was no ordinary tempest.

A snowfall in spring that left no prints.
Clouds that did not move, even when the hawks circled them thrice.
And silence—heavy, unnatural silence. The kind that comes before a name is spoken for the first time in centuries.

He came at dusk, cloaked in a coat stitched with threadbare runes, his boots worn, his eyes wary of clouds. The villagers paid him no mind. Just another wanderer.

But he had walked the edge of the world, past towers gutted by moss and memory. He had listened to skies no longer heeded. And he had learned to carry what no one else remembered: the burden of the storm.

Talen, last of the Storm-Bearers.The last was not chosen. He remained because he remembered.

Long before the kingdoms of men, balance was kept not by mages, druids, or gods, but by those who listened to the sky: the Storm-Bearers.

Not mages were they, nor druids, nor gods.
They were Storm-Bearers.

Chosen not for strength, but for stillness. Marked at birth by omens—lightning that split the sky when they cried, rains that fell on their cradles and nowhere else, winds that refused to touch their mother’s cloak. Each bore a spiral etched into skin, bone, or eye. Each heard the storm not as a threat, but as a song.

The first Storm-Bearer, Caereth the Wind-Bound, walked into the heart of a tempest and did not die. Instead, she listened—and the storm gave her its true name.

From that day, her line kept vigil at the threshold of ruin. They bartered with hail. They whispered to the thunder. They bound the wild sky with blooded palms and quiet vows.

Twelve came across the ages. One for each wind. One for each silence the world refused to understand.

And then came forgetting.

The people no longer listened.
And the Storm-Bearers were unmade.
By blade.
By time.
By betrayal.

All save one.

Talen.

The thirteenth.
The last.

He stepped into the square.

All at once, the wind broke, tearing shingles from beams and splitting oaks like mere husks.

The wind broke—all at once. It split oaks like husks. The lightning’s kiss upon the river set it to a boil, a wrathful caress.

Then came the thunder—not in bursts, but as a voice. A cry so vast it bent the air and filled the lungs of the world.

Talen did not raise his hands.
He did not chant.
He listened.

The conversation between Storm and Talen was not in words that the villagers heard or understood. Storms do not speak in the language of men. The storm turned its eye on him—when it rose like a creature betrayed—Talen spoke its name.

Not the name men gave it.
The first name.
The storm-name.

When the Storm Spoke

Talen stepped into the square, boots rooted in the trembling earth, wind tearing at his coat like a beast unchained. Rain sliced sideways. Thunder pressed against bone.

And the storm knew him.

A low shudder passed through the gale—not fear, but recognition.

The air trembled with a voice not shaped by tongue or throat, but by pressure and pulse. It was not sound, but sensation.

STORM:
You are not Caereth.
You are not Aluin, nor Mira of the Sighing Hills. I knew their names. I bent to their hands.
Who are you, thirteenth-born? Why do you bear the spiral unbidden?

TALEN (quietly, eyes closed):
“I did not ask for the burden.”

STORM:
Then cast it down, windless one.
Let me split this sky. Let me return to rage and remember nothing.

TALEN:
“If rage was all you wanted, you would not have waited.”

The wind hesitated.

Lightning coiled overhead, but did not strike.

STORM (softer now, like waves pulled inward):
They forgot me.
They named me natural disaster and built walls against my grief.
But once, I was sung to. Bound not by force, but by vow. I was held.

Not just this village. All of them.
Across the mountains and moors, they have walled their windows and deafened their children.
I was once sung to by kings.
Now I am a hazard. A forecast. A thing to flee.

TALEN:
“I remember.”

STORM:
Do you?

The thunder swelled again, rising like a tide—

STORM:
Do you remember how Caereth stood barefoot in the gale, her arms open wide?
How she bled her name into the stones?
How she promised to carry me when the world grew deaf?

TALEN:
“I carry her vow in my bones.”

STORM:
And yet your people build towers of stone and wood. They do not listen.

TALEN:
“Then speak through me. One last time. Not to destroy—but to be heard.”

The wind circled him—testing.
The lightning forked and shimmered around the edges of his silence.
Then—

A stillness, vast and trembling.

And the storm spoke not in wrath, but in remembrance.

It poured its name into him—not in a word, but in a weight.

Talen dropped to one knee.

The spiral on his palm flared with blue fire. His voice, when it came, was not his alone:

TALEN (and storm together):
We carry it still.

And the storm stopped.

The wind released its breath.
And the storm—at last—passed on.
Not ended.
Not tamed.
But heard.

He drew the spiral on the stone with blood from his bitten tongue. He bowed to the east and whispered, “I carry it still.”

The storm passed over Newry—not because it was conquered, but because it was remembered.

And for a single breath, the sky remembered how to exhale.

The storm passed—not defeated, but heard.
And though no one remembers the name he spoke,
the spiral he drew remains—worn by time, but unweathered.

Some say the winds across Newry are gentler now.
Others say the silence afterward taught them to listen again.

And though no one remembers the name he spoke,
the spiral he drew remains—worn by time, but unweathered.
Siann is long buried. Cormac’s cabin stands hollow.
But still, when thunder rolls, little Tulla—grown now, grey at the temples—
teaches her grandchildren to listen.

Can you hear it, friend, the wind’s lament? Do you recall the old songs?

I only know this:
When the wind turns sharp in spring,
when the thunder rumbles long before the rain,
I place my palm to the stones and whisper—

“We carry it still.”

The Spiral was never a spell. It was a scar made sacred—the mark left by choosing to listen when the rest of the world chose to run.

If this story stirred something in you—memory, magic, or the hush before thunder—then The Fianna Chronicles: Awakening awaits.
A tale where remembering holds the power to reshape a world.
 Own it now—signed, sealed, and sent from the Ever-Weaver’s hand:
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A Note fromLirian Ever-Weaver

The power of imagination?

It is the first fire lit in the dark. The wind before the word. The hush before the harpstring hums.

My imagination is not mine alone. It is the echo of a thousand forgotten songs, the moss-covered path through a forest no map recalls.

It does not obey the sun, nor bend to stone. It walks between raindrops, whispers to storms, and calls characters not from mind—but memory.

To imagine is not to invent, but to remember what the world once knew and chose to forget.

I am merely the keeper of the Ledger. The tales write themselves— I just listen.

If such stories stir something in you, they await in the wind-swept pages here: https://hopperj.substack.com

— Lirian Ever-Weaver Chronicler of Mórradún, and the hush before the tale begins

#epicfantasy #mythicfiction #substackwriters #bardic #TheFiannaChronicles