"Because your soul is bound to mine."

The Shah had been told he would not make the journey to Babylon. The words had fallen like pomegranate seeds from the lips of the Zurvanite seers—those who read destiny not in the stars but in the ancient dance of flame and shadow. They spoke of fate as the Tigris itself: a force that could nurture empires or drown them, heedless of mortal desires. The river of time, they whispered, flows only forward, and even kings must surrender to its current.

And so, knowing his end loomed near, he called for his cousin, the ruler of Susa, to bear witness to his last decree. 

When his cousin arrived from the bronze palaces of Susa, the Zurvan lair held its breath. Ardavan moved through the corridors like desert lightning, his presence crackling with unspoken power. His name echoed with the weight of the Achaemenids, though he wore their legacy like a loose cloak, never claiming it fully. The red silk of his robes whispered ancient stories with every step, golden lions dancing across the fabric like flames. His beard, streaked with silver like moonlight on still water, caught the dying sun.

Before the Shah, he bent like a reed in the wind—slight enough for courtesy, strong enough to rise again. His gaze found Farid, who stood still as a cypress tree in windless air.

The Zurvanites' chamber breathed perfumed secrets. Frankincense and myrrh wove together like lovers' fingers, rising from brass burners etched with prayers so old their meanings had turned to smoke.

The Shah's body crumbled, but his mind remained sharp as a Damascus blade.. He beckoned Ardavan closer, their words falling soft and swift as autumn leaves.

At the empire's edges, Rostam fought with the fury of Simurgh's wings, beating back the jackals that circled Persepolis. But poison needs no army to kill a king. The real viper coiled closer to the throne.

Hormoz, Crown Prince of poison dreams, watched his father with eyes like hungry amber. Each day, his shadow grew longer across Babylon's walls. Yet even his treachery paled before the greater threat.

Navid, the king of shifting sands, the second prince who ruled no land yet commanded the very wind. His power lay not in palace intrigue but in the whispered loyalties of men who moved like djinn through starlit dunes. They were devotees of sand and silence, appearing like mirages where the empire's foundations showed cracks.

Should Hormoz seize Babylon's throne, it would be Navid's blade—sharp as desert frost—that would carve the empire into pieces small enough for ravens to carry away. Without a Shah whose heart beat in time with both city and sand, Persia would scatter like seeds in a storm, each grain of its former glory lost to the winds of war.

And so the Shah begged his cousin.

"Give Farid one hundred thousand of your Red Warriors," he whispered, his voice thin as thread yet weighted with imperial command. His fingers—once strong enough to bend bronze—trembled against the throne's golden arms like autumn leaves clinging to their branches. "Let them ride with him to Babylon. The Lion Throne must welcome Rostam when he returns from the borderlands. My son"—here his voice softened like wax near flame—"is not forged for war, but his heart beats true as a nightingale's song."

Ardavan bowed, silence his only promise. Like smoke from an extinguished candle, he vanished into the darkness, leaving behind the mingled scents of decay, myrrh and destiny.

In the chamber's hush, father and son remained, surrounded by shadows that danced like memories on the walls. The candlelight painted them both in shades of gold and grief.

The Shah's next breath emerged like a desert wind, heavy with the dust of buried empires. "Your heart must not shatter for her."

Farid knew who her was.

Sima.

His jaw clenched like a fist around unspoken words, each memory of her a thorn pressed deeper into flesh.

"You are of royal blood," the Shah murmured, his voice as delicate as spider silk yet unyielding as steel. "Betrayal runs through our veins like quicksilver, bright and poisonous. She was like water in cupped palms—destined to slip away no matter how tightly you tried to hold her."

Farid's gaze fell to his hands, remembering how they had traced the constellation of freckles across Sima's face, how they had sworn oaths against her skin that now turned to ash in his mouth.

"Let her memory fade like incense smoke," his father counseled. "Turn instead to Zabel, your wife. I chose her with the care of a jeweler selecting a diamond. She is carved from the same stone as her mountain homeland, her heart tempered like Damascus steel. She will be your fortress when the storms come—and they will come, my son."

Each word struck like a hammer against heated metal, shaping truths Farid did not wish to hold.

"The throne has never sung to your blood," the Shah said, his voice softening like evening light on water. "That is why you have always held my trust. But destiny, my son, is not a kind mistress—she is more like a cruel poet, writing verses we never wished to speak. Your chapter in this tale may yet be written in letters of fire and gold."

The words caught in Farid's throat like thorns, bitter as unripe pomegranates. Each breath felt like swallowing fire and sand.

When at last he found his voice, it emerged soft as a desert night's first star. "In a village by the Howling Maw," he whispered, "I met a healer woman whose eyes held secrets like water holds light. She spoke of my mother... and of a serpent-woman from lands where dawn first breaks, whose presence drove you to plot my mother's death."

The words hung between them like incense frozen in air, heavy with the weight of decades-old poison.

For the first time since moonrise, the Shah's gaze wavered, falling like a wounded bird. His eyes, once keen enough to pierce armor, now seemed to see only ghosts. "Truth," he breathed, "can be sharper than any blade."

Farid's breath caught like silk on thorns.

"There are dark gardens in my past," his father confessed, each word heavy as ancient stone, "where nothing beautiful grows. Perhaps the gods, in their infinite wisdom, sent Sima as my punishment—a mirror to reflect my own cruelty. Perhaps she was the price of blood, demanded by souls I wronged when my heart was younger and harder than Damascus steel."

Tears gathered in Farid's eyes like dew on rose petals, threatening to fall. Before him, the great Shah—who had commanded armies and bent kingdoms to his will—seemed to fold in on himself like a scroll too old to hold its shape.

"Forgiveness," the Shah whispered, his voice fragile as ash, "is water in the desert. I ask for it knowing my hands are too stained to cup such precious liquid. Yet still I ask, my son."

Farid closed his eyes, feeling the weight of empire settle around his shoulders like a cloak of lead and gold—the throne that had never called to his blood, the love that fate had forbidden, the truths that had lain buried like scorpions in sand.

"Journey to Babylon," his father murmured, each word a farewell. "Leave me to my ghosts in Susa, with my sogoli. The road ahead is no longer mine to walk."

In that moment, Farid understood with the clarity of desert stars that this was their final meeting beneath heaven's vault.

And so, tears falling like rain in a land that rarely wept, he bowed one last time—not as heir to emperor, but as a mortal man bidding farewell to another whose time had slipped away like water through cupped hands.

१

The dungeons breathed memories of tears and stone, where shadows danced like lost souls seeking redemption. The torchlight painted stories of grief on ancient walls that had witnessed a thousand heartbreaks before this one.

Farid descended like a ghost among ghosts, each footfall an echo of regret against weathered stone. The iron bars parted before him with a song of rust and surrender. The guard's hesitation had melted before the weight of royal blood, though Farid had wielded only silence—that sharpest of weapons.

And there she was.

Sima.

A dark flower blooming in shadow, her knees drawn close like petals protecting a heart. Her hair fell in waves of midnight, a veil between her and the world's cruelties. Though stripped of her silks, forced to wear rough linen that scratched at pride and skin alike, she remained unbroken as desert stone. The cold that crept through these walls like a hungry djinn found no purchase in her bones.

They shared silence like bitter wine.

When at last he moved, it was to raise his hand, fingers cradling a vial that caught the torchlight like a trapped star. The amber liquid within seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat, each ripple a whispered secret.

"This was found among your possessions," he said, voice steady as a blade balanced on its edge. "When they took you."

She remained still as carved marble until, at last, her voice emerged, rough as sand against silk: "Hormoz's messenger placed it in my hands like a prayer. His words were poison: take the lives of father and son."

The truth landed between them like a fallen star, burning with possibilities that might have been.

"Tell me why you stayed your hand."

Her silence spoke volumes in a language only lovers know.

He moved closer, until the space between them was thin as a blade of grass. In the close darkness of the cell, as he knelt before her, they were equals at last—no longer prince and prisoner, but two souls stripped bare of all pretense. He searched her face like a scholar seeking truth in ancient texts, but she kept her gaze averted, holding her secrets close as a mother holds her child.

The stone walls seemed to lean closer, hungry for the words that hung between them.

"Was I ever more than a game piece on your board?" His voice emerged gentle as evening prayer, though each syllable carried poison. "Did you—" The question caught like thorns in his throat. "Was there ever love in your heart for me?"

Sima's silence spread like ink in water.

The air grew thick with unspoken truths.

His jaw hardened like cooling steel. "Speak."

Still, she offered only the quiet of desert nights.

Something ancient and raw broke loose in Farid's chest. His hands became fists of barely contained thunder. "You will answer your Prince!"

At last, she raised her eyes to his. Tears gathered there like dew on deadly nightshade, beautiful and dangerous.

"The answer lives in your own heart," she breathed. "You need only be brave enough to hear it."

Pain coiled in his chest like a serpent striking its own tail.

A laugh like broken glass tore from his throat. "You weave lies like a spider weaves silk," he said. "Your enchantments hold no power over me now."

Sima's lashes trembled with unshed tears. "Yet here you stand before me."

The truth of it struck him mute. For the first time since entering this tomb of stone and shadow, words abandoned him entirely.

The urge to flee rose in him like flood waters. He turned toward the door, his heartbeat a war drum against his ribs.

"Our paths divide here," he said to the shadows ahead. "This is our last meeting under heaven."

She nodded, a single tear tracking down her cheek like a star falling to earth, though her eyes remained clear as desert sky.

Bile rose in his throat like poison. His fingers curled into themselves until crescents of pain bloomed in his palms. "You will remain in Susa as the Shah's healer," he declared. "While I ride for Babylon's walls."

Another silent nod.

Something vital shattered inside him.

"Speak!" The word echoed off stone like thunder.

Sima's lips parted like a flower opening to moonlight, her gaze finally meeting his fully. "What words would ease your heart's burden?"

The sound that left Farid's throat was barely a laugh—more like wind through ruins. He turned to face her again, his movement slow as the setting sun. "Why do I linger here?" The question hung in the air like incense. "What enchantment still binds me to this place?"

Once more, he knelt before her, his fingers finding her chin with the delicacy one might use to touch a butterfly's wing.

Their eyes met—hers dark as midnight wells, his blue as Persian seas. In that gaze lived something unnamed, untamed, refusing to die despite all wisdom saying it should.

"Forgiveness," he breathed, "is beyond my reach. I cannot forgive you."

Her nod was slight as a dove's wing.

His fingers tensed against her skin, gentle yet unyielding as destiny itself. "Your punishment is to wait," he commanded, voice forged from iron and starlight. "Until either I return to Susa or summon you to Babylon's walls. You are forbidden from seeking other paths. You are forbidden from seeking death's embrace."

The fortress of her composure finally crumbled.

A sob tore from her throat like a bird breaking free of its cage, her body trembling like a leaf in autumn's last storm. "Why?" The word emerged broken as shattered pottery.

Something ancient and terrible darkened Farid's gaze.

"Because your soul is bound to mine."

His touch fell away like petals from a dying rose.

He rose and turned, each step toward the door an exercise in willpower, leaving her alone with only echoes and regret for company.

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