"A king's crown is weighted with duty, not just gold."

The wind keened like a mother's lament, carrying with it the scent of saffron and steel. High above the valley, on a jagged outcrop of the Al-Kharran Mountains where ancient fire temples once blazed, Farid reined in his horse, his heart heavy as he gazed upon Babylon. From this height, the city sprawled like an illuminated page torn from temple scrolls—its walls thick as destiny itself, its towers reaching toward the gods like the fingers of supplicants, its gates guarded by men who had traded their honor for power.

Behind him, the Red Warriors sat astride their warhorses like djinn made flesh. Their crimson-dyed lamellar armor caught the dying light like scattered pomegranate seeds, each iron plate a scale in their shared tale of loyalty.

The royal phoenix emblazoned on their breastplates seemed to breathe with each movement, its wings spread in eternal defiance. Their thick woolen cloaks, dyed the deep red of sacrifice and edged with verses of protection woven in golden thread, rippled like battle standards. Beneath their hoods, their eyes burned with the same fire that had forged the first warriors of Fars.

Their cuirasses clinked softly against silk tunics bearing clan sigils passed down through a thousand years—the lion, the hawk, the cypress tree eternal. Each warrior wore not just a curved shamshir but generations of tradition at his hip, and their recurve bows—crafted from horn and sinew and ancient magic—hummed with barely contained power. Their horses, descended from the legendary herds of Nisaea, moved like poetry, their coats shimmering between the color of sunset over Isfahan and dawn over the Alborz.

The emissaries' return was written in fate's ledger long before Farid sent them. His brother had not just stolen the throne—he had shattered the harmony of their house, torn the sacred bonds of brotherhood that even Alexander's armies had failed to break.

As the sun bled its last light into the horizon like henna staining a bride's palms, a solitary figure approached. Hormoz, who had once shared Farid's cradle songs and their mother's tales of ancient kings.

The crown prince of Persia wore black as if night itself had been woven into fabric, rejecting the celestial blue that had draped their ancestors since Cyrus dreamed his empire into being. His cloak, trimmed with white fox fur from the mountains where their grandmother once hunted, snapped in the wind like a war flag. The gold-inlaid sword at his hip—its pommel studded with turquoise to ward off the evil eye—marked him as firstborn, chosen, blessed. But his face, though it echoed their father's noble features, had been reshaped by ambition into something that would make even the divs of legend recoil.

In that moment, as brother faced brother on the mountain's edge, the wind carried not just echoes of the dead, but whispers of what was to come.

Farid dismounted with practiced ease, his expression unreadable. His brother would find no satisfaction in his face.

"Brother," Hormoz drawled, the word dripping from his tongue like bitter honey. "I feared you had grown soft in Susa's gardens, content to let the Lion Throne gather dust."

Farid's jaw clenched, but his voice remained smooth as polished marble. "The throne is not abandoned, brother. Our father's breath still warms the air of this world."

A smile played at Hormoz's lips, sharp as a cat's. "And is the mighty Shah hidden in your saddlebag, my dear brother? Because I see only shadows and remembered glory before me."

Farid did not rise to the poisoned honey of his brother's words. "That throne was not yours to claim, baradar. You know this truth as surely as you know the names of our gods. Only the Shah himself may name his successor—or have you forgotten the laws our ancestors wrote in blood?"

"And yet," Hormoz's smirk deepened like a wound, "here we stand. The throne rests in my grasp while our father sleeps in the earth."

Farid's fingers twitched at his side, but he held himself still. "The throne is granted by birth," he said, "but it must be earned through justice and right."

Hormoz scoffed, the sound echoing off the rocks like a raven's cry. "Great kings do not wait for permission like beggars at the feast, Farid. They seize their destiny."

Farid took a measured step forward, his blue eyes boring into his brother's. "Then you will die without ever truly claiming the Lion Throne, for you have forgotten that a king's crown is weighted with duty, not just gold."

For the first time, something flickered across Hormoz's face—quick as shadow-play behind a silk screen. He recovered swiftly, folding his arms like a merchant preparing to haggle. "Tell me, have you come to beg for mercy, or is this all just wind and dust?"

Farid let silence stretch between them like a prayer rug before speaking again. "Where is Parisa?" The name hung in the air like incense.

Hormoz's laugh cut through the evening air like a badly-tuned tar. "Ah. So the truth emerges. I thought perhaps you'd inquire after your wife first—but then, you always did favor our sister's counsel over anyone else's."

Farid's stomach twisted like a serpent around his heart, but his face remained a mask worthy of the ancient kings. He stepped forward, each movement deliberate as a calligrapher's brush stroke, his voice carrying the quiet menace of a desert storm. "If you have harmed even a hair on our sister's head, I swear by the sacred fires of Zoroaster and the blood of every Shah since Cyrus the Great, your death will echo through the centuries as a cautionary tale."

Hormoz raised his hands in mock surrender, rings glinting on his fingers like scattered stars. "Our beloved Parisa lives, safe as a nightingale in its golden cage. She was always too clever by half—like mother that way." His lips curved. "But your Zabel..." He savored the moment like the last drop of sweet wine. "Tell me, aziz-am, how does it burn your pride to know that your bride sleeps within my palace walls while you wander the wilderness like a lovesick Majnun?"

The rage in Farid's blood roared like the lions of Mazandaran, but he caged it behind eyes dark as a midwinter night. He released a breath slow as sunset prayers, his voice carrying all the chill of the Alborz peaks. "I did not climb this mountain to trade words like merchants in the market. We both know this tale has only one ending."

"Then let us write it in blood and steel," Hormoz's grin spread like spilled ink. "I will defend what is mine with every sword in Persia."

Farid met his brother's gaze, unflinching as their father's legendary blade. "And I will break these walls with one hundred thousand warriors who remember what honor means."

The silence between them hung heavy as funeral incense, weighted with memories of shared childhood games in palace gardens, of their mother's lullabies, of promises made and shattered like pottery in an earthquake. They were brothers once, nursed on the same stories of glory and empire. Now they were simply men, each convinced of his own righteousness.

Finally, Hormoz chuckled, the sound hollow as an empty tomb. "Then let the poets sharpen their quills. They will have much to write about."

Farid turned without another word, mounting his horse with the fluid grace their father had taught them both. As he rode away, the Red Warriors moved like a crimson tide behind him, their cloaks snapping in the mountain wind like the wings of the Simurgh itself.

Babylon would burn, and the ashes would birth a new chapter in the eternal story of Persia.

In the days that followed, Babylon transformed into a fortress of shadows and steel. Hormoz, ever the tactician their father had praised, positioned his archers along the legendary walls like a crown of thorns. The Immortal Guard—ten thousand elite warriors in gold-scaled armor—formed an impenetrable ring around the central palace, their spears glinting like stars fallen to earth. In the narrow streets, he stationed cavalry units ready to pour through the gates at his command, their horses' hooves muffled by carpets laid across the stone.

But Hormoz's greatest weapon was not steel—it was knowledge. The merchants who passed through Babylon's gates whispered that he had consulted the ancient military texts hidden in the royal library, studying the strategies of Cyrus and Darius until his candles burned to nothing. He had even, they said, discovered scrolls that detailed how Alexander's armies had been repelled from certain Persian strongholds—secrets lost to all but the most dedicated scholars.

Meanwhile, in the vast camp that bloomed like desert flowers around Babylon's walls, Farid prepared for war with the patience of a master weaver at his loom. The Red Warriors were but the tip of his spear—behind them came armies from every corner of Persia's true loyalists. From Mazandaran came warrior-hunters who could track a hawk's shadow across the sand. From the mountains of Kurdistan came archers who learned to shoot before they learned to walk. From Isfahan came master siege engineers who had studied the architecture of every great city from Baghdad to Samarkand.

Farid's strategy unfolded like an intricate game of shatranj. While Hormoz fortified the main gates, Farid sent silent boats down the Euphrates under cover of darkness, each laden with warriors from the marshlands who could swim like fish and climb like cats. As Hormoz's attention fixed on the armies at his walls, these swimmers-in-shadow sought the ancient water gates, the forgotten passages, the weak points that every great city accumulates like secrets.

But it was at dawn on the seventh day that the true battle began. Hormoz awoke to find his brother's army had seemingly vanished in the night—only to realize too late that they had not retreated but divided, like a river splitting around a rock. While one force hammered at the eastern gates with siege engines that hurled balls of burning naphtha, another had circled through the date palm forests to the west, using the morning sun to blind the defenders on the walls.

The sound of war drums shook the earth like the footsteps of giants. From his command post high in the ziggurat, Hormoz watched in growing fury as sections of his supposedly impregnable walls began to crack. His brother had studied more than just military tactics in Susa—he had learned the secrets of the ancient architects, knowledge that revealed the hidden weaknesses in even the strongest fortifications.

Yet Hormoz was not beaten. As Farid's forces breached the outer walls, they found themselves channeled into killing grounds pre-prepared with hidden pits and archer positions. The streets themselves became a maze of death, with Hormoz's cavalry charging down narrow alleys to scatter infantry formations before disappearing again into the urban labyrinth.

But Farid had anticipated this too. His marshland warriors, who had spent days mapping the underground waterways, emerged from wells and drains behind enemy positions. The Kurdish archers, who had quietly scaled buildings during the chaos, began picking off Hormoz's commanders one by one, throwing his carefully orchestrated defense into disarray.

The battle raged for three days and three nights. The city that had stood for centuries became a chessboard where two masters played out their deadly game. Hormoz's Immortals clashed with Farid's Red Warriors in the great market square, their combat so fierce that witnesses swore the ancient heroes themselves had returned to earth. The waters of the Euphrates ran red with blood and glory.

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