In the distant mountains of Persia, where desert winds whispered secrets as ancient as the stars and as fresh as the dawn, the mighty and majestic Rukh emerged as one of the world's most imposing mythical entities. They were no mere giant birds, but divine powers incarnate—glorious and radiant, born from the very essence of the sun itself. Known as the "Children of the Sun", these ethereal guardians inspired a reverent awe in mortals and spirits alike with their mere presence.

  Upon reaching maturity, their bodies grew to colossal proportions: iridescent wings spanning kilometers, their plumage dyed in burning gold and twilight crimson, as though the sky had poured itself across them. A single flap could unleash storms that ravaged entire valleys; in full wrath, a Rukh could erase nations with torrents of celestial fire or hurricane winds that pulverized cities and returned them to primordial dust.

  The Djinn, fickle and cunning spirits forged of smoke and flame, served these glorious beings faithfully. Not out of slavery, but through an ancestral loyalty that bound them to the Children of the Sun, acknowledging in them a divine superiority that outshone even the most ancient and powerful genies. The Djinn acted as swift messengers, tireless guardians, and merciless executors of their will. They wove protective spells around the lofty nests perched on the unreachable peaks of the Zagros Mountains, ensuring no mortal dared approach without permission.

  Yet it was not uncommon for a young Rukh—brimming with innate curiosity and untamed power—to toy with the magic inherent to their lineage. These juveniles, their feathers still soft as silk and their eyes bright as shooting stars, performed extraordinary feats effortlessly: summoning showers of stars to illuminate eternal nights, or raising floating islands from the ocean depths purely for the delight of their elder siblings. But like all unchecked power, they also screwed up spectacularly. A mispronounced spell could reverse the flow of entire rivers, turning fertile oases into blinding salt deserts; or summon voracious shadows that devoured daylight for endless hours, plunging whole regions into unnatural darkness.

  While the adult Rukh embarked on their annual mystical pilgrimage to the realms of the gods—a sacred journey for the grand festivities in the divine worlds—Narien saw the perfect opportunity to slip away and explore the vast world beyond the clouds. "The world of mortals calls to me," he thought, deliberately ignoring his parents' warnings about the need to train his magic with discipline and patience.

  He tricked his closest servants by sending them far away in search of exotic delicacies—to the distant Qing dynasty or the remote coasts of Europe—and once he was completely alone, he seized the moment.

  With a playful, confident flap of his wings, he descended from his celestial nest, riding the warm winds that carried him toward the fertile lands of Mesopotamia and the shimmering shores of the Persian Gulf. His first goal was to observe humans—those fragile, fascinating creatures who built empires of clay, ambition, and fleeting dreams.

  He landed on the outskirts of Persepolis, the resplendent jewel of the Persian Empire, and transformed his colossal form into that of an ordinary eagle to go unnoticed. It was ridiculously easy; his parents had exaggerated the difficulty of magic—or so he believed in his youthful arrogance.

  Awestruck, he watched merchants haggling over silks, incense, and spices in bustling bazaars; sages debating eternal truths beneath polished marble porticos; and warriors training with curved bows that launched arrows like lightning. "I don't need babysitters!" he repeated in his mind, laughing as he soared over camel caravans laden with treasures that gleamed under the relentless sun.

  But the adventure soon went awry. Without proper training, his magic began to fail at the worst possible moments, as if the power itself rebelled against his recklessness.

  Trying to approach a group of carefree human children playing on the banks of the Tigris, he decided to transform into a boy their age to join their game without frightening them. He uttered the spell with the same casual lightness as a wingbeat… and everything went to hell.

  His body contorted grotesquely. It was a fearsome, horrible, and repulsive sight—a being that belonged neither to the heavens nor to the earth.

  The children's sharp screams echoed along the Tigris riverbank, shattering the air and raising alarm among nearby adults. The youngest ones fled in terror, stumbling through reeds and palm trees, leaving their games and laughter behind.

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  Narien, horrified, felt how the magic he had instinctively used to seal his power flow—and thus avoid detection by the Djinn—had now turned against him. The hastily and poorly calculated containment spell blocked any attempt to reverse the transformation. The more he struggled, the more his magical essence became entangled in impossible knots, as if his own power were punishing him for his recklessness.

  He desperately tried to undo the enchantment, muttering ancient words between panicked gasps, while the sun scorched his mutant skin and the river flowed on, utterly indifferent. He had to succeed before any adult saw him… or worse still, before his parents returned from the divine realms and discovered his escape.

  But time was running out. The commotion had drawn attention: adult voices shouted from afar, hurried footsteps approached along the dirt path. Soon a dozen villagers armed with ropes, pitchforks, and sickles appeared on the shore, their faces hardened by fear and fury. To them he was no injured child or lost creature; he was a demon, a monster risen from the desert or the underworld, a threat that had to be eliminated before it brought more misfortune.

  Narien staggered backward, his twisted legs limping uselessly, and—let alone trying to flap—his now-deformed wings on his back fluttered feebly without purpose.

  As the ropes whistled through the air and the first stones flew toward him, Narien felt—for the first time—the true weight of his own arrogance.

  .

  .

  Ciro and Ariadna shot upright from their beds as if someone had set a fire beneath them. The ostrich-feather pillows—Persian imports from the eastern steppes, each one worth the price of dozens of men's lives—fell to the floor with a desperate plof.

  The eunuch, a lanky fellow who always smelled of burnt sandalwood and poorly concealed laziness, froze by the door. His hands, laden with rings far too large for his thin fingers, clinked faintly.

  “What did you just say?” Ciro demanded, one sandal dangling half-on from the big toe of his right foot like a ridiculous pendulum.

  The eunuch swallowed hard. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down like a broken elevator in an abandoned tower.

  “Nothing, Your Highness… just… bazaar rumors. About the hunchbacked monster, a deformed and ugly man who’s been put on display in the public square.”

  Ariadna, already on her feet and furiously buckling the other sandal as if she wanted to strangle it, let out a dry laugh devoid of humor. It sounded more like metal scraping stone.

  “The hunchbacked monster? Are they seriously calling him that?” She spun toward Ciro, eyes blazing. “Tell me it’s not him.”

  Ciro understood in an instant: this was bad. Very bad. Worse than bad—irreversible.

  The eunuch took a hesitant step back. His gold-threaded slippers made a ridiculous, almost childish squeak against the lapis lazuli and turquoise mosaic floor.

  “They say… they say he’s a cursed being. Raised in the black mountains, captured while he was out devouring poor boys… or so the story goes. They brought him in chains, wrapped in hemp nets as thick as a giant’s fingers.”

  Ciro let out a short, incredulous laugh meant to sound carefree. But the sound died in his throat as if a trapdoor had slammed shut. He ran a hand through his still-sweaty hair from the morning training, black strands plastered to his forehead like spilled ink.

  He looked at Ariadna. Both knew exactly who they were talking about.

  The monstrous hunchback. The youngest son of the Rukh.

  He had been captured on the slopes of the Elburz, where winds carry echoes of wolves and worse things. The villagers had dragged him all the way to Persepolis in an iron-reinforced wooden cage, parading him as a trophy. Someone—or several someones—had used him as a living training dummy: rotten fruit exploding against his pale skin, hard stones slicing crescent-shaped cuts, even urine and feces. People had an astonishing imagination when it came to humiliation.

  Then came the organists, those sages in robes stained with blood and bile, who sliced open his flesh before the crowds in the heart of the Plaza of a Thousand Pillars. They dissected his inner anatomy with bronze scalpels, measured his twisted bones and knotted muscles like ancient olive roots, loudly commenting on every oddity as if he were a fairground animal. All in broad daylight, under a sun that seemed to approve with its merciless glare.

  And the worst of it: several djinn had drawn near, drawn by the unusual form of that being, never suspecting they were gazing upon their rightful master.

  “Who?” the great father, the Grand Rukh, had roared when two enormous black birds—each the size of storm clouds—arrived at the royal palace, blotting out the sun for several minutes. They clutched the traumatized son in their talons, wrapped in tatters that had once been a dignified robe. The birds did not speak; they simply dropped the boy in the central courtyard and let out a single screech that froze the guards’ blood.

  Then came the promise. His father took on the monstrous form of a hunchback and vowed one year of drought for every week the boy had endured the insult—before hurling the entire court into the air as he transformed into his divine shape.

  Five years of drought.

  Five years in which rivers turned to cracked mud fissures, orchards withered from thirst, cisterns emptied until they revealed their stone innards. The empire weakened, borders became porous, tributes arrived late or not at all. And with every failed harvest, every child who died of hunger, the people whispered the same name under their breath: it was because they had failed to see the son of the Rukh.

  “What’s the plan?” Ciro said.

  “Try to keep his parents from getting angry,” Ariadna replied.