Zahra clutched the letter in her hand and slid down the stone wall until she collapsed against it, her knees giving way beneath her. The parchment crumpled in her fist as her body folded inward, grief tearing from her in raw, broken sounds she made no attempt to silence.
She sobbed until her chest burned. Until her throat ached. Until the words blurred and swam before her eyes.
He had written this letter knowing he was going to die.
The truth struck her again and again, each time like a fresh wound. This wasn't a letter penned in fear or desperation — it was deliberate. Measured. Final.
It told her everything.
Not secrets he had been sworn to keep, not truths forbidden by oath or magic — but truths he had spoken aloud, again and again, that she had refused to believe.
In his careful, familiar script, her father apologised.
For being her shackle.
The words hollowed her out.
He wrote that her love for him — her fierce, unyielding loyalty — had caged her just as tightly as any prison. That every time she chose him over herself, it had cost her something precious, even if she never saw it. And that he had seen it. Always.
He had never wanted her to be Champion for power.
Never to elevate his influence.
Never because he loved the Pharaoh more than his daughter.
Never any of the things those nobles whispered about.
He wrote that long before the council chambers, before the challenges, before the Shadow Games crept so close that they could be felt in the air — he had known.
A great evil was coming.
And he had known something else, too.
That he would not survive it.
That he would need to lay down his own life to make sure all that he loved survived.
His death would be the catalyst for change.
It had to be.
It had to be him.
He wrote that fate demanded something terrible — something that would break her completely, strip her down to nothing, so that she could rebuild herself stronger than she ever had been before.
She had to be left with the belief that she had nothing left to lose.
Zahra choked on a sob, pressing the letter to her chest as if that might somehow pull him back from the void he had vanished into.
Her father had begged her to become the Pharaoh's Champion to save her.
So she would live within palace walls and never know hunger or fear.
So she could do something she loved — fight, train, learn — without being bound to him.
So she could make friends, build a future, broaden her world beyond the shadow of his inevitable end.
When I found you, the Gods asked me something. They asked me what would I do for the sake of this child? I told them that I would love you with every part of me, and you would never need to question it. Then they asked, what would I lose for your sake. I told them my life, if I had to. Because I knew, as soon as I held you, that I would give my everlasting soul for your safety.
Always do what is right — what you have always done.
Those were his final words to her.
All is lost.
Hope is gone.