"Poor blind fool," Roxhana said with almost pity. "It’s not me — it’s your Prince who’s the traitor! He betrayed all the Arya! And we are saving our people right now — saving them from being doomed by these mad fantasies of peace!"

"Then why didn’t you say this to his face at the council?"

"Because I didn’t want to end up on the top of a funeral tower, like Anahita!" Roxhana snapped.

"You won’t be there," Narseh promised. "You’ll be thrown to the wolves as a traitor."

"I see. You want a fight? You’ll get one," Roxhana said, narrowing her eyes and beginning to circle him. "But where is your fravashi? You look pathetic — worse than a mere human..."

Narseh slowly removed six of his eight rings, one by one, and placed them in his pocket.

"My fravashi is fine," he said, though the last of these words came from somewhere other than his lips.

What does the Other Side look like? It cannot be described, because anything that can be described or comprehended belongs to This Side. The Other Side is the part of the world for which there is no knowledge, no words, no feelings.

Attempts to understand and retell the Other Side are as futile and removed from its true nature as trying to recall and recount a dream. In a dream, it seems as though you meet people, experience events, and everything makes perfect sense — until morning, when you wonder what language those beautiful poems with their extraordinary rhymes were written in, and what they meant. You swear that every word was about you, except they weren’t words at all. Yet they resonated so perfectly, ochre-yellow in tone, feeling like the horizon beneath your fingertips...

Those who truly try to grasp the Other Side risk never returning from it.

This Side begins with birth and ends with death. The Other Side never ends, has no boundaries. It is where power resides, and where creativity is born. It is all possible sensations, events, beings, and personalities, floating there like fish in the ocean, eternal and unchanging. The Other Side is the ocean; This Side is an island.

In Bizanth, newborns are immediately shielded from their dark twins, as though from sin, by hanging a chrismon pendant around their necks. Yet a fravashi is not evil: in its proper place, it is unfathomable and indescribable. But when it crosses into This Side, it becomes distorted.

The Manifested and the Unmanifested grind against each other like iron on stone, which is why on This Side, fravashis are ravenous and ruthless. They can only be invoked in moments of mortal peril and to protect what one considers Asha, the Highest Truth.

Fravashi cannot be controlled. They can only be negotiated with.

Using the farn, a dark twin is fed with one’s own energy. When calling upon a fravashi as a weapon, one offers it other prey. "Look at them — so warm, so alive, their blood coursing through their veins. See how it will gush from a slit throat... Look at this woman: tall, fair-haired, swift and strong, full of life..."

Narseh saw the darkened eyes of Roxhana — she was doing exactly the same, bargaining with her twin, holding two realities in her mind at once...

He felt it too, the bubbling, ravenous hunger within (not within him), the rage boiling up in his blood (not his, and not even blood)...

And all of it leaped onto This Side, taking the form of a black, clawed semi-beast, while Narseh found himself on the Other Side.

At first, Roxhana seemed unbeatable. Her fravashi was larger and stronger than Narseh’s. He tried to compensate for his lack of strength with speed and agility, but it felt like Roxhana was reading his mind — anticipating his every move. She easily tore off two of his fravashi’s limbs, while Narseh managed to sever one of hers, but only by sheer luck.

And Roxhana could stay in fravashi form much longer. Narseh began to tire while she still had energy to spare. He had no choice but to return to This Side. But fighting a fravashi in human form, especially without any armor, could hardly be called a fight — at best, it was an attempt to evade for a while. And to find some kind of advantage in his desperate situation...

To his surprise, Narseh did discover one: while in human form, with his mind fully on This Side, he could better observe and analyze Roxhana’s fighting style than when he was half-distracted by the Other Side. That’s what Narseh focused on doing.

Meanwhile, Roxhana was overconfident — her fravashi toyed with Narseh like a cat with a mouse. If she had been truly focused, she could have killed him immediately. And her confidence wasn’t misplaced: while Narseh was in human form, her fravashi struck him four times, with two hits landing dangerously close to vital areas. Still, none of the blows were fatal. Narseh managed to buy time, and that was all he needed; the minutes dragged endlessly, but finally, his rested mind could once again separate This Side from the Other. He could switch places with his twin once more...

Now they were both back in fravashi form, on more equal footing — and Narseh had managed to learn a bit about Roxhana’s techniques while in human form.

This time, her fravashi began to lose ground, its speed and creativity waning. She seemed to be tiring. Narseh, too, would soon be exhausted — for the second time — so he needed to act quickly. If they both ended up fighting in human form, Narseh would die instantly: while he was slightly taller and stronger than Roxhana as a human, his injuries were severe, and she was still unharmed...

Finally, the right moment came: Roxhana was spent and returned to her human form, while Narseh’s fravashi still held its form, though barely!

The black claws of his fravashi nearly grazed her warm, soft human throat...

And then Roxhana vanished — damn it, he had hoped she didn’t have the strength left to teleport! Where had she gone..?

A powerful blow struck him from behind — she had used a sword to slash the lower limbs of his fravashi. The searing pain forced Narseh to shift back into human form, collapsing to his knees. Roxhana kicked the akinak blade from his weakened grip, grabbed his hair to pull his head back, and pressed the steel of her own akinak against his throat.

"Surrender," she barked. "I don’t want to kill you! Fight with us instead!"

"Go to hell," Narseh rasped. Or tried to — the words barely left his lips. Fight? Roxhana was clearly overestimating him. Even if he agreed to join the traitors, he was too spent to be of any use. He couldn’t even stand up from his knees. He remained upright only because Roxhana held his hair tightly. He was utterly drained, down to the last drop of strength. His human body was wounded, and his fravashi was nearly obliterated; it would take weeks to recover. Unless he... No, he couldn’t remove the last two rings. That would solve nothing.

And then he saw Justin.

He recognized him by his long reddish hair — now dirty and matted with blood, dragging on the ground. An Arya Narseh didn’t know was hauling Justin by his legs.

"What should we do with him? He’s the last one," the Arya shouted to Roxhana.

Narseh only then realized the battle was over. He and Rokshana had fought the longest. All the Arya loyal to the Prince were defeated and dead. The Bizantines were dead too. Narseh could no longer sense a single spark of life in the fortress.

Only these four Arya traitors remained. And Narseh and Justin, but they were unlikely to stay alive for long.

Roxhana shrugged. "Leave him here. Or kill him. Doesn’t matter — he’s no threat. He can’t summon a fravashi."

"And then what?" Khosrow asked, panting heavily. He hadn’t avoided fighting and looked worse for wear. "What can we achieve? There are only four of us left!"

"No, there are many more," Roxhana said. "Many are wavering, but they will join us when they see this." She held up a small box made of blue glass. Narseh had no idea what it was.

"And don’t forget our allies in Bizanth. Those who are our sisters and brothers in everything but blood and language. For several hundred years now that the evil God of Bizantines has existed, they have had to hide and suffer, but there are many of them — some in positions of power. They are ready to rise against their oppressors. They will help us, and we will help them. Together, we will fulfill Anahita’s vision: we will kill all who are not like us. Every adult and every child."

The four Arya clasped their hands in a gesture of remembrance.

"May she be remembered long and warmly. Anahita would be proud of us."

The Arya who had brought Justin leaned over him, preparing to slit his throat, and then suddenly said:

"Is he from Bizanth?"

"The Prince loves collecting all sorts of garbage," Roxhana sneered. "Yes, he’s from Bizanth. Even fought against us at the Battle of the Split Rock..."

Another man, unknown to Narseh, kicked Justin in the face with a boot. His head snapped back and forth. Narseh’s mind, open to Justin’s, recoiled: the blow broke Justin’s nose, and his right eye — now a well of pain — might not be lost, but...

"How could you tolerate him? I’d challenge my shayasya if they brought a Bizantine rat into my clan."

"I was there," Khosrow said suddenly, his tone strange. "At the Split Rock."

"Then kill him yourself," the Arya with the knife suggested. "With your own hands, not through a Fravashi. Slowly. I would do that."

"If that were enough..." Khosrow’s voice was bitter. "A woman from my clan died in that battle before my eyes. Do you know what it was like, Bizantine? They smashed her arms on the battlefield, blinded her, and raped her until she died. And she couldn’t close her mainyu nor escape to the Other Side..." He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth in impotent hatred. "If you were an Arya, you bastard... If only you could understand what that feels like! But you mindless creatures will never feel, never understand..."

"If we do the same to him, he’ll understand," another Arya suggested.