Twenty

After escaping the clamoring city, Cyrus shifts Alizeh into a vast, enchanted flower field. Exhausted and overwhelmed by the crowd’s adoration, Alizeh sheds her heavy collar and tries to steady herself while Cyrus assures her they are safe. His intention is to console her with beauty, and their banter briefly lightens the moment.

As quiet settles, Alizeh contemplates the weight of destiny and the practicality of accepting Cyrus’s offer—his throne and resources could unite her people, yet the path is entangled with Iblees’s designs. She begins questioning Cyrus: why he wears black, whether he has siblings, and most pointedly, why he killed his father. Cyrus refuses to answer, insisting citizens judge rulers by prosperity, not bloodshed, and claims he is rightly feared.

Seeking assurance, Alizeh asks for reasons she can trust. Cyrus offers a blood oath, which Alizeh rejects as inhumane and a loss of his free will. Their impasse exposes frictions: she needs truth; he offers binding magic instead of confession. When Alizeh presses again about his father, Cyrus becomes tense and avoids the subject.

Without warning, Cyrus is seized by invisible torment. He collapses, bleeding and pleading as Iblees invades his mind, displaying his agony before Alizeh. She recognizes the manipulation—her growing compassion for Cyrus is being weaponized to force her acceptance of the marriage.

Alizeh refuses to yield under duress, deciding she cannot let the devil dictate her choices. Even so, she is moved by Cyrus’s raw suffering. She kneels, takes his hand, and weeps for him, withholding an answer while resolving not to let Iblees’s cruelty determine her fate.