The Hashashin were a fairly crazy, unhinged, and frankly frustrating people for someone like the future heir — that child they called “the Young of the Mountain”, a title that one day would be replaced by the feared “Old Man of the Mountain”.

  The training for the heir was frustrating and a combination of mental techniques and a delicate yet brutal psychological demolition designed to turn him into something unstoppable.

  They didn’t let him sleep. You never knew whether the sleep you were just beginning to drift into would be interrupted by a knife grazing your throat, by a training companion pretending to betray you, or by a master shouting that death gives no warning. “Sleep is a luxury for the dead,” they repeated. And they repeated it until the boy’s dark circles became permanent, like tattoos under his eyes.

  He had to be ready for everything: attacks from any angle, betrayals from those who had sworn loyalty that same morning, assassination attempts disguised as everyday accidents (a loose rope on the hanging bridge, poison in the water, a “slip” on the wet stone stairs).

  At the same time they forced him to learn languages (Persian, Classical Arabic, Turkish, some Greek, Kurdish dialects and even rudiments of Latin from Frankish merchants), to read body language as if it were an open book, to detect lies in the dilation of a pupil or the slight tremor of a lower lip.

  And then came the worst part: the lessons in killing. They weren’t satisfied with “effective”. They wanted the fastest, the most precise, the cleanest and —above all— the most irreversible. A strike that didn’t even give time to scream. A stab that severed the spinal cord without touching bone. A cut that emptied life in fewer than six heartbeats. They practiced on dummies, on live pigs, on condemned prisoners… and sometimes on each other, to “toughen the character”.

  At eight years old the boy already felt as though the weight of the entire world was crushing his chest. Every day brought more pressure, more demands, more perfection required from a body and mind that were only just beginning to understand what it meant to be alive. He drowned in silence. He shattered into pieces that no one bothered to pick up.

  Until one day, while carrying out one of those disguised punishments they called “observation tasks”, he stood staring at the slave girls.

  They were trained differently. They were taught to fuck with grace and fire, to sing poetry that could make anyone forget the name of any beloved for a few moments, to rest with an elegance that seemed like a martial art in itself. They also learned some combat —hidden daggers in sleeves, strangulations with veils, poisons in kisses—, but never to the level of madness demanded of the boys (or girls) destined to become fedayeen.

  They were beautiful, lethal and, above all, they seemed… calm. Even when serving, even when pleasuring, even when killing, they maintained a serenity that the boy envied with every exhausted fiber of his being.

  He watched them from the shadows, fists clenched, breath held. It wasn’t desire he felt (he was still too young for that). It was something deeper and more dangerous: pure envy for that ability to simply exist without every second being a life-or-death test.

  And in that exact moment, as the sun set behind the mountains and painted the training courtyard blood-red, something inside him broke… and at the same time something new began to form.

  The following weeks he spent almost without sleeping. He locked himself in the temple’s forbidden library, among shelves that smelled of mold and old wax, poring over half-disintegrated scrolls and ancient books that creaked when opened. He was looking for something, anything, that would give him a real advantage, something to break the invisible chain he felt tightening around his neck every time he trained and failed.

  It was in a bound tome about supposed dimensional travelers and other worlds —or so the rumors claimed— that he found the mention: a small choker of blackened obsidian and silver, forged on a nameless moon. It wasn’t an obvious power amulet, nor an artifact that spat fire or summoned storms. In tiny, almost time-erased letters, it was said that it could change destiny. And a man to girl…

  Months passed. He ordered his men, after months of false leads, of merchants trying to scam them with cheap enchanted trinkets, of entire nights chasing rumors in taverns and black markets. Until finally, he held it in his hands: an absurdly small object, cold to the touch, with a chain so fine it seemed about to snap. The choker didn’t shine, didn’t vibrate, didn’t do anything at all.

  He put it on in front of the broken mirror in his room. He waited. He felt the metal settle against his collarbone. And… nothing. Not a tingle, not a change in temperature, not a sudden vision. Just silence and his own disappointed breathing.

  “Damn useless trinket,” he muttered, about to rip it off.

  But he didn’t.

  Days later, during a training session in the back courtyard, he decided to try it another way. Not on himself. On someone else.

  Marcus was there, as always. The gray-eyed European with scars who spoke little and hit very hard. He had arrived in chains years earlier, a four-year-old slave child in the war market. Yet his talent with the sword and inhuman discipline had first bought him freedom, then a place among the best. Now he was his sparring partner, his shadow in training, and probably the only person he trusted enough to do something so stupid.

  “Put this on,” he said, taking off the choker and handing it to him.

  Marcus raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask. He just slipped it over his head with a look of “this is ridiculous but I’ll humor you”. The chain settled against his tanned, scarred skin.

  And then it happened.

  No lights, no thunder, no supernatural wind. Just an instant when the air seemed to thicken, as if time itself held its breath.

  Marcus blinked once. Twice. And when he looked at him again, something in his eyes was… different.

  “What did you do?” he asked in a low voice, almost a whisper.

  The heir stayed silent for a moment, staring at the stone floor as if the answer were written there.

  “It was supposed to be me,” he said, almost spitting the words.

  He nodded toward where a slender figure stood motionless. The light barely touched her, but it was enough to see the short, old-copper-red hair falling in messy strands over her shoulders. The gray eyes were still the same: cold, sharp, capable of cutting glass. Only now they were framed by a much softer, smaller, more… feminine face.

  “I turned him into a girl,” the boy continued, and this time the smile that appeared was crooked, almost childish. “The choker doesn’t swap destinies like in nice fairy tales. It doesn’t put you on someone else’s throne, doesn’t give you their strength or their crown. It only changes your body. It puts you in the skin of a girl or a boy… and everyone else forgets you were ever a boy —except the people who were involved.”

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  He paused. He ran his tongue over his lower lip, as if tasting the memory.

  “The book said whoever changes has orgasms nine times more intense.” He let out a low chuckle. “Nine. Imagine that. An idyllic life, no chaos, no daggers in the dark, no sleeping with one eye open and the other counting heartbeats. You would just have to be… a pleasure servant. Or even an ordinary servant, if you behave. Spread your legs when asked, serve wine, stay quiet when insulted, smile when hit. Easy. Restful. Pretty.”

  The red-haired figure took a step forward. The choker chain still hung from her neck, black and thin like a broken vein. The gray eyes now burned with such pure fury it hurt to look at them.

  “Is that what you wanted for yourself?” Marcus asked. The voice came out low, hoarse, but unmistakably his. The pitch had changed, yes, become higher, more fragile… but the poison inside remained exactly the same. “You wanted to turn me into a luxury whore so you could finally sleep eight hours straight for the first time in your miserable life? You’re an idiot.”

  Rustamzadeh stared at him for a few seconds with that heavy, slightly amused calm of someone who has seen too much madness in life and can still see a little further.

  “You’re screwed,” he said at last, without emotion. “Your anti-magic defense level is ridiculously powerful. They’ve bathed you in counter-spells, anti-curses and special protections since you were a baby. Literally since the cradle. There are layers and layers of wards woven into your skin, your blood, your shadow. It’s impossible for you to be turned into a girl. Not with that choker, not with anything.”

  “Nooooo…” screamed the Young of the Mountain, a long, childish, broken wail that echoed off the stone walls.

  He brought his hands to his face, fingers trembling, as if trying to tear the disappointment from his skin. His shoulders slumped. For a moment he seemed much smaller than he already was.

  Ariadna and Mariane, sitting to one side on the worn cushions, looked at him with completely blank eyes and contempt.

  “Your turn,” she said, looking at Ariadna and Ciro who then narrated their version of the apocalyptic world.

  After twenty minutes of halting explanations, nervous gestures, crossed glances and pauses full of disbelief, silence finally fell over the room like a heavy slab.

  Rustamzadeh was the first to break it. He ran a hand over his short beard, eyes narrowed as he processed everything he had just heard.

  “So… I suppose you changed the future because there was no lack of rain this year,” he said slowly, almost as if testing the words aloud to see if they made sense. “The harvests were good. The granaries filled. People didn’t die of hunger on the roads. There were no swollen bodies rotting in the ditches. There were no riots over a crust of bread.”

  He paused. His fingers drummed once on the dark wooden table.

  “But the universe doesn’t leave gaps unfilled.”

  Ciro and Ariadna tilted their heads, frowning.

  “What do you mean?” asked the girl who looked like a boy wearing feminine clothing.

  Rustamzadeh raised his gaze. There was no longer surprise in his expression; only a cold, almost resigned understanding.

  “Butterfly effect, yes… but it’s not only that. From what I understand, the universe usually balances itself. Always. If you prevent a catastrophe on one side, the force that would have gone into that catastrophe has to go somewhere else. It’s as if the cosmos has a budget of suffering and chaos it cannot waste.” He shrugged bitterly. “You prevented the great famine… and in exchange the universe pushes toward civil war. If you hadn’t noticed, we’re practically going to have a civil war in 4 or 5 years. Damn it.”

  The young Prince Ciro, who until that moment had remained seated with his knees drawn up and his gaze lost, suddenly raised his head.

  “So all of this… the war that’s brewing now… is our fault? Because we made it rain?”

  Rustamzadeh looked at him steadily.

  “I don’t doubt it. I suppose it’s either the end of the world as we know it… or there’s an opportunity.” His voice dropped to almost a murmur. “A goddess wouldn’t have interfered if nothing could be changed. If simply traveling to the past and watering a field were enough to change everything, the gods would have lost centuries ago. But they haven’t. That means there are rules. Limits. Prices.”

  He fell silent for a moment, eyes fixed on some invisible point in front of him. In his mind the pieces spun fast, fitting and unfitting at the same time.

  This is too complicated, he told himself. Too much. If the balance is real, then every victory we achieve here will have to be paid for somewhere else. With blood. With betrayals. It will be war, betrayals, murders, new enemies. And if we try to stop the civil war… what comes next? A plague? An earthquake that splits the mountains? Or simply the end of everything because the universe no longer finds a way to balance the scales?

  Ariadne broke the silence with a low but firm voice.

  “And what do we do now? Do we sit with our arms crossed because ‘the universe is going to balance itself anyway’? Or do we keep trying?”

  Mariane leaned forward, eyes fixed on Rustamzadeh.

  “What’s the way to reverse this?” she asked, returning to the main subject without patience for more detours.

  Rustamzadeh sighed, as if it cost him to say it out loud.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, getting to the point. “It’s nothing extraordinary… in theory. You have to search for when the Traveling Dungeon appears —it’s called the Maidens’ Trap.”

  .

  .

  "Many millennia ago, before the last Great War."

  In the heights of the Eighth Firmament, where columns of lapis lazuli uphold the very weight of the stars and the winds sing hymns in the forgotten tongue of the ancient kings, the Lord of Forms and Stones—he whom some call Arshtibán, the Architect of the Thousand Arcs—spread wide his arms before his brother, the Lord of the Inner Fire and of Desire, known among mortals as Ahriman or more simply the Lord of the Thousand Delights.

  With a voice that resounded like a hammer striking sacred bronze, he proclaimed:

  “Brother mine, you who set ablaze the blood of kings and beggars alike! Behold my supreme work! I have raised the Fortress of the Thousand Veiled Columns, the great dungeon sealed with runes of star-fire and built from black marble torn from the entrails of the holy mountain.

  Any maiden, noble wife, palace concubine or warrior-daughter who crosses the ebony threshold… in the space of a single heartbeat shall be transformed into a true houri of unbridled passion! Her hips shall dance like flames in the desert wind, her eyes shall burn with fire that bends wills, her voice shall whisper promises capable of bringing down empires. It shall be the culmination of art and of form! Eternal glory to my chisel and to my divine compass!”

  The Lord of Desire lay reclined upon cushions woven from the sighs of a thousand lovers, a cup of eternal pomegranate wine in his hand, while three ethereal maidens cooled his skin with plumes of the simurgh. He raised one eyebrow with regal slowness and asked, in a voice soft as silk yet laden with poison:

  “And what if a man should cross that threshold, O builder of wonders?”

  Silence. A silence as deep as the abyss between the seven layers of heaven.

  The Lord of Forms stood motionless. His eyes became twin mirrors of obsidian in which danced thousands of celestial calculations: golden proportions, angles of the stars, signs of masculinity and femininity. Three divine sighs later, his face fell apart.

  “…What… did you say?”

  The Lord of Desire repeated, now with a slow and dangerous smile:

  “I ask, O my brother: what will happen if a male—a warrior, a prince, or a mere camel-driver—dares to enter your masterpiece?”

  The compass of pure gold and adamant that hung about the Architect’s neck fell to the ground with a tragic chime that shook the seven celestial vaults.

  Then he began to speak to himself in a low, feverish voice, like a scribe possessed:

  “Are the runes of sex distinction… active? …Are the seals of primordial duality… in place? …And if he bears an ancient curse? …And if his mind is of ambiguous nature like that of the fallen devas? …And if he enters veiled by sorcery? …And if the yazatas themselves have altered his fate?”

  The Lord of Desire simply waited, sipping nectar and contemplating the disaster with delight.

  Suddenly the Architect raised his face to the infinite void and let out a wail that made the stars grow pale:

  “Damn my incompetence… and damn my chisel!”

  He fell to his knees upon the perfect marble (which cracked faintly beneath the weight of his divine despair).

  “Return in seven lunar cycles, brother… Destroy it… once again. This was attempt number four thousand.”

  The Lord of Desire let out a peal of laughter that set the lesser constellations dancing.

  “And what name will you give your creation now, O master of straight lines?”

  The Architect, with gaze lost and voice broken, looked upon his half-ruined work and murmured:

  “It shall be called… The Maidens’ Trap.”