Shahrnaz (شهرناز)

Shahrnaz, one of the two daughters of Jamshid, alongside her sister Arnavaz, born into a golden age that looks stable right up until the moment someone decides they are a god.

Their father, Jamshid, does exactly that. Claims divinity, loses his farr — that divine legitimacy thing everyone pretends to understand until it disappears—and with it, the entire structure of order starts cracking.

Because in this world, when legitimacy falls apart, it doesn’t stay empty for long.

Enter Zahak.

He invades, takes the throne, and captures Shahrnaz and Arnavaz. They are forced into his harem, which is a polite way of saying they get folded into a regime that thrives on fear, coercion, and two snakes growing out of someone’s shoulders as a lifestyle policy.

So their lives become survival inside someone else’s collapse.

Then Fereydun shows up.

Young hero, very determined, and absolutely done with Zahak’s entire operation. While Zahak is away, Fereydun storms the palace and finds Shahrnaz and Arnavaz still alive inside it. Not untouched, not unscarred, but not broken beyond recovery either.

He frees them. “Purifies” them, in the language of the myth, which is doing a lot of emotional and moral cleanup work in a single word.

They, in turn, give him what matters most in this kind of story: information. Zahak’s weaknesses, his location, his patterns. The kind of intelligence that only comes from surviving inside the system you’re about to dismantle.

With that, Fereydun defeats Zahak and binds him to Mount Damavand. No execution. No closure. Just containment. A tyrant turned into a problem that can’t escape but also won’t fully end.

Order is restored. Or rebuilt. Or restarted, depending on how generously you interpret “restored” in a world like this.

Fereydun then takes Shahrnaz and Arnavaz as wives, folding liberation and kingship into the same structure of power that replaced Zahak’s rule. It’s a reminder that even after tyranny falls, the architecture that replaces it still comes with its own complications.

Shahrnaz has children: Salm and Tur.

And just like that, the next fracture is already built into the foundation.

Because in this universe, even rescue doesn’t end the story. It just changes who inherits the consequences.