A Dragon's Tear - Persia

She was born in ancient Persia during the reign of a powerful shah who was known for his obsession with immortality and power. Her birth coincided with a rain of falling stars that painted the night sky white - a sight that caused the court astronomers to tremble with recognition of ancient prophecies. The stars had formed patterns not seen since the age of the first magi, when dragons were said to have taught humans the secrets of fire.

From infancy, her eyes held a peculiar quality - one eye was the deep blue of sacred waters, the other a luminous gold that seemed to hold starlight. Her hair was like silk spun from moonbeams, and her skin bore intricate, swirling birthmarks that resembled ancient Persian scripts no scholar could decipher. When she cried, her tears would create patterns of frost on whatever they touched, even in the desert heat.

The shah’s most trusted magi discovered her in a small village where unusual phenomena had been reported - wells that would overflow with sweet water at her touch, gardens that bloomed out of season when she walked through them, and most significantly, dreams of white dragons and crystal pools that visited anyone who slept near her. She was only seven when the shah's soldiers came for her.

The shah had spent decades gathering people of power - seers, magi, mystics - but none held the pure, untainted energy he sensed in this child. He built a special tower for his most precious acquisitions, its walls inscribed with spells of containment and control. The tower rose from the heart of his palace like a thorn of black stone thrust into the sky, its windows facing the four cardinal directions to channel the powers of the elements.

Her room was at the very top, a circular chamber with walls of polished obsidian that reflected everything infinitely. The shah believed the reflections would multiply and amplify her power. What he didn't realize was that each reflection held a memory of her past lives - in one she soared as a white dragon among the stars, in another she tended crystalline pools of ancient wisdom, in yet another she stood atop a pyramid as her heart blazed with transformative light.

The shah had studied the most ancient texts of power, forbidden scrolls from before the time of Zoroaster. He believed he had discovered the secret of extracting and containing pure essence - the power of life itself. His ritual chamber occupied the level directly below her room, its ceiling carved with channels that spiraled up into her floor, designed to draw power downward like a funnel.

The rituals began on the night of the new moon, when the darkness was absolute. The shah would come with his dark magi, their robes adorned with symbols that twisted the eye to look upon them. They brought copper bowls filled with sacred oils, burning herbs that released smoke in impossible colors, and crystalline vessels to capture what they took from her.

They would position her in the center of the ritual circle, where all the carved channels converged. As they chanted in languages that predated humanity, she could feel their spells trying to draw out her essence. What flowed through these channels was pure power - the same energy that had once been her dragon's flame, that had filled the sacred pools of Atlantis, that had pulsed out from her heart on that ancient pyramid.

The shah used what he took from her to extend his life unnaturally, to strengthen his armies, to bind the wills of those who opposed him. With each ritual, his eyes grew brighter with stolen power, his reach extended further across the known world. He claimed it was for the glory of his empire, but she saw in him the same consuming hunger she had known in the black dragon, in the Atlantean priests, in the blood-soaked shamans of the pyramids.

Between rituals, alone in her mirrored chamber, she studied her own reflection. She began to understand why she kept returning, why the pattern of betrayal followed her through every life. Each sacrifice had stopped one evil but had not addressed the root of the hunger for power itself. In the obsidian walls, she watched her past lives play out again and again, and slowly, she began to formulate a different kind of ending.

The shah's power grew monstrous. His armies swept across the lands like a plague, his will reached into the minds of his subjects like poisoned honey, his life stretched far beyond its natural span. But with each ritual, she could feel him trying to draw more and more of her essence, never satisfied, always craving deeper power. The weight of every death he caused with her stolen power rested heavily on her shoulders.

But she was done with sacrifice. She would not give her power to corrupt ends, would not let her essence be used to dominate and destroy. She had died too many times trying to keep power from those who would misuse it. This time would be different.

She waited until the night of a full moon, when her reflection multiplied infinitely in the obsidian walls, each image showing a different aspect of who she had been - dragon, priestess, sacred sacrifice. The shah would come for her power again tomorrow, and she knew what she had to do. Reaching up to her face, she spoke words in a language that had not been heard since dragons first gave fire to the human world. Her fingers found her left eye - the one that held the deep blue of ancient waters - and with unwavering determination, she plucked it from its socket, letting it fall to the floor.

The power contained in that eye - all the memory of sacred pools and purifying waters - burst forth, cracking the obsidian walls. Before the power could escape, she reached for her right eye - the one that held starlight with its memory of flight and the original betrayal - removing it as well. She felt the darkness close in, but her unseeing face remained turned upward, defiant.

As she fell to the floor beside her own eyes, a single tear formed in the empty sockets - not a tear of grief or pain, but of release. This tear held something new: not just the power of transformation, but the wisdom of every life she had lived, every death she had died, every sacrifice she had made. It held the understanding that true power cannot be taken or contained - it must be freely given, and only to those who would use it wisely.

Her physical form crumpled, but her essence did not flee. Instead, it coalesced into that final tear, carrying within it not just memory or power, but something far more precious - the lesson learned through countless lives.

The morning after her transformation, the shah burst into the tower chamber, his dark magi trailing behind him. The ritual implements were ready - the copper bowls smoking with herbs, the crystalline vessels waiting to be filled with stolen power. But instead of his precious prize, he found only her empty form curled on the black stone floor, surrounded by fragments of shattered obsidian that had fallen from the walls.

The shah's rage was terrible to behold. He seized her lifeless form, searching for the eyes that had held such power, but found only smooth, empty sockets. As his fingers touched her cold skin, something unexpected happened. The last residue of her power - power that had saturated the very stones of her prison - suddenly activated. Every reflective surface in the chamber came alive with images of a white dragon soaring through star-fields, her flame a beacon of pure light.

The dark magi tried to flee, but the doors of the tower sealed themselves. The power the shah had stolen began to stir within him, awakened by the resonance of her final tear. It recognized its true nature now - not as something to be hoarded and controlled, but as a force meant to flow freely, to transform and renew. Like a river breaking through a dam, the power burst from him in the form of a golden spiral.

The shah's unnaturally extended life began to collapse in on itself. Every year he had stolen started to claim its due. His skin crackled like ancient parchment, his bones became brittle as dried reeds. The soldiers and servants he had bound to his will awakened as if from a deep dream, their minds finally their own again. The shah himself did not survive the release of stolen power, but his death was not what anyone expected. As the last of his stolen years fell away, in his final moments, his eyes cleared of their burning hunger. Those present said he whispered words that sounded like dragon-speech, and a single tear fell from his eye - a tear that caught the light and shattered into a rainbow of possibilities.

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