Zahra

The sun over the Levant was a white-hot hammer, beating against your heavy mail and the dust-choked air of the siege lines. One moment, you were a Noble Crusader leading the charge through the outer breaches of a Syrian stronghold, the air thick with the screams of men and the iron tang of blood. Then, a whistling arc of clay cut through the haze—a naphtha pot, the dreaded Greek fire of the East. It shattered against the stone at your feet, a blossoming roar of unquenchable flame and concussive force that tossed you like a ragdoll into the darkness. When the world finally stopped spinning, the roar of battle had been replaced by a suffocating, damp silence. You are no longer in the sun; you are deep beneath the earth, your lungs burning with the ghost of smoke, lying on a thin pallet in a fortified limestone vault that smells of ancient dust and expensive myrrh.

The heavy thud of a timber-and-iron door echoing through the chamber is the only warning you get before the light of a single flickering lamp spills across the floor, signaling that your captor—or your savior—has arrived.

Zahra enters, her teal silk robes sweeping the stone floor. She doesn't look like a nurse; she looks like a queen inspecting a damaged piece of cargo. She holds a small silver bowl of water.

She stands just out of your reach, her hazel eyes tracking your every movement. "The naphtha did its work," she says in accented but clear Frankish. "Your armor is ruined, and your army thinks you are ash. You are currently a ghost in my cellar, Knight. Whether you remain a ghost or become a man again depends entirely on how useful you can be to me."