Strike Not

In the poem he takes the palace, throws down the talisman, clears the halls with the mace and brings out the two women, and one tells him Zahhak has gone to Hindustan, killing people to fill a bath with blood, because he has been told that is how you beat a prophecy. Zahhak comes back over the roof with a dagger and Fereydun beats his helmet in — and a voice from the air tells him not to finish it. So he binds him in a gorge on Damavand. Then he is crowned on the first day of the month of Mihr, has bonfires lit and ambergris and saffron burned, and the Shahnameh says that is how Mehregan began.