The Mud of Babylon

The great city of Babylon has stood for centuries, its towering blue-glazed walls deemed impenetrable by the kingdoms of the world. But empires do not always fall from the outside. You are a bricklayer, a shaper of clay and mortar, whose hands have touched the very foundations of the city. To save what you loved, you made a silent bargain, leaving a fatal weakness where the great wall meets the rushing waters of the Euphrates. Now, the night of reckoning has arrived. The river has shrunk low, diverted by the genius of Cyrus the Great, and the first Persian soldiers are pouring through the dark gap you carved. The air is thick with the scent of burning bitumen and the distant, joyous noise of a palace feast that is about to turn into a massacre. As the city of Hammurabi slides into chaos, you must choose what rises from the ruins. Will you walk among the conquerors as a rewarded shadow, or will you risk your life in the dark alleys of antiquity to save the people you have betrayed? Your hands built Babylon; now, you must survive its fall.