When the solemn period of mourning for Rostam came to its end, his valiant son Faramarz turned his heart toward vengeance. He unsealed the vast treasuries of his father, the Elephant-Bodied, distributing weapons and riches to the warriors of Zabulistan. At dawn, the thunderous brass of trumpets, Indian bells, and heavy war drums echoed across the realm. Faramarz marched his host from Zabul toward Kabul, raising a tempest of dust so immense that the sun was utterly extinguished from the sky.
News of the Zabulian host reached the King of Kabul, who hastily summoned his scattered forces. Steel clashed against steel as the earth hardened like iron and the sky darkened to lapis lazuli under the gloom of war. The dust of the battlefield grew so dense that even wild lions lost their path through the woods. Faramarz, riding at the head of his forces, kept his eyes fixed upon the treacherous King of Kabul. As the drums beat for total charge, Faramarz plunged directly into the heart of the enemy lines and seized the Kabuli monarch with his own hands.
With their king captured, the army of Kabul dissolved into chaos. The champions of Zabul pursued them like hunting wolves, cutting down the lords of Sind and the noble brahmins of Hind. The earth of the battlefield turned to crimson mud, and the fleeing host abandoned their homes, wives, and children. Faramarz ordered the bleeding, bound King of Kabul to be placed in an elephant howdah and transported to the hunting grounds—the very site where the treacherous pit had been dug.
There, Faramarz stripped the bowstring across the Kabuli monarch's back with such fury that sinew and bone were exposed. He then suspended the king upside down inside the fatal pit, leaving his mouth choked with blood and soil. Forty of the king's idol-worshiping kinsmen were cast into flames. Faramarz then turned toward the scorched plane tree where the body of the traitor Shaghad still hung pinned by Rostam's final arrow. He kindled a mountain of fire that consumed Shaghad, the tree, and the very ground beneath them.
Having eradicated the treacherous dynasty, Faramarz appointed a loyal ruler over Kabul, ensuring that no remnant of the old line remained unbowed before his blade. He then returned to Zabulistan and Bost, his heart heavy with grief and smoke. The entire populace came out to meet him with torn garments and weeping eyes; for a full year, all of Sistan remained robed in dark indigo and black, mourning the immortal Rostam.