Kay Khosrow leaves the world

After sixty years the world is at peace and every enemy of Iran is gone. Kay Khosrow begins to fear himself. He thinks of Jamshid and Zahhak, of his grandfather Kay Kavus and of Afrasiab, kings who saw nothing but crookedness. If he too grows proud and ungrateful, the farr, the divine glory, will leave him and his name will end in shame. He has avenged his father; better to go to God while he is still good. He orders his doorkeeper to turn every visitor away kindly, washes, puts on white, and goes to pray.

The court stays shut. The champions fear that a div has led him astray, and send for Zal and Rostam. After five weeks of prayer Sorush, the angel who brings God's messages, speaks to him in a dream: you have found what you sought. Give your treasure to those who deserve it, choose a king under whom even an ant is safe, and do not linger in this dark world. Kay Khosrow takes his seat again without crown or armlets. Zal, who has come in alarm, rebukes him for following a div's advice; the king answers him patiently, and Zal asks his pardon.

Then he divides the world. Rostam receives a patent for Nimruz, the house of Gudarz Qom and Isfahan, and Tus the Kaviani banner and Khorasan; treasure goes to the army and the poor. Last he calls for Lohrasp, a man no one has thought of, and gives him the crown. Zal protests aloud that he once saw this Lohrasp arrive with a single horse, and that nobody knows his lineage. Kay Khosrow answers that Lohrasp is of the line of Hushang, modest, wise and just. Zal puts his finger in the dust and smears it on his lips in penance, and hails the new king.

The spring in the mountains

Kay Khosrow says goodbye to his women and rides into the mountains with Zal, Rostam, Gudarz, Giv, Bizhan, Gostaham, Fariborz and Tus. A hundred thousand men and women follow in tears, begging him not to go; he tells them to rejoice. On the heights he sends the lords back: the road ahead is long and waterless, and only someone with farr and stature can cross it. Zal, Rostam and Gudarz obey. Tus, Giv, Fariborz, Bizhan and Gostaham will not.

After a day and a night they come to a spring. In the dark Kay Khosrow bathes in it and recites the Zand and Avesta, and bids them farewell: when the sun rises they will see him only in dreams. Go back, he warns, even if the clouds rain musk, for a wind will come off the mountain with so much snow that they will not find the road to Iran. At sunrise he is gone. They search the sands and find no trace. Back at the spring Fariborz repeats the king's warning, but the ground is warm, the air is clear and they are tired. They eat and sleep. The storm comes, the snow covers their lances, and none of them is seen again.

Zal, Rostam and Gudarz wait on the mountain for a week and go home in tears, Gudarz tearing his hair for a family lost to the feud and now to the snow. The champions' own talk at the spring gives the poem's last word on the mystery: the wise will laugh, they say, at a tale of a man who went alive to God. Zoroastrian books in Middle Persian count Kay Khosrow among the immortals who will return at the end of time.