One of Iran's most powerful men was making his way back from the country's border with Azerbaijan when trouble struck.
As his helicopter passed over treacherous mountains and dense trees, a blanket of thick fog and bad weather reportedly settled over the area.
Ebrahim Raisi was a man who had cut a ruthless path to power by crushing dissent in the country and was widely tipped to be the next successor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The so-called "Butcher of Tehran" had crafted an image that was built on one continuous rise to the top.
But as he flew home after inaugurating a joint dam project with Azerbaijan, he came in for what Iranian state TV called a "hard landing" in the mountainous valleys of the Dizmar Forest.
The helicopter he was travelling in with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other local officials crashed.
Little is known about what exactly took place on the side of that steep mountain in the early afternoon but early theories point to bad weather, which prevented search and rescue crews from reaching the area north of Tabriz, in the province of East Azerbaijan.
As wild conditions interfered with efforts to find the men, the Iranian army and elite Revolutionary Guards were diverted to the mission.
Through the night and into the early hours, they searched until a Turkish drone reportedly identified a heat source, in what was a promising sign the crash site had been found.
With a rough location to work towards, rescuers soon closed in.
"We can see the wreckage and the situation does not look good," Pirhossein Kolivand, the head of Iran's Red Crescent, said.
By the time the sun rose on a new day, Iran's state media confirmed the two ministers had not survived.
Ayatollah Khamenei was quick to say the crash would not disrupt the country's operation. However, there is no denying Mr Raisi's death comes at a tense moment in global politics.
A decades-long shadow war between Iran and Israel exploded in April when Tehran struck the country from its own soil.
Its proxies continue to engage in battles with Israel, while at home, Iran's leadership is grappling with international sanctions, soaring inflation and weak economic growth.
Now the death of a potential successor adds another layer of uncertainty to Iran's tense political climate.
The 'death committees', the purge and the missing thousands
The Iranian Revolution transformed the fates of millions of people, seemingly overnight.
Until 1979, the country was ruled by the shah — a dictator who maintained a tight grip on power, while also pushing Iran to become a Western-style secular nation.
The revolution was fuelled by outrage over the suppression of religious minorities, as well as government extravagance and corruption.
With the shah in exile and hardline conservatives in power, men like Mr Raisi stood to reap all the benefits of this new Iran.
The son of a cleric, he became the deputy prosecutor of the capital Tehran in 1981, when he was just 25 years old.
There, he earned the fearsome nickname, the Butcher of Tehran.
Mr Raisi was one of four judges who sat on a prosecution committee in the 1980s that is believed to have ordered the executions of thousands of political prisoners.
The prisoners — some reportedly as young as 13 years old — were alleged to be part of the armed opposition group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation, which attempted to topple the Iranian government in 1986.
Two years later, Iranian authorities issued a "fatwa" against members of the group, saying "they are waging war on God and are condemned to execution".
No-one knows how many people died during the five grim months that followed, but estimates range from 2,500 executions to up to 30,000 deaths.
Witnesses say prisoners were detained in secret, and those who refused to change their political affiliation were tortured and hanged from cranes before being buried in mass graves.
"The circumstances surrounding the fate of the victims and the whereabouts of their bodies are, to this day, systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities," according to Amnesty International.
Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson described the purge as the "worst violation of prisoners' rights since the death marches of allied prisoners conducted by the Japanese at the end of the Second World War".
Mr Raisi repeatedly denied his role in the death committees, but in 2021 he was asked about his reputation as the Butcher of Tehran.
"If a judge, a prosecutor, has defended the security of the people, he should be praised … I am proud to have defended human rights in every position I have held so far," he told reporters.
A president who makes his name on crushing dissent
After a failed bid for the presidency in 2017, Mr Raisi tried again in 2021 — and this time he appeared to have a little help from his friends.
Several moderate and reformist candidates were disqualified from the race by the all-powerful Guardian Council, making Mr Raisi the only viable contender.
Cruising to an easy victory in an election marked by low voter turnout and calls for a boycott, Mr Raisi became the first Iranian president to be sanctioned by the US government.
He vowed to "fight poverty, corruption, humiliation and discrimination".
But a year after coming to office, the president's grip on power came under threat from widespread protests taking place all across the country.
Two months before the action on the streets, Mr Raisi called a lack of compliance with hijab rules "an organised promotion of [moral] corruption in Islamic society" and ordered tighter enforcement of the "hijab and chastity law", restricting women's dress and behaviour.
The death of Mahsa Amini in custody at the hands of Iran's morality police became the spark that lit the powder keg of simmering tensions in Iran.
Protesters demanded the end of clerical rule and took to the streets in anger against the violation of their basic rights.
Despite Iran being largely cut off from the international community, their chant "women, life, freedom" was heard all around the world.
In Tehran, Mr Raisi promised to get the protesters back in line, stating that "acts of chaos are unacceptable".
As part of the crackdown, security forces allegedly used firearms, including assault rifles, as well as metal pellets and paintball guns to suppress dissent on the streets.
The use of AK-47s was also widely documented, killing a large number of people in the first few days, according to Sara Hossain, the chairperson of an independent international fact-finding mission on Iran.
In total, up to 20,000 people were detained during the protests and credible figures suggest up to 551 people were killed.
While the mass protests died down, Mr Raisi's popularity among the people appears to have never recovered.
"He has so many enemies inside and outside of his country," Macquarie University research fellow Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who spent more than two years in an Iranian prison, told Sky News.
While bad weather has been identified as the likely culprit of the crash, Mr Raisi's death raises the stakes in an already precarious situation in the Middle East.
His death comes at a tense moment in Iran
Despite the prestige and helicopter rides that come with it, the presidency is a largely ceremonial role in Iran.
Mr Raisi likely believed he was biding his time until the death of his old mentor, 85-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei.
The foreign minister who was also on the helicopter was also considered a potential contender to be Iran's next supreme leader.
Now, the country is looking for a new president at an extraordinarily tense time in the region.
Iran's economy is in bad shape, the country recently traded missiles with Israel, and while authorities have managed to suppress dissent by female activists, they are waiting and watching.
Forty years ago, Mr Raisi saw the chaos of Iran's revolution as a ladder for his personal and political aspirations.
After he crashed in the rugged mountains, his death was mourned by his supporters as a tragedy and hailed as a stroke of luck by his enemies.
The ambitious inside Iran's brutal, secretive system may see it as a unique opportunity.
