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Chapter Text

The palace had grown louder with time, its halls no longer echoing with only whispers of nobles but with the footsteps of a child who carried both desert and dynasty in his veins.

Leto ran barefoot across the courtyard, his laughter sharp against the still desert air. The boy had his mother’s hawk eyes and his father’s quiet intensity, though youth still softened his features. The guards parted instinctively as he passed — not out of fear, but out of recognition. He was Muad’Dib’s heir, the holy mother’s son, and even at ten years old, there was something in him that pulled eyes and held them.

Chani stood at the balcony above, her veil loose, her arms folded as she watched him. Her smile was faint but true, a rare softness breaking through her desert-honed sternness. She saw in him the strength of her tribe, the spark of Liet-Kynes, the promise of a future not yet stained by the blood that clung to his father.

Paul approached from behind, his steps silent, his cloak sweeping the stone floor. He stood beside her, his gaze fixed on the boy below. Leto had stopped running now and was crouched at the edge of a shallow pool, staring into the water with an intensity that was unnervingly familiar.

“He listens,” Paul murmured, his voice almost reverent. “Even to silence. He is my son.”

Chani tilted her head, watching their boy. “And mine. Do not forget that, Usul. He will not only be shaped by your visions. The desert will shape him. I will shape him.”

Paul’s lips curved in the barest hint of a smile. “Already he has begun to shape himself.”

Down in the courtyard, Alia approached her nephew, her stride purposeful, her presence commanding despite her youth. Though not yet grown, she carried herself with the same eerie confidence she always had — a child born old. She crouched beside Leto and whispered something. The boy looked at her, grinned, then splashed his hand in the water. Alia laughed, a bright sound twisted by something sharper.

Chani frowned. “She toys with him too much.”

“She teaches him,” Paul said, though his tone held unease.

“Her lessons are not always the ones a boy should learn,” Chani countered. Her gaze remained fixed on her son, her voice low and fierce. “He is not a god, Paul. He is a child. He must be allowed to be a child.”

Paul’s silence was long, the desert wind filling it. His prescience pressed upon him like a storm at the horizon, possibilities branching endlessly before him, futures he longed to turn away from but could not.

At last he said, “He is both. And that is the burden he will carry, whether we will it or not.”

Chani’s hand brushed the stone rail, her fingers digging into it. “Then I will fight to keep the child in him alive. Even if you, even if the desert itself, try to strip it away.”

Paul turned his gaze to her, and for a moment the Emperor’s mask slipped, showing only the father beneath. “And that is why he will endure.”

The courtyard rang with the clash of wood striking wood. Paul stood at the center, calm and immovable, as Leto charged at him with a cry, practice staff raised high. The boy’s steps were quick, sure-footed, honed by drills with Stilgar and the palace guards. But Paul was faster. With a smooth sidestep, he caught the boy’s strike on his own staff, twisted, and sent Leto sprawling into the dust.

Leto sat up, coughing, but grinning through the dirt smeared across his cheek. “You always see it coming, father.”

Paul extended his hand and pulled him back to his feet. “The desert teaches us—expect what comes, even before it does. Anticipation is survival. If you know where the worm will surface, you live. If you don’t…”

“…you are swallowed whole,” Leto finished, nodding, still catching his breath. His eyes glinted with both admiration and frustration. “But sometimes, I wish you would let me win.”

Paul’s expression softened, though the weight of his eyes never lifted. “You learn more from the fall than from the victory. Remember that.”

From the edge of the courtyard, Chani watched, her arms folded, her face unreadable. But when Leto caught her gaze, her lips curved into the faintest smile, a warmth that Paul rarely allowed himself.

“Enough for today,” Paul said, setting aside the staff. “Come. The family waits.”

That evening, the great dining hall was filled with the scent of roasted spice bread and stewed meats. Jessica sat at one end of the table, composed but weary, her hands folded neatly before her. Alia lounged at Paul’s right, her eyes sharp, her smirk ever ready.

Chani entered with Leto beside her, the boy freshly washed and dressed, though his hair still clung damp to his forehead. Paul was already seated, his posture regal, but his gaze softened as they approached.

The servants moved quietly, laying out dishes, pouring water into crystal goblets. No one spoke until Paul gestured for the first plates to be served.

Leto tore into his bread eagerly, glancing between his father and mother as if waiting for approval. Alia arched a brow at him, teasing, “You eat like a sandworm, little cousin.”

Leto smirked back. “Better than drinking like one,” he retorted, nodding at her goblet.

Jessica sighed softly, muttering, “You two sound more like siblings than aunt and nephew.”

Paul lifted his goblet, his eyes glinting. “Perhaps that is fitting. In this family, lines blur. We are bound tighter than blood alone.”

The meal unfolded with laughter and small arguments, the clatter of plates and the murmur of servants moving in the background. For a brief stretch of time, the hall was not an Emperor’s court but a family’s table — a fragile illusion of peace in the midst of empire.

When the servants cleared the plates, Paul rested his hand on Leto’s shoulder, firm and protective. “One day, this table will be yours,” he said quietly. “But for now—eat, laugh, live. Be a child while you still can.”

Chani’s eyes lingered on him, her hand brushing Leto’s hair, silent agreement in her gaze.

And Alia only smiled, too sharp, too knowing, as though she already saw the day Paul spoke of.

Later that night, after the servants had cleared the table and the palace quieted under the moons, Leto lingered in his parents’ chambers. He sprawled on a woven rug at Chani’s feet, a wooden carving of a sandworm in his hands. Paul sat nearby, silent, writing notes on a stack of scrolls.

Leto traced the sandworm’s ridges, his young brow furrowed in thought. Then he looked up suddenly, his voice innocent but intent.

“Mother… why is it that I never see the princess?”

The word hung in the air like grit. Paul’s pen stopped.

Chani’s posture stiffened, her hand tightening against the cradle’s edge. She studied her son carefully, then said in a voice sharper than the blade of a crysknife:

“Because she is poison, Leto. She is a witch of the Sisterhood. Her tongue is dipped in venom, and her hands are stained with deceit.”

Leto blinked at her, wide-eyed. “But she’s family, isn’t she? Aunt Irulan?”

Paul’s gaze flicked to Chani, weighing her words, then back to his son. He said nothing, letting her speak.

Chani leaned forward, her eyes hard, her voice steady. “She is no aunt to you. She is not of the desert, not of us. Long ago, she sought to kill me, to keep me from carrying you. Do you understand? You breathe because she failed.”

The boy’s hand tightened around the wooden worm. He looked down at it, his small voice low. “Then why keep her here?”

Paul finally spoke, his tone even, his gaze on his son. “Because some prisoners must live, to remind others of the cost of betrayal.”

Leto frowned, his young mind turning over the words. He glanced back to Chani, who bent and brushed his hair back from his face, her expression fierce, protective.

“Never let her words reach you, Leto,” she murmured. “If she smiles at you, it is not kindness. If she speaks, it is not truth. She would twist you into something you are not. Remember this: the desert does not love witches. The desert devours them.”

Leto nodded slowly, a weight settling on his young shoulders. He looked at Paul again. “And you, father—do you hate her too?”

Paul set down his pen, his eyes shadowed. “Hate is too small a word for what she has earned. But we are Atreides. We use even our enemies, until they are nothing.”

The boy fell silent, staring into the fire’s glow, the wooden worm clenched tight in his hand. Chani drew him closer against her side, her eyes never leaving Paul’s.

And above the crackle of the flames, in the distant halls of the palace, Irulan sat alone in her confinement — whispering to herself, scribbling in ink, her ears aching for the sound of the boy’s voice she would never be allowed to hear.

The palace was quiet, the deep hours of night when even the guards’ footsteps softened. Leto moved like a shadow along the corridors, barefoot, his small hands brushing the cool stone walls for guidance. He knew the passages well by now — children learned quickly in a house of whispers and secrets.

He stopped before a heavy door carved with the sigil of the Atreides hawk. Alia’s chambers. A faint light flickered from within, the smell of spice-laden incense curling beneath the door.

Leto knocked once, softly.

“Come in, nephew,” Alia’s voice called, clear and amused, as though she had known he was coming all along.

He pushed the door open and slipped inside. The room was half-shadows, half-flickering candlelight, filled with scrolls, blades, and trinkets taken from defeated nobles. Alia lounged on a low couch, a smile tugging at her lips. Her blue-on-blue eyes glittered with something too old for her years.

“You should be sleeping,” she teased.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Leto said, his voice low, hesitant but determined.

Alia tilted her head, intrigued. “And what great secret drives you from your bed at this hour?”

Leto shifted, his fingers tightening around the carved sandworm he always carried. “I asked Mother about the princess. About… Irulan. She said Irulan is a witch. Father said she’s a prisoner. But—” His young eyes narrowed, sharp with the same curiosity that had once burned in Paul. “—why do they keep her here if she’s so dangerous?”

Alia’s smile widened, sharp as a blade. She patted the cushion beside her. “Come, sit. I’ll tell you what they will not.”

Leto obeyed, slipping beside her. She leaned in close, her voice a conspiratorial whisper.

“Irulan is Bene Gesserit. That means she was trained from birth to scheme, to bend others with her voice, to make her lies sound sweeter than truth. She came here not as family, but as a weapon. Her only duty was to breed an heir for House Corrino to chain your father’s throne. But he never touched her. He chose your mother instead.”

Leto’s eyes widened. “So that’s why she hates Mother.”

“Hates her? Oh, little one, she envies her.” Alia’s grin curved cruel. “Irulan is trapped in her golden cage, her power stripped away. Each day she must watch your father’s true love sit beside him, watch you grow as the heir she was supposed to give him. Every tear she sheds is another victory for Chani.”

Leto frowned, deep in thought. “But then why don’t we just send her away? Or kill her?”

Alia’s laughter rang softly in the chamber, low and unsettling. “Because death is easy. Death is clean. Better she lives — humiliated, broken, forced to write histories where she disappears and your mother shines brighter than the sun. That is punishment worthy of the desert.”

The boy fell silent, his brow furrowed as he tried to absorb the cruelty in her words. At last, he asked, barely above a whisper: “Do you hate her too?”

Alia’s eyes gleamed in the candlelight, and her voice dropped like a blade. “I don’t waste hate on Irulan, dear nephew. She’s already nothing. But you—” she tapped his chest with one finger, right over his heart— “you must learn to see what people truly are, not just what they pretend to be. That is how you’ll survive this palace. That is how you’ll rule.”

Leto swallowed, feeling both wiser and more unsettled than before.

And as he slipped back into the night, the sound of Alia’s laughter followed him, echoing through the stone corridors like a warning.

The corridor outside Paul and Chani’s chambers was dark, lit only by the faint glow of spice lamps. Leto crept along it with the same caution he used in the training yards, bare feet silent, his wooden sandworm clutched in one hand. He eased the door open, wincing at the faint creak, then slipped inside.

Chani was curled on the bed, her breathing soft and steady, the rise and fall of her chest as calm as the desert’s night winds. Leto froze, relieved. She was still asleep.

But his father was not.

Paul sat in the shadows by the window, his cloak around his shoulders, eyes fixed on his son. The blue-on-blue gaze glowed faintly in the dim light, as sharp as any blade.

“Where have you been, Leto?” Paul’s voice was quiet, steady — but it carried the weight of judgment.

Leto stiffened, his throat dry. “I—” He faltered, then lifted his chin, forcing the words out. “I was with Alia.”

Paul rose, his steps measured, silent on the stone floor. He stopped in front of his son, looking down at him with that calm intensity that made even hardened nobles tremble.

“What did you ask her?”

Leto swallowed hard, gripping his toy tighter. “About the princess. About… Irulan.”

Paul’s expression did not change, but the silence stretched so long it pressed on the boy’s chest. Finally, Paul crouched down, bringing his eyes level with his son’s.

“Your mother told you the truth,” he said. “Irulan is poison. Everything about her is poison. Why did you not believe her?”

Leto’s voice cracked, though he tried to sound firm. “Because I wanted to know more. Because you never speak of her. Because she’s here, but she’s not… allowed near me. I don’t understand why.”

Paul studied him for a long time, searching his son’s face. There was no deception in the boy, only curiosity — dangerous, innocent curiosity.

At last Paul sighed, placing a hand on Leto’s shoulder. “You are my son. Someday you will learn that silence often protects more than words. But know this: Irulan is not your kin. She is a tool of others, a weapon meant to bend our house. You must never let her near your heart, or your mind.”

Leto’s eyes searched his father’s face. “Then why do we keep her alive?”

Paul’s gaze hardened, shadows deepening in his eyes. “Because her suffering serves us better than her death.”

The boy shivered, though he nodded.

Paul rose and guided him toward the bed. “Go to your mother. Sleep. Let her never know where you went tonight.”

As Leto climbed into bed beside Chani, curling against her warmth, Paul stood once more at the window. His face was unreadable in the moonlight, but his thoughts churned like the desert winds — about his son’s curiosity, about Alia’s influence, and about the shadow Irulan still cast, even in chains.

Chapter Text

The chamber smelled of dust and parchment, the faint tang of spice lingering in the air. Maps stretched across the great table, tiny markers indicating battles on worlds Leto had never seen, names he only half understood. Paul stood at the head, listening to a grizzled commander deliver his report of another conquered system, his face as impassive as stone.

“…the Sardaukar remnants are scattered, sire. Our allies speak of Muad’Dib’s justice as if it were holy writ. Those who resist burn. Those who bend are fed.”

Paul nodded once, the barest acknowledgment. He was Emperor, conqueror, prophet, and his very stillness carried authority.

At the door, Leto lingered, peeking into the room. His small frame seemed dwarfed by the vastness of maps and the weight of voices. He was curious, always curious. Paul’s shadow loomed so large that even Leto strained to glimpse its edges.

He crept in, silent as he could. No one turned — except Alia.

She sat in the corner, her legs crossed, her smile sharp and knowing. Her gaze flicked to her nephew, then back to the table, then back again. When Paul dismissed the commander with a curt wave, the room fell quieter, only the hum of stillsuit pumps and the rustle of maps filling the space.

Alia tilted her head toward Leto, her eyes gleaming with sly amusement. “Little hawk,” she said, just loud enough for him to hear, “you shouldn’t lurk in doorways. Come in. The desert is not kind to those who hide.”

Paul turned sharply, catching sight of his son. His expression softened slightly, but his tone was measured. “Leto. You should be with your mother.”

Leto hesitated, stepping inside. “I wanted to see. To understand.”

Paul opened his mouth to answer, but Alia’s voice cut smoothly between them. “If you truly wish to understand, nephew, you must taste the spice. Only then will your eyes open to what your father sees. To what I see.”

The room chilled at her words. Paul’s eyes narrowed, hard as flint.

Leto’s heart beat faster. He had heard whispers of spice, of visions, of the awakening it brought — but his mother and father had always kept it from him. Too dangerous, they said. Too soon.

Paul’s gaze fixed on his sister, his voice low, dangerous. “Enough, Alia.”

But Alia only smiled, too innocent, too sharp. “You cannot keep him blind forever, brother. The desert will claim what is its due. Better he walk its path now than stumble into it later.”

Leto looked between them, torn between fear and fascination. He wanted to ask more, but the weight of Paul’s stare froze him in place.

“Go,” Paul said, his voice quiet but heavy with command. “Return to your mother.”

The boy hesitated, then bowed his head and slipped from the chamber.

Behind him, Alia’s laughter followed like a knife, soft and cutting.

Paul turned to her, his jaw tight, his words a warning. “You play with fire, sister. Do not make me your enemy.”

Alia only smiled, her eyes glittering. “He already wonders, brother. You can keep water from the sand for only so long.”

The doors shut behind them with a heavy thud. The tension that had begun in Paul’s war chamber followed them like a shadow. Chani set aside her veil and crossed her arms, her gaze fixed on Alia. The boy was asleep elsewhere, but the air still carried the weight of his name.

“You will not speak of spice to him again,” Chani said, her voice sharp as a crysknife.

Alia leaned against the carved stone wall, her smile slight, almost mocking. “You would keep him blind, sister? Keep him small, when he is destined to see the future that shapes us all?”

Chani’s jaw tightened. “He is ten. He is a child. The spice awakens what cannot be put back to sleep. Do you wish to twist him as you were twisted?”

Alia’s eyes gleamed, the candlelight catching her unnatural wisdom. “I was born with the spice in my veins. Born awake, drowning in knowledge before I could speak. And still, I endure.”

Paul stood between them, silent until now, his expression cold and unreadable. When he finally spoke, his voice carried the weight of command. “Enough.”

Alia tilted her head toward him, sly. “Brother, you know better than any of us that the boy will not escape it. He has your blood. He has your mother’s training waiting in him, whether you wish it or not. To delay only weakens him. And weakness will destroy him.”

Paul’s eyes narrowed. “It will not destroy him. What destroys is haste. He is not ready. He must be allowed to grow before he is awakened.”

Chani stepped closer, her voice fierce with love. “He will not be poisoned by visions and voices. Not yet. Not while I breathe.”

For a moment, Paul’s mask slipped. He looked at her, and the man behind Muad’Dib shone through — weary, protective, afraid. “You are right,” he said softly, then turned his gaze back to his sister. His words hardened. “And you—Alia, my sister—your hunger to see him ‘awakened’ reeks of the Sisterhood’s poison. Do not think I do not see it.”

Alia’s smirk faltered for just a heartbeat, replaced by a flash of something sharp and wounded. Then it returned, curved and cutting. “You fear him, brother. You fear what he will become, because you already see it. I only speak what your prescience whispers.”

Paul’s jaw clenched, his silence heavy.

Chani stepped forward, closing the distance between herself and Alia. Her voice was a hiss. “Stay away from my son.”

For once, Alia did not answer. She only watched them both, her expression unreadable, her smile fading into something that was not quite defeat — but not victory either.

When she left the chamber, the silence she left behind was worse than her words.

Paul turned to Chani, his hand reaching for hers. His voice dropped to a whisper only she could hear. “We cannot keep him untouched forever.”

Chani’s grip was fierce, unyielding. “Then let it be as long as we can. Let him be a child before he is your heir.”

Paul looked into her eyes, and for a moment even Muad’Dib bowed to the desert mother’s will.

The long dining table was set as always, plates of spice bread, bowls of roasted tubers, steaming cups of bitter coffee. The lamps burned steady along the walls, but the air was heavy with things unspoken.

Paul sat at the head, his face calm, but the lines at the corners of his eyes betrayed strain. Chani was beside him, Leto at her right, his hands fidgeting with a piece of bread he hadn’t touched. Across the table, Jessica sat upright, composed but weary, her gaze moving between them like one watching a storm gather. Alia lounged to Paul’s left, her lips curved in a faint smile that was almost a dare.

The servants moved carefully, as if the silence itself might shatter.

It was Alia who broke it. She lifted her goblet and said lightly, “Our nephew grows quickly. Soon he’ll be taller than me. Perhaps it’s time he grew in other ways as well.”

The words slid through the air like a knife.

Chani’s hand stilled on her cup. “Enough, Alia.”

Leto’s eyes flicked between them, curious, uncertain. “Grew in what ways?”

Alia leaned toward him, conspiratorial. “There are truths the spice reveals, little hawk. Truths your mother and father keep from you.”

Paul’s voice was quiet, steady, but it carried the weight of command. “Alia. Not another word.”

Jessica set down her fork with a sigh. “This is not the place, not the time—”

But Chani’s voice cut sharper than all of them. “He is a child. He will not be thrown into the Sisterhood’s poison or your visions, Alia. Not now, not ever by your hand.”

Leto shrank slightly in his chair, his small fingers crumbling the bread. The servants glanced at one another nervously but kept their heads bowed.

Alia’s smile deepened, cruel and knowing. “You speak as if you can keep him small forever. But the desert devours children who refuse to grow.”

Paul’s palm struck the table, the sound cracking like thunder. The servants froze in place. His eyes blazed with fury. “I said enough!”

For a moment, even Alia’s smile faltered.

Silence fell. Only the hiss of lamps and the distant hum of the desert wind filled the space.

At last, Jessica rose, her voice low, tight with disappointment. “You sit as a family, yet you eat like enemies. This table was once a place of love. I fear you have forgotten that.” She left without another word, her shadow long in the torchlight.

The servants hurried to clear the plates, heads bowed, hands trembling.

Chani pulled Leto closer, her hand firm on his shoulder. “Eat,” she whispered to him, soft but unyielding. “Be strong.”

Paul sat rigid, his gaze fixed on Alia, who leaned back in her chair, eyes glinting with something that was not quite triumph, not quite defeat — but dangerous all the same.

And Leto, wide-eyed, said nothing, though in his chest questions churned like a brewing storm.

The hallways outside the dining chamber still echoed with Jessica’s footsteps when the family rose. Servants moved quickly to snuff the lamps, but their whispers lingered in the shadows. Paul dismissed them with a gesture, leaving only family in the vast, echoing silence.

Chani gripped Leto’s hand, guiding him toward their chambers. Her lips pressed tight, her eyes blazing. Paul followed, his steps measured, his fury still caged but pulsing beneath his calm. Alia trailed last, the faintest smirk tugging at her lips, her eyes glinting as though she alone found amusement in the storm she had stirred.

Inside their private chambers, Chani rounded on her.

“You will not speak to him of spice again.” Her voice shook with restrained violence. “I should cut the words from your tongue before they poison my son.”

Alia tilted her head, feigning innocence. “Do you think you can keep the desert from claiming him, sister? It is already in his blood. He will awaken, whether you wish it or not.”

Paul’s voice cut like steel. “That decision is not yours to make, Alia.”

She laughed softly, not cruelly this time, but with that strange, hollow wisdom that had always marked her as other. “You pretend choice exists. But you know better, brother. You see it, even if you refuse to speak it aloud. The boy’s path is carved already.”

Chani stepped forward, fury breaking her composure. “You speak of my son as though he were a pawn in your game. He is flesh, blood, my child. Not some tool to be bent by spice visions!”

Alia’s eyes narrowed, her smile fading. For a heartbeat, the mask slipped — and what flickered through her face was not mischief, but something harder, older, almost monstrous. “Then perhaps you should not have borne him into a world where every eye watches his shadow.”

Paul’s hand shot out, seizing Alia’s arm. His grip was iron, his voice a low growl. “Enough. I will not have you turn your venom on her. If you value your place in this house, you will hold your tongue.”

For the first time in years, Alia’s composure cracked. She wrenched her arm free, her blue-on-blue eyes blazing. “You would threaten me, brother? You, who know what stirs inside me? Do you think you can leash me as you leash your nobles?”

The silence that followed was heavy, dangerous.

At last, Alia turned on her heel and swept from the room, her laughter ringing back like the cry of a carrion bird.

Chani stood trembling, her hand still tight on Leto’s shoulder. The boy clung to her, wide-eyed, his small chest heaving with the weight of words too large for him.

Paul exhaled slowly, his gaze fixed on the closed door where Alia had gone. “She grows reckless,” he muttered. “Too reckless.”

Chani looked up at him, her voice low and fierce. “She is already lost. But Leto is not. And I will die before I let her make him like her.”

Paul turned, his hand resting on her cheek, his eyes weary, shadowed by visions only he could see. “That is why he still has hope. Because he has you.”

And in the corner, half-forgotten in their fury, Leto listened — a child caught between destinies, questions burning in his heart, his small hand still clenched tight around his mother’s.

Chapter Text

The chamber was dark, lit only by a single lamp, its glow casting long shadows across the walls. Outside, the wind howled against the stone, carrying the scent of dust and spice. The boy was asleep, curled beneath heavy blankets, his wooden sandworm clutched tight in his hand.

Chani stood at the window, her arms crossed, her posture tense. Paul lingered behind her, pacing slowly, his cloak whispering against the stone floor.

“You cannot keep him from it forever,” Paul said at last, his voice low, measured. “The spice is in everything. The food, the drink, the very air he breathes.”

Chani turned sharply, her eyes flashing. “And still I have managed. I choose his meals. I guard his cups. Even his water, Paul—I watch it with my own eyes. I will not let his childhood be burned away as yours was.”

Paul stopped, his gaze fixed on her, shadowed by the weight of prescience. “You think you fight the desert itself. It will claim him, Chani. It always does.”

Her jaw tightened, her voice dropping to a whisper edged with fury. “Then let it wait. Let him be a boy until his shoulders can bear the burden. Do not tell me we cannot keep him safe. He is our son. He is mine.”

Paul stepped closer, his hand brushing against the table where scrolls lay scattered. His face was pale in the lamplight, weary, haunted. “I see a way. A path between drowning him in visions and starving him of what he cannot escape.”

Chani frowned. “What path?”

“Microdoses,” Paul said. His eyes glowed faintly, the blue-on-blue catching the lamplight like fire. “A grain at a time. Enough to harden him. To prepare his body for what is inevitable, without forcing his mind open before it must.”

Chani’s breath caught, her hands curling into fists. “You would feed him poison. Little by little. You would risk his soul.”

Paul’s voice grew sharp, cutting through her fury. “I would save him. Do you not see? The Sisterhood would have drowned him at birth in spice, cracked him open like a shell. Alia would have him consume it whole. I alone can walk the line between.”

Chani shook her head, her voice trembling though her gaze stayed hard. “You would gamble with our son’s life. Do not speak of saving him while you speak of dosing him like some experiment.”

Paul reached for her hand, but she pulled away, her breathing ragged. For a moment his mask faltered — the Emperor vanished, and only the man, weary and desperate, remained.

“If we do nothing, the desert will take him anyway,” he said softly. “I would rather guide him into its jaws than watch him be swallowed whole.”

Chani turned back toward the window, staring into the endless dark sands beyond. Her silence was heavy, her heart torn between love and fear.

Behind them, Leto shifted in his sleep, murmuring softly, the faintest trace of words that neither of them could make out.

Paul and Chani stood locked in their argument, their son already stirring with dreams of a desert that would one day demand its price.

The morning sun slanted through the high windows of the palace, casting shafts of golden light into the dining chamber. The servants had just withdrawn, leaving behind bowls of porridge, cups of spice tea, and the hum of silence.

At the head of the table, Leto sat with his wooden spoon, swinging his legs, humming to himself as he stared at the food. Chani was not yet arrived — she lingered with Jessica in the gardens — and Paul was reviewing reports brought on a wax-sealed scroll.

Alia moved with uncharacteristic sweetness. She leaned close to Leto, her blue-on-blue eyes softened, her voice as honeyed as the Sisterhood had taught.

“Here, little hawk,” she said, producing a small pouch from her sleeve. She opened it with a delicate flourish, revealing raw spice — its orange dust glimmering faintly in the light. She sprinkled a heap into a spoonful of porridge, the scent pungent, intoxicating.

“Eat,” she whispered, lifting the spoon toward his lips. “Taste the desert as it truly is. See what you were born to see.”

Leto’s eyes widened, curiosity warring with unease. He leaned forward, lips parting.

The scroll in Paul’s hand fell silent against the table.

In an instant he was there, seizing Alia’s wrist in an iron grip. The spoon clattered to the stone floor, scattering orange dust like blood.

Paul’s voice was low, lethal. “What are you doing?”

Alia met his gaze with a defiance that burned. “What you fear to do, brother. He must awaken. He must.”

Paul’s grip tightened, and suddenly the chamber seemed to thrum with something unseen — the clash not of bodies, but of minds. The weight of prescience fell between them, visions colliding like blades.

Alia’s pupils dilated, her smile twisted. “You see so far, but your fear blinds you. He will outgrow you. I will make him what you cannot.”

Paul’s breath grew shallow, his eyes narrowing as time itself bent. He saw a dozen paths — Alia’s schemes, her poison, her hunger — and cut through them with ruthless clarity. Where she tried to weave chaos, he wove order. Where she flung futures like daggers, he broke them mid-flight.

Her face contorted as she struggled, her laughter faltering into a snarl. “You cannot stop it!”

Paul surged forward, the vision-duel snapping back into flesh and blood. His crysknife flashed. In one swift motion, he slashed across her forearm. Blood welled crimson, bright against her pale skin.

Alia staggered back, clutching her arm, her eyes wide with shock — not at the pain, but at the fact that he had beaten her so utterly, so effortlessly, in the realm she thought was hers.

Paul stood over her, breathing hard, his voice a storm barely contained. “Do not touch my son again. Not with words. Not with spice. Not with anything.”

Leto stared, trembling, his spoon forgotten, the porridge untouched.

Alia’s breath hissed through her teeth, fury and humiliation twisting her features. “You cannot guard him forever, brother. The desert will claim him, whether by my hand or another’s.”

Paul’s eyes blazed, cold and merciless. “Then let the desert try. But if you dare again, I will cut more than your arm.”

The tension snapped like a whip. Alia’s crysknife flashed from her belt, faster than most eyes could follow. Paul met her blade with his bare hand, twisting her wrist until the weapon clattered across the floor. She lashed out with her other hand, but Paul seized her arm, driving her back against the wall with brutal force.

The chamber rang with their struggle — the scrape of boots, the slam of bodies against stone. Paul was relentless, his movements precise, merciless, each strike calculated not only to subdue but to humiliate. Alia fought with fury, her small frame a whirlwind, but Paul broke through her every motion, countering with the efficiency of a man who had killed across a hundred battlefields.

“You thought prescience would make you my equal,” Paul hissed, pinning her wrist above her head. He struck her across the face with the flat of his hand, the sound sharp, echoing. “But you are still a child before me.”

Alia spat blood, her eyes wild with rage. She clawed at his arm, kicked, twisted — but every strike was turned back, every attempt crushed by his weight, his sheer force of will. He drove her to the floor, his knee pressing into her chest, his knife at her throat.

The door opened suddenly. Jessica entered, her steps halting, eyes widening as she beheld her children locked in brutal combat.

“Paul!” she cried, bewildered, horrified. “Stop this!”

But Paul did not move. His blade hovered at Alia’s skin, drawing the faintest bead of blood. His voice was low, merciless. “Do you yield?”

Alia’s chest heaved, her pride straining against the weight that pinned her. Her mind reeled — she had believed herself stronger, clearer, more ruthless. But Paul had crushed her in prescience, crushed her in flesh, crushed her in spirit.

Her voice broke at last. “I yield.”

Paul pressed the knife a fraction deeper, his eyes burning into hers. “Say it. Say my plan is the only path.”

Tears of rage welled in her blue-on-blue eyes. Her voice was a whisper, choked with blood and shame. “Your plan… is the only path.”

Paul leaned closer, his tone colder still. “And?”

Her lips trembled. “And I… I am sorry.”

He held her gaze for a long, terrible moment, then withdrew, rising to his feet. Alia curled on the floor, humiliated, bloodied, her pride broken.

Jessica stepped between them, bewildered, her voice trembling. “Paul… what have you done?”

Paul wiped the blood from his blade, his face like stone. “I reminded her who commands this House. And who commands the future.”

Chani, silent at the edge of the chamber, clutched Leto to her, her eyes dark but steady. She said nothing, for there was nothing to say.

Alia remained on the floor, trembling, her breath ragged. For the first time in her life, she looked at her brother not as kin, not even as rival — but as something greater, something terrible, something she could never defeat.

Paul stepped back, his knife still dripping Alia’s blood. She pushed herself slowly off the floor, her breath ragged, her cheek marked with the sting of his hand. For a moment, her eyes burned with rage — but then, to Jessica’s shock, her lips curved into a smile.

Not bitter. Not broken. But almost… glee.

She laughed — low, dark, and strangely delighted. “So it is true. You are stronger. Stronger than me. Stronger than even the visions let me believe.” Her shoulders shook with the laugh, wild and bitter-sweet. “How foolish I was, to think I could be your equal. Foolish, but… glorious to try.”

Jessica stood frozen, bewildered by the sudden change in her daughter’s tone. “Alia…” she began, but Alia waved her hand, cutting her off.

“No, mother. Do not pity me.” Her eyes fixed on Paul, glittering with something sharp and reverent. “You’ve shown me my place. You’ve shown me. I was never meant to command him, never meant to outshine him. My path is only beside him — or beneath him.”

Paul wiped his blade clean and sheathed it, his expression unreadable. “Then remember it. And do not stray again.”

Alia bowed her head, not with shame but with a kind of twisted grace, a smile still tugging at her lips. “I will not, brother. You have my apology… and my loyalty. Truly.”

Jessica, shaken, reached for Leto, pulling the boy close to her. “Enough. He should not see this.” Her voice carried a mixture of reproach and quiet sorrow as she guided her grandson out through the doors, toward the cool sanctuary of the palace gardens.

As they left, the boy looked back over his shoulder, eyes wide, still clutching his wooden sandworm. He saw his aunt kneeling, smiling strangely through the blood on her face, and his father standing above her like a figure out of legend — terrible, immovable, victorious.

The doors closed behind them with a heavy thud.

Chani slipped to Paul’s side, her hand brushing his sleeve. Her eyes searched his, steady but troubled. “You’ve broken her,” she whispered.

Paul’s gaze lingered on Alia, who still knelt, head bowed, whispering to herself in a voice that trembled with both awe and something darker.

“No,” Paul murmured at last, his eyes narrowing. “I’ve set her in her place. But broken things have their own kind of power.”

And in the gardens, under the filtered light, Jessica sat Leto down among the blossoms. She smoothed his hair, her voice low, soothing, as she spoke of peace and of simpler days on Caladan — trying, in her way, to draw him back from the shadow of what he had just witnessed.

The palace gardens glowed with soft light, lanterns swaying gently among the tall desert flora transplanted from far-off worlds. The air here was gentler, cooler, carrying only the faintest trace of spice. Fountains whispered, their trickle of water as precious as any jewel.

Jessica guided Leto to a low stone bench beneath an imported Caladan tree, its leaves shimmering silver in the moonlight. She sat beside him, smoothing the boy’s dark hair back from his brow. He was quiet, clutching the wooden sandworm in his lap, his small knuckles white.

“Do not be afraid,” Jessica said softly, though her voice held weariness. “What you saw was not meant for you.”

Leto looked up at her, his eyes wide, troubled. “Why does Father hurt Aunt Alia? They’re family. Aren’t we supposed to protect each other?”

Jessica sighed, her gaze drifting to the rippling water. For a moment she looked older, burdened by too many memories. “In this family, protection often wears the face of cruelty. Sometimes, Leto, the only way to guard what you love is to strike hard against those who would twist it. Even if they share your blood.”

The boy frowned, his voice small but sharp. “But Aunt Alia said she only wanted me to taste the spice. To see what she sees.”

Jessica’s lips thinned, her hand tightening on his shoulder. “Alia carries too many voices in her mind, child. Some hers, some not. Her love for you is not false, but it is dangerous. She would cast you into fire to see you burn bright, not realizing you might only turn to ash.”

Leto looked down at the wooden carving in his hands, silent for a long time. Then, softly: “I don’t want to fight family. I don’t want to be like that.”

Jessica’s heart ached at the words, at the innocence she knew could not last. She bent close, pressing a kiss to his hair. “Then remember this moment, my grandson. Remember the sound of the fountains, the scent of flowers, the peace of this garden. Hold it close. For when the desert takes from you — and it will — you must have something inside that it cannot devour.”

Leto leaned against her, quiet, thoughtful. The soft murmur of water filled the silence, wrapping them both in fragile calm.

The chamber was quiet, lit only by the faint orange glow of spice lamps. Scrolls lay scattered across Paul’s desk, reports of the Jihad spreading farther each week. He sat hunched forward, one hand pressed against his temple, eyes fixed on a map of conquests that sprawled like veins across parchment.

The door opened softly. Jessica stepped inside, her presence quiet but commanding. She did not speak at first, only studied him — her son, the Emperor, cloaked in the weight of prophecy and blood. For an instant, she saw the boy she had raised on Caladan, the boy who had laughed at sea gulls and learned his first lessons in loyalty at her knee.

“Mother,” Paul said without turning, his voice edged with fatigue. “Why are you here at this hour?”

Jessica moved closer, her footsteps soft against the stone floor. “Because your sister is reckless, and your wife is fierce, and between them you will be torn in two if I do not act.”

Paul turned at last, meeting her gaze. His eyes were shadowed, the blue-on-blue burning with the burden of prescience. “You would take sides, then?”

Jessica shook her head. “Not sides. I would steady the path.” She drew a breath, her voice firm. “You are right to microdose the boy. Spice will find him whether you forbid it or not — in the food, in the air, in the water he drinks. Better that he be guided than drowned. But it must be done carefully, with control. You cannot carry this alone.”

Paul studied her, his expression unreadable. “And you offer yourself to carry it with me.”

“I am Bene Gesserit,” Jessica said, her tone even, almost resigned. “I know the poison and the cure. I know how to walk the knife’s edge without falling. With me guiding the process, Leto will not break. He will not be corrupted by the weight of visions. He will be hardened, sharpened — but not twisted.”

Paul leaned back in his chair, his hands steepled. “You say this as his grandmother, or as the Sisterhood’s creature?”

The question hung heavy. Jessica’s lips curved, bitter, but her eyes did not flinch. “I say this as the woman who once bore you, and who has lived long enough to regret the dangers I left unchecked. I will not see Leto become a tyrant — nor a martyr. I will see him a ruler. A good ruler. That much I still owe you.”

Paul’s gaze softened, though the steel beneath it remained. He rose, circling the desk until he stood before her. His hand lingered on her shoulder, heavy, steady.

“You would help me shape him,” he said, low.

Jessica’s eyes glistened faintly in the lamplight, though her voice was unwavering. “I will help you shape him into more than Muad’Dib. Into more than your shadow. Into himself.”

For a long time, Paul was silent. Then at last, he nodded, a small exhale leaving him like a sigh of surrender.

“So be it.”

And in that moment, though the desert still stretched endless and hungry outside the palace walls, there was a fragile thread of hope — a mother’s vow, a son’s weary trust, and the faint promise that perhaps Leto’s path might yet escape the doom that haunted every vision.

Chapter Text

The next morning, the solar light spilled across the practice chamber. It was a room carved deep within the palace walls, its stone cool, its air filtered, the hum of stillsuit vents faint. Here, lessons were given that no scrolls could hold.

Paul stood at the center, his posture straight, his hands folded behind his back. Jessica moved slowly around the perimeter of the chamber, her eyes keen, measuring, her every step controlled. On a low cushion sat Leto, cross-legged, restless but trying to mimic the stillness he saw in his father.

Chani lingered against the wall, her arms folded, her gaze sharp. She said nothing, but her presence filled the room — watchful, protective, suspicious of every word Jessica spoke.

Paul’s voice was steady, deep, carrying authority without force. “Leto. Today you begin the path that cannot be turned aside once walked. You will learn to guard your mind before spice ever touches your tongue. Without such discipline, it will drown you in visions, break you apart. Do you understand?”

Leto nodded quickly, though uncertainty flickered in his young eyes. “I think so, Father.”

Jessica stepped closer, kneeling before her grandson. Her tone was gentler than Paul’s, yet precise. “Close your eyes, child. Breathe as we have taught you — slow, steady, filling your belly, not your chest. Hold. Release. Again.”

He obeyed, though his shoulders twitched with the effort to stay still.

“Now,” Jessica continued, her voice dropping into the subtle cadence of the Sisterhood, “imagine your mind as a fortress. Stone walls, gates, guards of your choosing. Nothing enters unless you allow it. Nothing escapes without your command.”

Leto’s brow furrowed, his small hands pressing against his knees. “A fortress… with walls of stone.”

Paul crouched beside him, his voice lower, more intimate. “Good. See the walls. Now imagine what threatens them — voices that are not yours, shadows that want to climb inside. Feel them pressing against the gates. Do not let them in. Steel yourself.”

The boy’s lips tightened. His body tensed. “I can hear something,” he whispered, eyes still shut. “Like… whispers.”

Chani shifted against the wall, her hands curling at her sides.

Jessica’s hand pressed lightly to Leto’s forehead. “Do not fight the whispers. Observe them. They are tricks of the spice that surrounds you even now. Let your guards hold the gate. Let them stand firm.”

The boy’s breath slowed, steadied. His shoulders eased.

Paul nodded, satisfied. “This is the beginning, Leto. You must master the fortress before you ever taste what will test its walls.”

Leto opened his eyes, wide and earnest. “And when I do? When I eat the spice?”

Paul and Jessica exchanged a look. It was Jessica who answered first, her voice calm but edged with warning. “Then the fortress will be tested. The gates will be assaulted by a thousand voices and visions. You will see paths, futures, shadows of what may be. That is the gift — and the curse. Only discipline will keep you whole.”

Paul’s hand tightened briefly on his son’s shoulder. “I will walk beside you when that time comes. I will not let you drown.”

Across the room, Chani’s gaze softened, though her jaw remained tight. Her eyes never left her son, but she burned with distrust of the Bene Gesserit methods laced into Jessica’s every word.

Leto looked from one to the other — his father, his grandmother, and his mother silent in the shadows. And though he was only ten, he felt the weight of something vast settling on his shoulders.

The seasons shifted across Arrakis, though to the untrained eye the desert seemed always the same: endless dunes, relentless sun. But in the palace, months had left their mark.

Leto had grown taller, his shoulders beginning to straighten under the weight of training. He sparred in the mornings with blades dull enough not to cut, his small arms trembling as Paul corrected his stance again and again.

“Do not swing wildly,” Paul instructed, catching the boy’s clumsy strike with ease. “Precision, Leto. Precision is survival.”

The afternoons were spent in stillness, Jessica teaching him breathing, control, the fortress of the mind. Chani often watched from the shadows, her gaze proud, though guarded.

But it was the evenings that startled Jessica most. When Paul, his eyes shadowed with the burden of prescience, would sit with his son and speak softly — of mercy, of fairness, of listening to the weak as much as the strong.

“Strength without compassion is tyranny,” Paul told him one night, as Leto leaned on his father’s knee. “And a ruler who cannot show kindness rules only sand and corpses.”

Jessica, watching from across the chamber, almost laughed aloud. Not with mirth, but with disbelief. Later, when Paul dismissed the boy to rest, she lingered behind.

“You train him in kindness,” she said, her tone wry. “Is that not ironic, when the galaxy whispers your name in fear? Muad’Dib, the tyrant of the universe, preaching mercy to his son.”

Paul’s face did not change, but something in his eyes flickered — a glimmer of pain, quickly shuttered. “I know what I am, Mother. I know what my Jihad has made me. But I will not have my son become only that.”

Jessica folded her arms, studying him. “And do you believe teaching him mercy will cleanse your empire of blood?”

“No.” Paul turned away, gazing into the desert beyond the window. “But perhaps it will cleanse him of me.”

For a long moment, Jessica said nothing. The night winds carried the smell of spice, the whisper of shifting sands.

At last, she spoke, her voice softer. “It seems the Sisterhood was right, in a way. You are the Kwisatz Haderach. The man who can be in many places at once. Dictator. Prophet. Teacher of mercy. But still just a man, shaping his son with contradictions.”

Paul’s hand tightened against the stone of the window frame. “Contradiction is the only truth the future has left me.”

Jessica’s gaze softened, though she did not step closer. She left him there, staring into the desert, a man caught between mercy and tyranny, training a boy to inherit both.

The war chamber was quiet after the council had dispersed, maps rolled up, markers gathered. Only family remained — Paul, Chani at his side, Jessica lingering near the archway, and Alia leaning casually against the table, her fingers tapping the stone surface as though beating out some private rhythm.

Leto sat cross-legged nearby, practicing his breathing, his lips moving in silent recitation of the Bene Gesserit litany Jessica had taught him. He was growing steadier each day, the fortress of his mind slowly taking shape.

Alia’s gaze lingered on him, sharp and thoughtful. At last she spoke, her tone light but cutting through the silence.

“Brother,” she said, “you’ve given him the sword, the voice, and even the soft shield of mercy. But you have not given him me.”

Paul looked at her, his expression unreadable. “You think yourself a lesson?”

Alia smiled faintly. “I am many lessons. He needs to know how to wield fear as well as love. How to see what lurks in shadows, and how to command loyalty when love falters. These are things neither you, nor Mother, nor Chani will teach him. But I can.”

Chani stiffened, her eyes narrowing. “You would twist him into your own image, Alia. You nearly poisoned him with spice before his time.”

Alia did not flinch. She turned her gaze to Chani, steady, unyielding. “I overreached, yes. I thought the desert had claimed him already. I was wrong. But do not mistake my hunger for harm. I want him strong. And strength comes in many forms.”

Jessica’s lips thinned, her voice wary. “Paul, think carefully. Alia has gifts, but she also carries madness inside her. Do you want that in your son’s training?”

For a long moment Paul was silent, his eyes distant, caught in visions. He saw paths where Leto faltered, where he was too soft, where he was too brittle. He saw paths where Alia’s lessons hardened him like stone, gave him weapons words and steel could not.

At last, he turned back to his sister, his voice cold but decisive. “You may train him. But on my terms.”

Alia tilted her head, almost amused. “And those terms?”

“You will teach him discipline of mind, and how to see the hidden faces of loyalty and betrayal. You will not give him spice. You will not poison his innocence with your madness. Do so, and I will end your lessons as I ended your defiance.”

For a heartbeat, tension thickened the air. Then Alia smiled — not mocking, but with something that almost resembled delight. “As you command, brother.” She turned her gaze on Leto, her smile lingering, sharp as a knife. “Then let us begin, little hawk.”

Chani’s hand tightened on Paul’s sleeve, her voice a whisper meant only for him. “You place him in the viper’s nest.”

Paul’s jaw clenched, his gaze never leaving Alia. “Yes. But a hawk must learn to know snakes before he rules the desert.”

Weeks passed, and with them, Leto’s body and mind grew sharper. The boy who had once stumbled with a practice blade now struck with precision, his feet quick on the sand-swept training floor. His breathing slowed into the measured rhythms Jessica drilled into him, his gaze steady even as Alia wove riddles of betrayal and loyalty before him.

But it was not the sword, nor the breathing, nor the riddles that changed him most. It was the way he began to see.

It came one night in the courtyard after a day’s lessons. The moons were full, silvering the stones of the palace. Fremen throngs had gathered below, chanting hymns to Muad’Dib. Their voices rose in a rolling thunder, reverent and wild, echoing off the walls of the city.

Leto stood at the balcony beside Paul, Chani, and Alia. Jessica lingered behind, a silent shadow.

The crowd surged as Paul lifted a hand. Their cries of devotion filled the air, raw and absolute. Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! The word was no longer just a name — it was thunder, it was flame, it was the beating of thousands of hearts in unison.

Leto had heard these chants before, but now, with his training sharpening his senses, it struck him differently. He felt the tide of belief crashing against the stone walls, the way it pressed against his skin, heavy, suffocating, exalting.

“They think you are a god,” he whispered to his father.

Paul’s profile was lit silver in the moonlight, his face calm, his voice steady. “They believe what they must. A god can command more than an Emperor.”

Leto’s small hand tightened on the balcony rail. “And Mother? And Aunt Alia? Why do they call them holy?”

Chani’s gaze softened as she glanced at him, but she said nothing. It was Alia who bent close, her smile sharp, her eyes glinting. “Because they stand beside a god. And because in their blood, the desert sees something more. Your mother is the Holy Mother — the one who carried you. I am St. Alia of the Knife, born awake, wielding death before I could walk. They cannot help but worship us. To them, we are no longer only flesh, but myth.”

Leto turned to Paul, searching his father’s eyes. “Is that true?”

Paul looked at his son, his gaze steady but haunted. “It is true that the Fremen believe it. And belief, Leto, can build empires — or drown them in blood.”

Below, the chanting grew louder, swelling like the desert storm. Muad’Dib! Holy Mother! St. Alia!

And for the first time, Leto felt what the throngs felt: awe, fear, the weight of destiny pressing down like a living thing. His chest tightened, his pulse quickened.

He understood then why they saw his father as more than a man, his mother as more than a woman, his aunt as something born of nightmare and miracle both.

He saw the shape of the myth that encircled them all.

And he realized, with a shiver that was not entirely fear, that one day — they would chant his name, too.

The chamber was sealed, its walls lined with sound-dampening cloth. No servants, no guards, not even Alia were permitted inside. Only Paul, Chani, Jessica — and the boy.

On a low table rested a crystal vial. Inside, raw spice dust shimmered faintly, its orange glow alive under the lamplight. The scent of it was sharp, filling the chamber like incense, though only a grain had been measured out.

Leto sat cross-legged on a cushion, his hands resting on his knees, as he had been trained. His eyes flicked between his father and grandmother, his throat dry.

Paul knelt before him, steady, calm, the vial in his hand. “This is not like the food you eat, or the air you breathe. This is pure spice, undiluted. It will stir things in you — whispers, shadows, perhaps even visions. That is why you must fortify your mind.”

Leto swallowed, nodding. “I’m ready.”

Jessica crouched to his other side, her hand brushing his temple. Her voice slipped into that subtle Bene Gesserit cadence that steadied, anchored. “Breathe. Remember your fortress. Strong walls. Firm gates. No one enters without your leave.”

Chani stood behind, arms folded, her gaze fierce, protective. She said nothing, but her whole body was taut, as if she might leap forward and snatch her son away from the path laid before him.

Paul tipped the vial. A single grain of spice fell onto his fingertip. He touched it to Leto’s tongue.

The boy stiffened. His eyes squeezed shut, his breath caught. The taste was sharp, bitter, burning like fire at the back of his throat.

At once, the world seemed to tremble.

The lamplight flared brighter. He felt his heart hammer, his blood racing. Shadows whispered at the edges of his mind, voices he couldn’t quite hear but almost recognized. Shapes of paths stretched before him like shifting dunes — futures layered atop futures, some bright, some terrible.

His hands clenched into fists.

The fortress. The gates. He heard Jessica’s voice in his mind, steady, anchoring. He tried to imagine the walls he had built in training. Tried to see guards standing firm. But the voices pressed hard, like sand flooding against the gates.

“I can’t—” he gasped, his voice trembling.

Paul’s hands gripped his shoulders, steady and unyielding. His own Voice filled the chamber, sharp as steel. “You can. Hold the gates, Leto. The desert will test you, but it will not break you if you command it.”

Leto cried out softly, sweat beading on his brow. The visions pressed closer — the shimmer of blades, the sound of chanting crowds, the echo of his own name shouted by thousands. It frightened him, yet it burned with power.

Then, with a shuddering breath, he pushed back.

The walls of his fortress held. The gates closed. The whispers dulled to silence.

He opened his eyes. They were wide, glowing faintly blue. His small body trembled, but he remained upright, unbroken.

Jessica exhaled slowly, relief softening her stern expression. “He held.”

Chani moved at once, kneeling to embrace him, her voice thick. “My son.”

Paul’s hand lingered on Leto’s shoulder. He did not smile, but his eyes softened, a rare flicker of pride in their depths. “You have taken the first step,” he said quietly. “And you did not fall.”

Leto leaned into his mother’s arms, still shaking. His voice was faint, awed. “I saw them, Father. I saw the crowds. I saw… me.”

Paul’s gaze darkened, the shadow of prescience heavy in his silence.

Chani clutched Leto closer, her voice fierce. “Do not chase what you saw. Hold only to who you are.”

But in his small chest, Leto already carried the echo of those voices. And though he did not yet understand, he knew his life had just changed forever.

Chapter Text

The long dining hall shimmered with golden light, lamps burning low as the family gathered. Servants moved silently along the edges, pouring spice wine, setting down platters of roasted desert hare and flatbread.

At the head of the table, Paul sat in his place of honor, Chani beside him with Leto at her side. Jessica’s presence was steady, calm, and Alia leaned back in her chair with that faint smile she always wore when tensions simmered.

Irulan was late. When she finally entered, dressed in pale silks, her steps deliberate, the hall seemed to grow colder. She inclined her head stiffly and took her place opposite Chani, the space around her heavy with silence.

The meal began, though conversation was thin. Leto, flushed with the quiet pride of his day’s trial, picked cautiously at his food, his eyes flicking often to his father.

It was Irulan who broke the silence. She lifted her glass of spice wine, her smile faint, dry.

“A toast,” she said smoothly, her voice carrying across the table. “To young Leto, who takes his first steps with spice. How fortunate he is, to walk so easily the path that some of us were denied.”

Her gaze slid toward Chani, then Paul. The words were smooth, but the sting in them was sharp.

The room froze.

Paul’s eyes flicked to her, cold as desert steel. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then his hand shot forward, seizing the ceramic plate before him. With a single motion, swift and unhesitating, he hurled it across the table.

The plate shattered against the wall behind Irulan’s head, shards scattering across the stone. The sound cracked through the hall like a crysknife striking bone. Servants jumped, one stifling a gasp.

Irulan sat frozen, her knuckles white against the stem of her glass. For an instant, her mask of composure slipped, her face pale.

Paul leaned forward, his voice low, deadly calm. “Do not speak of what you cannot touch. Do not poison my son’s triumph with your bitterness. You are permitted at this table only by my mercy. Do not forget it.”

Irulan’s lips trembled — only faintly, but enough. She lowered her gaze, forcing a smile that barely held. “As you command, my Emperor.”

Chani smirked, sharp and merciless, her hand brushing Leto’s shoulder in reassurance.

Alia’s smile widened, eyes glinting with dark amusement at the spectacle.

Jessica, however, closed her eyes briefly, her voice soft but firm. “Paul. Enough. The boy should not dine in the shadow of your fury.”

Paul did not look at her. His gaze remained fixed on Irulan, unblinking, until the silence grew unbearable.

At last, he leaned back, lifting his goblet. “Eat,” he said. The single word was command, final, inescapable.

The family obeyed, though the servants moved stiffly, whispering in the corners of their minds of broken plates and a wife who lived by sufferance.

And Leto, silent between his mother and grandmother, understood a little more of why the Fremen called his father a god.

The morning sun burned high over Arrakeen, spilling across the palace courtyards. Leto had slipped away from his lessons, his practice blade still strapped to his side. He moved with a boy’s restless energy, eager for a moment of freedom.

As he rounded a corner, he caught sight of her.

Irulan.

She stood half in shadow near the carved archways, her pale gown catching the light. When she saw him, she didn’t call out — she lifted her hand, beckoning with a subtle, almost secretive motion.

Leto hesitated. He had been warned, often and fiercely, to keep his distance from her. His father’s cold fury, his mother’s sharp tongue, even Alia’s mocking reminders — all had painted Irulan as something dangerous. A poison behind a pretty face.

But she was family. And she was smiling at him now, not cruelly, but gently.

“Come, Leto,” she said softly as he approached. “I only wish to speak. No harm in words, is there?”

The boy edged closer, curiosity tugging him forward even as his training whispered caution.

“You’re not supposed to talk to me,” he said, his tone half-defiant, half-uncertain.

Irulan tilted her head, her smile wry. “No. Your father forbids it. But fathers are not always right, are they? Sometimes they see threats where there are none.”

Leto frowned, gripping the hilt of his toy blade. “You tried to hurt my mother once. Everyone says so.”

Her smile faltered only briefly before she smoothed it again. “I was foolish, yes. Misguided. But I have no quarrel with you, Leto. In fact…” She crouched down, bringing her eyes level with his. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I only wish you to know the truth. They call me your stepmother, but I have no child. No son of my own. You are my only hope to leave some mark upon this world. And I… I would see you thrive.”

Leto blinked at her, torn between suspicion and the aching need every child has to be listened to. “Why?” he asked simply.

Irulan’s smile deepened, touched with bitterness. “Because one day, when you are Emperor, you will read the histories. And you will see my name there, written as one who guided you. Not forgotten. Not erased. You would not want to erase me, would you?”

The boy shifted uncomfortably, the weight of her words pressing on him in ways he didn’t understand. His young mind, sharp but still soft, tried to hold to his father’s warnings. Do not let her voice into your fortress. He could almost hear Jessica’s training in his ear.

“I… don’t know,” he said at last.

Irulan reached forward, her hand hovering just above his. Not touching, but close. Her eyes glistened with something almost desperate. “Just remember, Leto. Not all who are kept in shadows deserve to be there. One day, you may find that even the forgotten have wisdom to give.”

A sharp voice cut across the courtyard.

“Leto!”

Chani’s figure appeared at the far archway, her presence radiating authority. Her eyes fixed on Irulan, cold as a crysknife. “Away from her. Now.”

Leto startled, glancing between the two women. Then, with a boy’s instinct, he darted toward his mother, clutching at her sleeve as she drew him behind her.

Irulan straightened, her mask sliding back into place. She dipped her head in false deference. “I only spoke with him. Nothing more.”

Chani’s gaze was venom. “Speak again, and you’ll choke on your words.”

Irulan said nothing, but her eyes lingered on the boy even as Chani pulled him away.

And Leto, though shielded once more, could not shake the faint echo of her plea: Not all who are kept in shadows deserve to be there.

It began as curiosity, innocent and dangerous.

After that first encounter, Leto found himself drawn back to the quiet corridors near Irulan’s chambers. He told himself it was only to listen, only to see if she would beckon again. But each time, she was waiting.

She never raised her voice. Never forced him closer. She simply smiled, offered a gentle word, and let his questions pull him forward.

“You train so hard,” she said one morning, her voice soft as they stood in the shadow of a colonnade. “Swordplay, breathing, discipline. But do they teach you to listen to whispers? To read what is not said?”

Leto frowned, his young brow furrowed. “Father says whispers are poison.”

Irulan’s smile was wry, her eyes gleaming. “Perhaps. Or perhaps whispers are truths too soft for shouting. You must learn to hear both, little hawk. Even gods fall if they mistake silence for loyalty.”

Another day, she placed a small, ornate scroll into his hand. The parchment smelled faintly of spice and ink. “History,” she told him. “A true history, not the one they allow you to hear. Read it when you are older. You will see how many voices are erased by victory.”

He tucked it under his tunic, his heart racing at the thought of a secret.

And always, her words cut at the edges of his innocence.

“Do you love your father?” she asked one evening as they sat in her chamber alcove, where no servants dared linger.

“Yes,” Leto answered without hesitation.

Irulan’s smile was faint, almost wistful. “Then remember this: love does not blind you. It sharpens you. But loyalty—” she leaned close, her voice low, “loyalty can be shackles if you do not choose them for yourself.”

Leto didn’t fully understand, but he carried the weight of her words back into his bed at night, replaying them as if they were part of his lessons.

When Paul looked at him, he said nothing. When Jessica quizzed him on mind fortresses, he answered carefully. When Chani pressed a hand to his cheek, searching his eyes, he avoided her gaze.

Yet he returned again and again.

Because Irulan made him feel something no one else in the palace did — important not only as a son, or as a future ruler, but as a person. She looked at him as if he mattered in the present, not only in the future.

And slowly, she wove her voice into the cracks of his fortress.

Chapter Text

The throne room was empty, its vast hall echoing with silence once the petitions had ended. Paul sat alone on the high seat, his hands resting against the carved armrests, his gaze unfocused. The smell of spice thickened the air, cloying, inevitable.

He let the visions come.

The threads of time stretched before him, shimmering dunes of possibility. He saw his son slipping into shadowed corridors, a pale figure waiting with open hands. He saw Irulan’s smile, saw the words she wove like silk, slipping through the boy’s defenses. He saw Leto return again and again, carrying questions that would one day gnaw at his loyalty.

And beyond, darker futures: Leto standing before him with Irulan at his shoulder, her voice inside him like a hidden knife. The empire cracking, not from armies or rebellions, but from within his own bloodline.

Paul exhaled slowly, dragging himself back into the present. The visions receded, but their weight lingered.

Footsteps stirred behind him. Chani entered quietly, her stillsuit hood pushed back, her hair loose from the desert winds. She moved toward him, sensing his mood.

“You’ve seen something,” she said, not a question.

Paul’s jaw tightened. He looked at her, and for once the mask of Emperor, Prophet, Muad’Dib slipped. His eyes were haunted.

“Our son goes to her,” he said, the words sharp, bitter. “Irulan. Again and again. She whispers into him. She plants doubts, seeds he cannot yet understand. I have seen the futures where those seeds grow.”

Chani froze, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Leto…” Her voice broke, fury and fear tangled in it. “And you—what will you do?”

Paul stood, pacing the base of the throne steps. His cloak dragged against the stone, the fabric heavy. “If I forbid him, he will go in secret still. If I punish her, she will twist her own martyrdom into a lesson for him. If I do nothing, she poisons him in silence. Every path is a trap.”

Chani’s voice was low, dangerous. “Then kill her.”

Paul stopped, turning sharply. His eyes burned with blue fire. “I cannot. Jessica is right: her death would ripple through history in ways even I cannot master. To kill her is to give the Sisterhood their victory. To silence her is to make her words louder. I cannot kill her.”

Chani’s fists clenched. “Then what?”

Paul looked away, into the empty hall, as if the answer might be carved into the stones. “Then I must shape the boy before she does. I must show him what Irulan cannot. And if he must hear her words…” His eyes darkened, his voice low with terrible resolve. “Then he must also learn how to break them.”

Chani’s breath came sharp, ragged with restrained fury. “You would let her keep speaking to him?”

Paul met her gaze at last, his expression unreadable, only the shadow of the future heavy upon him. “Better he learn to resist her than to live in ignorance of her poison.”

And in that silence, Chani saw the truth: Paul was not only Emperor to the universe. He was Emperor to his son, shaping him as ruthlessly as he shaped planets.

The practice chamber was dim, its walls lined with Fremen hangings that muffled sound. A training mat stretched across the floor where Leto stood, sweat glistening at his brow. He held his practice blade, his small chest heaving after a flurry of strikes Paul had parried with ease.

Paul lowered his own weapon, his breathing even, calm. He did not scold, did not praise. Instead, he moved closer, his eyes fixed on his son with that piercing, unblinking gaze.

“You’ve grown sharper,” Paul said. His tone was measured, almost casual. “Your stance steadies. Your blade no longer trembles. Yet your mind… it stirs elsewhere.”

Leto stiffened, his young face betraying a flicker of guilt. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”

Paul circled him, slow, deliberate, like a predator gauging prey. “You do. You carry whispers in your eyes. Secrets.” He paused, his voice dropping to a low, resonant timbre. “Secrets of Irulan.”

The boy froze, his knuckles white on the hilt of his blade.

Paul came to stand before him, close enough that the boy felt the weight of his presence pressing down. “Did you think I would not see? That I would not know? I am Muad’Dib. The desert whispers to me. The future lays itself bare. Every step you take, every thought you hide, I have already walked its shadow.”

Leto swallowed hard, his throat dry. “You… you knew?”

Paul’s gaze softened only slightly, though the steel remained. “Yes. I know you’ve gone to her. Again and again. I know the poison of her words has brushed your ears. And I know you’ve carried her secrets in your heart, thinking them yours alone.”

Leto’s blade slipped from his hand, clattering to the mat. His voice was small, trembling. “Then you really are a god.”

Paul bent, crouching to his son’s level, his hand resting heavy on the boy’s shoulder. His voice was quiet, but each word struck like a stone. “No, Leto. Not a god. A man who sees too much. And that is why you must listen. Irulan’s words are snares. She cloaks herself in pity, but her chains are real. If you let them bind you, you will not rule — you will be ruled.”

Leto’s eyes shone with confusion, fear, and a child’s desperate hunger to please. “I didn’t mean to… I just wanted to understand her.”

Paul’s expression tightened. For a moment, something almost like sorrow flickered across his face. “I know. And that is why she is dangerous. Because she makes you believe you can save her.”

He stood, pulling the boy up with him, forcing Leto’s shoulders straight. “Remember this, my son: pity is a weapon in the hands of those who know they cannot win by strength. Guard yourself against it as you would against a blade.”

Leto nodded, trembling, unable to meet his father’s eyes. His mind spun, shaken by the sense that nothing could be hidden from Paul Atreides — not even his own heart.

And for the first time, he feared not only what his father could do… but what his father already knew.

The hidden passage was narrow, its stone walls cool beneath Leto’s palms as he crawled forward. He had discovered it weeks ago, a crack behind a tapestry in his chambers that opened into a web of narrow shafts running through the palace. The Fremen called them lisana t'mal, the tongues of shadow, used in the old days to watch unseen.

Today, curiosity and unease pulled him inside. His father’s words still rang in his head: Pity is a weapon… guard against it as you would against a blade.

Paul sat upon his throne, his posture regal, his face a mask of stillness. His presence alone bent the hall into silence. The petitions began, nobles and merchants stepping forward to plead their causes.

At first, Leto thought it was like every court he had been forced to watch — words and gestures, the endless drone of complaints. But here, unseen, he saw what was hidden.

His father’s gaze cut sharper than a crysknife. His voice, calm and precise, slipped into tones of the Voice when displeasure stirred. One noble faltered mid-sentence, his words collapsing under Paul’s subtle command. Another tried to bargain too boldly — and Paul’s hand flicked, dismissing him with a single word. Guards dragged the man away like refuse.

Cold, Leto thought, his small fingers clutching the wall. Colder than the father who speaks of kindness at night.

The court grew tense when a decorated nobleman stepped forward, pride in his stance, arrogance dripping from every word. He spoke of tribute, of resisting Paul’s decrees. He cast a slight glance at Chani, seated on the smaller throne beside Paul, as though her presence diminished the empire itself.

Paul did not move. He did not even frown. He let the man speak, let his arrogance fill the hall like sour smoke.

But Chani moved.

Swift as a sand hawk, she rose, her crysknife flashing in the lamplight. Before the noble’s final insult could leave his lips, the blade slid across his throat. His words ended in a wet gasp, blood spraying across the polished stone.

Gasps echoed through the chamber. Silence fell, broken only by the sound of the noble’s body collapsing.

Chani stood tall, her breathing steady, her knife dripping red. She did not look at Paul, nor at the terrified nobles. She simply spoke, her voice strong, resonant:

“No one questions the Emperor. No one questions his House.”

Paul inclined his head the slightest fraction — approval, acknowledgment, nothing more. The court remained hushed, terrified. The scent of blood thickened the air.

Behind the wall, Leto’s breath caught. His heart pounded in his chest, a boy’s fear and awe mixing into something he could not name.

His father’s coldness. His mother’s knife.

This was what the Fremen worshipped. This was what the galaxy feared.

And in that hidden passage, the boy began to understand: the myths chanted in the streets were not born from kindness, but from blood.

The streets of Arrakeen buzzed with life, throngs of pilgrims filling every alley and market square. Banners of Muad’Dib fluttered from balconies, their edges scorched by sun and sand. In the heart of the city, the newly built Temple of Saint Alia of the Knife rose like a beacon, its steps crowded with chanting worshippers.

Leto pulled his hood low, the rough desert cloak he wore borrowed from a servant. His feet carried him through the crowd, his small frame swallowed by the sea of bodies. He wanted to see it for himself — the madness he had only glimpsed from balconies and heard whispered in passages.

The chants were thunderous. “St. Alia! Bless us, holy one! Protect us, St. Alia!”

Leto stared, wide-eyed, at the towering statue of his aunt carved in obsidian, knife raised high. Women wept at its base, men pressed their foreheads to the steps. A priestess cried out that the Holy Family carried the will of Shai-Hulud, that their blood was divine.

For the first time, Leto felt not awe but unease. The worship was too raw, too consuming. It frightened him, even as it pulled at something deep inside.

Then a hand closed firmly around his shoulder.

Two cloaked figures loomed on either side — Imperial guards, disguised but unmistakable. Without a word, they guided him away from the crowd, slipping through side streets until the temple’s chants faded into silence.

By the time they reached the palace gates, Paul and Chani were already waiting.

Paul’s face was unreadable, but his eyes burned with the weight of foresight. Chani’s lips were tight, her hands clenched at her sides.

“Do you think yourself clever?” Paul asked, his voice calm but heavy with steel.

Leto lowered his hood, shame and defiance warring on his young face. “I wanted to see. To understand why they call us gods.”

Chani stepped forward, kneeling to meet his eyes. Her voice was sharp, urgent. “Those people out there — they are drunk on belief. They would tear themselves apart at a word, thinking it holy. You cannot walk among them like some curious boy. They would either kill you in their frenzy or worship you until you forgot yourself. Both are poison.”

Paul’s gaze sharpened. He crouched beside them, his voice low, deliberate. “Listen to me, Leto. The desert’s gift is not worship — it is madness. Religion is a storm, and storms cannot be controlled, only ridden. If you let their voices inside you, you will drown. That is why I forbid this.”

Leto swallowed, his small fists tight. “But how can I rule them if I don’t know them?”

Paul’s jaw tightened. “To know them is not to stand in their temples. It is to see how their belief chains them — and chains us. You think you will master it, but belief masters all. That is the trap.”

Chani cupped her son’s cheek, her voice softer now. “Promise me you won’t go back, Leto. Not alone. Not like this.”

The boy’s eyes lowered, caught between fear, pride, and the flickering memory of the chants echoing in his chest. He nodded, though a part of him burned with the unanswered question: if the people believed so fiercely, how could their gods deny it?

Paul saw the question in his son’s silence — and in the endless dunes of prescience, he saw the storm already rising.

The boy would not relent.

Days after his return from the temple, Leto pressed again at dinner, his voice steady though his mother’s glare could have cut stone. “If you forbid me, I’ll only find a way on my own. You cannot keep me caged. I need to see what they see. I need to know why.”

Paul said nothing at first. He only watched his son — too much of the Atreides steel already burning in the boy’s gaze. Finally, he set down his cup, the decision carved in the stillness of his face.

“Then you will not go alone,” he said. “If you must see, you will see with your parents beside you. But you will learn the truth of it, not the dream.”

That night, beneath the pale moons, they dressed in the rough cloaks of desert folk. Their stillsuits were muted, marked only with the scars of weather and travel. Paul carried himself with the quiet ease of a wanderer; Chani’s stride was sharp, predatory even under the guise of humility. And between them walked Leto, his eyes wide with excitement and nerves.

They slipped into the streets unseen, guards shadowing them at a distance so discreet even Leto could not spot them. The city was alive with night fires and chanting throngs, the air thick with incense and spice smoke.

Paul and Chani led him toward the great temple square.

Leto stared in awe as before: the towering effigy of Alia, obsidian knife gleaming under torchlight; the pilgrims pressed shoulder to shoulder, crying out for blessings.

But now he saw more.

A man shoving another aside to reach the altar, fists raised, devotion twisting into violence. Women tearing at their own hair, collapsing in exhaustion as priests ignored them. Guards quietly dragging away bodies of those crushed in the frenzy, their deaths unnoticed by the crowd.

Chani’s hand gripped her son’s shoulder tight. “This is what they call holy. Do you see, Leto? They don’t worship her — they consume her, as they would consume you. Their hunger has no end.”

Paul bent close, his voice a steady murmur in his son’s ear. “Listen. Do you hear their words? They call her Saint. They call me god. They would call you Messiah. But listen deeper — hear the madness beneath the prayer. This is not faith, Leto. It is fire. Fire that burns whatever it touches.”

The boy swallowed, his heart racing. He looked at the faces, the wild eyes, the bloodied hands reaching toward the statue. “They don’t see us as people,” he whispered. “They see only… stories.”

Paul nodded slowly, his own face lit by torchfire. “And stories are more dangerous than armies.”

A fight broke out at the temple steps — two men clashing, one stabbing the other with a crysknife in a frenzy of devotion. The crowd surged, shrieking prayers even as blood stained the stone.

Chani pulled Leto back, shielding him from the chaos. “Now you know why we warned you. This is the worship you wanted to understand. Do you understand it now?”

Leto’s eyes were wide, his small body trembling. “Yes,” he breathed. “I see. They love us so much they would kill for us. Even die for us. And they don’t even know us.”

Paul’s hand tightened on his son’s shoulder, his voice cold with truth. “That is the weight you will inherit. That is the storm that will one day call your name. Do not ever mistake it for love.”

The desert winds trailed dust into the alleys as the three cloaked figures wound their way back toward the palace. They had kept to the shadows, skirting the torchlit boulevards, avoiding the pilgrims still drifting home from the temple.

Paul led them toward the narrow servants’ gate, the passage most discreet. The guards there were loyal Fremen, their eyes sharpened by years of surviving the desert’s cruelty.

As Paul stepped forward, the taller of the two blocked his path with a crysknife, his hand firm, his tone flat.

“Identify yourselves.”

Paul lowered his hood just enough for his face to show in the gloom. But the guard did not move aside. His eyes narrowed, searching the face of the cloaked stranger.

“This gate is not for wanderers,” he said harshly. “Not even for those who wear disguises. Speak your names.”

Chani stiffened, her hand going instinctively to Leto’s shoulder, pulling him closer. The boy’s eyes went wide, darting between the guards and his father.

Paul’s expression did not falter. His voice, calm as desert stone, carried the faint edge of the Voice. “Do you truly not know me?”

The guards faltered, their bodies stiffening, their eyes widening in shock. One dropped to his knees instantly, head bowed. The other stumbled, his weapon falling as he collapsed beside him.

“Muad’Dib…” one whispered, voice trembling with awe and terror. “Forgive us. We did not see.”

Paul’s gaze was ice. “You saw only what I wished you to see. Remember that.”

The guards pressed their foreheads to the dust, too afraid to rise.

Leto’s small voice broke the silence. “Father… they didn’t know it was you. Why didn’t they see?”

Paul turned, his face a mask of calm that did not reach his eyes. “Because gods must wear masks, Leto. And sometimes even those closest cannot see beneath them. Never forget — power is not in being recognized. Power is in being obeyed.”

The boy swallowed, his hand tightening in Chani’s cloak. He understood, dimly, but the fear in the guards’ trembling forms rooted itself deep inside him.

As they entered the palace, Chani leaned close, her whisper sharp. “This is what you wanted him to see? Fear, worship, blood? He is only a boy, Paul.”

Paul’s reply was quiet, heavy. “And if he remains only a boy, he will not survive.”

Chapter Text

A year had passed in the endless rhythms of Arrakis. The desert storms rose and fell, the temples swelled with pilgrims, the Jihad pressed outward across the stars. But within the palace, a quieter struggle unfolded — one measured not in battles but in heartbeats and breaths.

Leto had grown taller, his shoulders beginning to carry the first hints of manhood, though he was still a boy. Each day Paul measured out the microdose, a grain of spice at a time, Jessica at his side to steady and oversee.

At first the visions came in flashes — shapes at the edge of dreams, a cry of voices, the shimmer of futures like heat rising from sand. He had stumbled, afraid. But over months, the fortress of his mind grew strong. He learned not to fear the storm but to watch it.

Sometimes he would smile faintly after a dose, his voice soft with wonder. “I saw Mother laughing. I saw Father on a dune, older. I saw a bird that doesn’t exist here, flying over the sea.”

And Paul would rest a hand on his son’s shoulder, silently relieved that the boy’s visions still carried gentleness, not only fire.

For even with the spice, Leto’s innocence had not left him. He still laughed easily with Alia, still pressed flowers from the palace garden into Chani’s hands, still sat in Jessica’s lap to hear her Bene Gesserit parables retold as stories.

It was this kindness, this lightness of spirit, that became Irulan’s torment.

Again and again, she sought him in the quiet halls, with her soft smiles and careful words. She dangled history scrolls before him, hinting at secrets buried in the Sisterhood’s records. She told him of the treachery of nobles, of the fickleness of armies, of the dangers of being too trusting.

But each time, Leto disarmed her with an answer so simple and guileless that her strategies fell apart.

“Why would I need to know your history when I can write my own?” he once asked, handing her scroll back untouched.

Another time, when she whispered that pity could become a weapon, he had frowned and answered, “Then I will never wield it that way.”

Her composure cracked in those moments, her frustration sharp behind her practiced mask. She had been trained all her life to bend with words, to poison with suggestion — and yet, faced with the boy’s unshakable sincerity, her barbs dulled, her nets broke.

He remained polite, always respectful, but never hers. His kindness was a shield stronger than anything his father had given him.

In the evenings, Paul sometimes watched him sleep, his small face peaceful, unaware of how many futures pressed upon him. Chani would kneel beside, brushing the boy’s hair from his brow, whispering, “Still my little hawk. Not yet the storm.”

And Irulan, in her chambers, bit her lips until they bled as she wrote and rewrote the chronicles. For each attempt to twist the boy bent back upon her, leaving her words hollow.

The son of Muad’Dib was growing — not into a tyrant, nor yet into a god, but into something else entirely. And even the Bene Gesserit could not yet see what he would become.

The midday sun hammered down on Arrakeen, the air heavy with spice and dust. Alia pulled her hood low, the rough cloak disguising her noble features. Beside her walked Leto, similarly shrouded, his steps quick with the thrill of disobedience.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Leto whispered, his blue-on-blue eyes darting around the crowded bazaar. The press of bodies, the scents of roasted spicebread and burning incense, overwhelmed him, so unlike the sheltered corridors of the Keep.

Alia smirked beneath her hood. “Safe? No. But necessary. You wanted to see what lies beyond the palace walls. I wanted you to feel it. So here we are.”

They wound their way through the bustling streets, voices rising in chants of Muad’Dib, in hymns to the Holy Mother and to Saint Alia herself. Merchants cried out their wares, children played in the dust.

Then a sudden shift in the crowd drew their attention. Fremen soldiers had returned — warriors hardened by the Jihad, their stillsuits dusty from distant battlefields. They marched down the main road, their faces stern, their bodies lean with the hunger of long campaigns.

The crowd surged toward them, pressing close, cheering. “Muad’Dib’s warriors! The blessed knives of Shai-Hulud!”

Leto craned his neck, his eyes wide as he watched the soldiers pass. Their weapons bore bloodstains not yet cleaned. Their banners were ragged, dusted with alien sands. And their eyes — all of them — were fever-bright, burning with zeal.

“They’ve been gone years,” Alia murmured, her tone unreadable. “Killing in Brother’s name. Bleeding for his vision. Listen to how they’re received — as saints, as conquerors. Tell me, Leto… does this look like justice, or like madness?”

Leto didn’t answer at first. The crowd pressed tighter, showering the soldiers with garlands, with handfuls of spice and grain. Some wept openly, clutching the hems of their cloaks as though touching holiness itself.

One soldier lifted a child into his arms, crying out, “For Muad’Dib! For the desert’s god!” The crowd roared, fists raised, voices breaking.

Leto felt his chest tighten. He had seen the worship from balconies, had tasted visions of it in the spice. But here, in the press of sweating bodies and wild devotion, it struck him different. Raw. Terrifying.

“They look at them as if they are more than men,” he whispered.

Alia glanced at him, her expression sharp, her smile thin. “And what do you think they see when they look at you, nephew?”

Before Leto could answer, one of the soldiers passed close, his eyes sweeping the crowd. For a moment, Leto thought the man had seen through their disguises. The soldier’s gaze lingered, reverent, almost fearful — then moved on.

Alia gripped Leto’s wrist and pulled him back into the alleys, away from the frenzy. Her voice dropped low. “Never forget, Leto. To them, we are not people. We are vessels. Gods, saints, monsters. Whatever shape their hunger needs. If you don’t master that truth, it will devour you whole.”

The tavern stank of sweat, dust, and fermented spice. Lanterns swayed on hooks, their light casting the room in a wavering amber glow. The voices of soldiers filled the air, their songs rough, their laughter bitter and too loud.

Alia slid onto a low bench, pulling her hood close. Leto sat beside her, trying not to stare at the grime-streaked warriors who had returned from the Jihad. A barmaid set down mugs of spice beer, frothing and pungent.

Alia lifted hers without hesitation, taking a long swallow. The fire of it hit her throat, and she smirked at Leto’s wide eyes. “Don’t look so shocked,” she said under her breath. “You think Father and Mother never drank when they were young?”

Leto leaned closer, whispering. “If they find out—”

“They won’t,” Alia cut in, her gaze sweeping the tavern. “Now listen. This is where truth lives. Not in Father’s throne room. Not in Mother’s whispers. Here, in the mouths of men drunk on their own bloodshed.”

Nearby, soldiers crowded around a scarred table, mugs slamming, voices rising. They spoke of distant campaigns — of burning cities, of alien blood spilled in Muad’Dib’s name. Their words were half boast, half confession, their eyes wild with the memory of fire.

Leto’s stomach turned. These were the men who had marched through the city that morning, received as heroes. Yet here, their laughter reeked of cruelty. One mimed cutting the throat of a crying child, another roared with mirth at the memory of an enemy begging for water.

“Holy warriors,” Alia murmured with contempt. “Saints of the Jihad. Do you see it now, Leto? This is what Father’s storm breeds. Devotion that rots into savagery.”

Before Leto could respond, one of the soldiers noticed them — a big man with a broken nose and eyes bloodshot from spice beer. He staggered closer, leering at Alia under her hood.

“Well now,” he slurred, his breath heavy with drink. “What’s this? A pretty desert mouse drinking among men? Lost your way, little thing?” He reached for her hood, trying to tug it back.

Alia’s hand shot out, catching his wrist with iron strength. Her hood slipped as she turned, revealing her face — pale, sharp, unmistakable.

The soldier blinked, stunned. The tavern went silent.

Alia rose slowly, her eyes burning with blue fire. Her voice cut through the hush, low and terrible:
“You would lay hands on me? On the blood of Muad’Dib? On the Saint you praise in your drunken songs?”

The man stammered, paling as he fell back, his bravado collapsing into terror. Around him, the other soldiers scrambled to their knees, bowing low, their mugs spilling. The room filled with frantic murmurs — Saint Alia… forgive us… we did not know…

Leto sat frozen, watching as Alia stood above them all, her gaze fierce, almost triumphant.

And in that moment, he realized the worship outside the temple was no different here. Whether in prayer or in fear, the people bent. Always, they bent.

Alia leaned closer to the cowering soldier, her smile thin and merciless. “Pray harder, fool. You may yet live long enough to learn your place.”

The tavern erupted in cries of repentance, but Leto’s heart hammered with unease. He saw not only the fear of the soldiers — but the thrill in his aunt’s eyes.

The doors of the private hall swung open with a heavy groan. Alia strode in, her hood already tossed back, her expression sharp with defiance. Leto trailed behind her, his small frame stiff with nervousness, his eyes darting between his aunt and the man waiting for them.

Paul stood in the center of the chamber, hands clasped behind his back, the faint smell of spice incense lingering around him. He did not need to raise his voice. His silence carried more weight than any shout.

“I’ve already heard,” he said evenly, his eyes fixed on Alia. “A tavern. Soldiers. A display that will ripple through the city by morning. Do you ever stop to consider what storms you unleash with a gesture?”

Alia smirked, tilting her head. “Storms, storms, storms. You speak of them as though they frighten me.” She stepped closer, pulling a half-empty bottle of spice beer from beneath her cloak. “Calm yourself, brother. They drank, they groveled, and they’ll tell the tale as a miracle. Perhaps I’ve even helped your precious myth.”

She tossed the bottle at him with a sharp flick of her wrist.

Paul caught it easily, not flinching as the glass smacked into his palm. He turned it in his hand once, then, to Leto’s shock, raised it to his lips. The burn of fermented spice slid down his throat.

He lowered it, exhaled through his nose, and set the bottle aside with a heavy clink. For a moment, the weariness in his shoulders was visible — the weight of prophecy, of empire, of family forever pulling in different directions.

“Alia,” he sighed, his voice low. “You mistake theater for strength. You throw fire into tinder and call it control. But each spark feeds the blaze that will consume us all.”

Alia’s smile faltered for just a heartbeat before she masked it again with sarcasm. “And you would rather what? That I sit quietly like Irulan, scribbling my penance in scrolls? No. I will not waste my blood in silence.”

Leto, standing between them, felt the air tighten with something dangerous. His father’s calm, his aunt’s defiance — two storms clashing, both too powerful to yield.

Paul’s gaze softened for an instant as he looked at his son, then returned to Alia, cold again. “One day, you will learn that power wielded in mockery is power wasted. Until then, remember — I allow you your freedom. Do not test the limits of it.”

The chamber went quiet, only the faint hum of the walls filling the silence. Alia smirked again, but her eyes betrayed the sting of his words.

Paul turned away, his cloak sweeping behind him, his voice drifting back like sand carried on the wind:
“I am tired, sister. Tired of watching you court the fire as if you cannot be burned.”

And Leto, wide-eyed, thought: But she enjoys the flame too much to stop.

Chapter Text

The city of Arrakeen breathed with rumor.

In the bazaars, merchants whispered as they passed spice scales and bolts of cloth. In the taverns, soldiers returned from the Jihad lowered their voices as the mugs clattered. In the alleys, children played at being Muad’Dib and his consort, their games twisting into half-prayers, half-fears.

The stories had changed.

It was no longer just that Muad’Dib saw the future. No longer only that Chani carried the blood of the desert or that Alia bore the knife of Shai-Hulud. Now, people claimed more.

“They are everywhere,” a spice-seller muttered to a caravan guard. “I saw Paul in the market yesterday, though he was on Kaitain at the same time. He walked past me and knew my secret debts. His eyes cut through me.”

“And Alia—” a barmaid added, shivering. “They say she appears in taverns, watching. That she hears every curse, every doubt. A man swore he felt her hand on his throat for speaking against her.”

“Chani, too,” an old woman whispered to her granddaughter. “She is the holy mother. She is in the kitchens, in the gardens, in the water itself. She knows when you lie. She knows what you dream.”

The tales spread like dry sand whipped into a storm. Each retelling grew sharper, stranger, until the common people no longer spoke of Paul or Chani or Alia as flesh, but as presences that lingered in every corner of life.

For some, it was a comfort — that their Emperor, their Saint, their Holy Mother watched them. For others, it was a terror, an inescapable gaze they could never flee.

And inside the Keep, Paul heard the reports from his spies. His jaw tightened, his silence deep.

“This is what I feared,” he murmured to Jessica and Chani, the chamber lit only by the pale glow of oil lamps. “The myth has grown beyond us. Not only gods now, but ghosts. Omniscient. Omnipresent. Everywhere at once. The people no longer see rulers. They see shadows.”

Chani’s hand brushed her belly, her face unreadable. “Then let them,” she said softly. “If it protects our son, let them believe we are everywhere. A little fear may guard him better than your soldiers.”

Alia, leaning against the wall with her usual smirk, added, “Why fight it? The desert has always fed on fear. Let the people choke themselves on it. It makes them easier to guide.”

Paul turned his eyes to her, his expression flat, his voice heavy with a warning that cut through even her confidence.
“Guide? Or control? Be careful, sister. This is not a tide to ride. It is a tide that drowns.”

Outside, in the streets, a beggar prayed aloud, trembling in his rags:
“Forgive me, Muad’Dib. Forgive me, Saint Alia. Forgive me, Mother Chani. You see me. You hear me. Always.”

The courtyards beyond the palace walls were alive with shouts and laughter. Children darted between the mudbrick homes, chasing each other through the dust, their games threaded with scraps of song about Muad’Dib and the Holy Family.

Among them, one more child slipped in unnoticed. His hood was patched, his tunic plain, his sandals worn down by design. His face was half-shadowed, his movements careful. No one looked twice at him.

Leto Atreides, heir of the Empire, son of Muad’Dib, was just another boy.

At first he lingered on the edges, watching. The other children leapt and laughed, brandishing sticks as if they were crysknives, pretending to duel as their parents must have seen the Fremen warriors do in the Jihad.

“Who are you?” one girl asked suddenly, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed with sun. She looked him up and down. “You don’t look like you’re from here. Caravan child?”

Leto hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. My family… travels.” It wasn’t a lie, not entirely.

The girl grinned. “Then come! Be Muad’Dib in the game. You’re the new one, so you must.”

He froze for a heartbeat, the irony striking him. Yet he stepped forward, picking up the stick they thrust into his hand.

And he played.

They dueled and ran, fell into the dust, laughed until their throats ached. They called him Muad’Dib and another girl Saint Alia, and one boy shouted blessings as Chani. They reenacted victories they’d only half-heard from their parents, their voices high with joy, not awe.

In those hours, Leto’s laughter blended with theirs. He was no longer heir, no longer watched by guards and suffocated by prophecy. He was a boy with scraped knees and dusty palms, running until his lungs burned.

When the game ended, they collapsed in a circle, panting. The same girl leaned against him, her voice casual. “They say Muad’Dib can see everything. Even us, now. Do you think he knows we’re playing him?”

The other children giggled nervously. One boy spat and said, “Of course he knows. He knows when we steal bread. My uncle says he even hears when you curse.”

Leto smiled faintly, hiding the sting in his chest. “Maybe,” he said softly. “But maybe he’s too busy to watch children. Maybe he lets them be.”

The girl laughed. “Then we are free!” she cried, and the others shouted in agreement.

Later, when the sun dipped low and the children scattered to their homes, Leto lingered a moment longer, staring at the empty circle where they’d sat. For the first time, he felt the weight of what it meant to be other — the one they pretended to be, the one they worshiped, the one he could never tell them he truly was.

He pulled his hood lower and slipped away, the taste of laughter and lies still tangled on his tongue.

The markets of Arrakeen were chaos — the shouts of vendors, the sizzle of spicebread on open griddles, the stink of sweating animals brought in from the caravans.

Leto trailed with his new friends, his hood drawn low, dust streaking his face. Today they weren’t playing games of Muad’Dib or Alia. Today, they whispered of mischief.

“Just bread,” the boldest boy said, his grin sharp. “The guards don’t watch children. We’ll run before they know.”

Leto’s heart thudded. He had never stolen before. Yet he wanted to belong — not as the son of an emperor, not as a myth, but as a boy among boys.

So when the others darted forward, nimble fingers swiping at loaves, he followed. His hand brushed the warm crust of spicebread, tucked it under his cloak, and his legs carried him running with the others into the alleys.

But not fast enough.

“Thieves!” a guard’s voice thundered.

Rough hands seized Leto by the hood, jerking him back hard. He stumbled, the bread falling to the dust. His companions scattered like desert mice, gone before the soldiers gave chase.

The guard yanked back his hood, sneering at the pale, wide-eyed boy beneath. “Little rat,” he spat. “Thieving gutter brat.”

“I—” Leto began, but the man’s hand struck him across the cheek, the crack loud in the alley.

“Quiet.” Another soldier grabbed his arms, binding them roughly. “Steal from the market, and you’ll taste the cells. Maybe worse.”

Leto tried to speak, tried to protest, but shock stole his tongue. For the first time, he was powerless — not an heir, not Muad’Dib’s son, but a boy no one recognized.

The guards dragged him through the streets. Passersby glanced, muttered, then looked away. To them, he was nothing — just another dirty child caught stealing.

The jail was a squat, sand-stained building near the edge of the market. Inside, the air reeked of sweat and urine. Iron bars groaned as they shoved him into a cell.

He sat on the cold floor, his lip bleeding, his palms scraped raw.

For hours, no one came. Rats skittered in the corners. Drunks muttered from other cells.

And Leto felt the first raw taste of what life was, stripped of protection, stripped of worship. He felt hunger gnaw his belly, thirst dry his throat, shame burn his face.

When the footsteps finally came — precise, heavy, unmistakably military — the boy pressed his forehead to the bars. He knew before the door swung wide that his father’s presence filled the room.

Paul stood framed in the torchlight, blue-on-blue eyes cold as the desert night. Chani was at his side, her face sharp, her jaw set. The guards had gone pale, bowing so low their foreheads nearly touched the stone.

Paul said nothing at first. He only looked at his son in the shadows of the cell. And Leto, trembling, whispered:

“Father… they didn’t know me. They thought I was no one.”

Paul’s silence was heavier than anger.

Paul stepped into the cell without a word, the guards shrinking back as if even the air around him cut like a blade.

He crouched before his son, his cloak sweeping the filthy floor. His hand tilted Leto’s chin up, the boy’s lip split and bruised. The touch was gentle, but Paul’s face was carved in stone.

“They struck you,” he said softly, but the softness carried a weight that made the guards tremble.

Leto swallowed, his throat tight. “They didn’t know… I wanted to be like them. Like the other children.”

Paul’s gaze darkened, the stillness around him like the stillness before a sandstorm. He stood slowly, turned toward the guards, and his voice became terrible.

“You laid hands on the son of Muad’Dib. You caged him like vermin. Do you know what crime that is?”

The guards fell to their knees, babbling apologies, their eyes wide with horror. One pressed his forehead to the stone, sobbing. “Forgive us, my Lord—we thought him a beggar child—”

Paul’s hand rose and stilled the room.

“No forgiveness,” he said, cold as Arrakis night. He gestured to his Fremen escort, who had silently appeared behind him. “Take them to the square. Let the people see what becomes of those who raise their hands against my blood.”

The soldiers were dragged away screaming, their voices echoing down the corridor.

Chani’s eyes followed them, unreadable, before she turned to her son. She knelt, pulling him into her arms, her voice a whisper. “My hawk… never forget, you are not like them. You cannot play their games. You are not free to be ordinary.”

Paul watched, his face hard, though inside him was a crack of grief. He had seen futures where his son never laughed like other boys again. He had seen the price of every path.

“Come,” he said at last, extending a hand. “Leave this place. And remember what it felt like. To be unseen. To be struck. To be no one.”

Leto took his father’s hand, his eyes wide, his body small but trembling with understanding. He knew Paul would never let him forget this moment. The bruises would heal, but the lesson was carved deeper than any scar.

As they left the jail, the night air hit cool against Leto’s face. From the square ahead, the first screams of the punished guards rang out, carried on the desert wind.

Leto looked up at his father, his voice a whisper:

“They thought I was no one. But I… I wanted to know what that was.”

Paul’s jaw clenched. “Now you do.”

The city square was alive with torches when they arrived. Word had already spread that Muad’Dib himself had come to oversee justice. A crowd pressed close, whispering prayers and chanting under their breath, eyes wide with fear and reverence.

The two guards knelt at the center of the square, their faces pale, their bodies shaking. Their lances had been broken, their cloaks torn away. They were nothing now, not soldiers of the Emperor — but men awaiting doom.

Paul stood before them, his cloak flaring in the wind. Chani kept Leto close, her hand steady on her son’s shoulder, but she did not shield his eyes. He had to see.

“You dared strike blood of Atreides,” Paul’s voice rang across the square, magnified by stillness. “You caged him like an animal. You forgot who rules this desert. You forgot who I am.”

The crowd murmured, some weeping, others falling to their knees.

The guards sobbed openly now, begging. “We did not know, Lord! Forgive us, spare us—”

Paul lifted a hand. The Fremen stepped forward, dragging the guards upright. Each man was bound to the square’s iron posts. Sand knives glinted in torchlight.

Leto’s breath caught as he realized what was about to happen. He looked up at his father, his small voice trembling. “Father… must they die?”

Paul looked down at his son, and in his eyes was the quiet of a storm that could not be stopped. His voice was cold, terrible: “Mercy teaches them nothing. But fear will make them remember.”

The knives struck fast, across throats, blood spilling onto the dust. The crowd roared and wailed, voices crashing like a storm tide. Some shouted blessings, others fainted in terror.

Leto flinched, his small hands balling into fists, his heart hammering. The guards’ bodies slumped, their blood soaking into the sand, and the chants began at once:

“Muad’Dib sees! Muad’Dib punishes! His hand is everywhere!”

Paul turned away, cloak sweeping, his face unreadable. Chani guided Leto after him, her voice low, fierce in his ear: “Remember this, hawk. Your blood makes men tremble. Never let them forget it.”

Leto looked back only once, at the stains spreading across the sand, and he understood why the children whispered in their games that Muad’Dib and his family were everywhere.

Chapter Text

The palace courtyard had been cleared, its sand swept smooth and shaded cloths strung high to soften the glare of Arrakeen’s sun. Paul and Chani stood at the edge, watching as a group of children from the city were led in by guards.

They came barefoot and wide-eyed, their clothes patched but neat, each clutching at the hands of the others as though strength lay in touch. They had been chosen carefully from loyal Fremen families, the ones least likely to cause unrest.

Still, their eyes were wary.

Paul’s presence hung heavy in the air. He had shed the disguise of a beggar long ago — here he stood unmistakable, Muad’Dib himself, blue-on-blue eyes like twin flames. The children bowed low, trembling.

“Play,” Paul said simply, his voice carrying command even when softened. “You are here to play with my son.”

They glanced at one another nervously. Play? With the blood of Muad’Dib? With the boy they whispered of in alleyways and games, the child born of gods and storms?

Leto stepped forward, smiling faintly, trying to ease them. “Don’t be afraid. I’m just Leto.”

But the smallest girl whispered, “You’re not just Leto. You see everything, don’t you? Like your father. Like your aunt.”

Another boy nodded quickly, his voice hushed. “If I lie, you’ll know. If I steal bread, you’ll hear me. You’re like them. You’re everywhere.”

The children shrank back, their playfulness swallowed by fear. One even crossed himself in the desert way, whispering a prayer against divine wrath.

Leto’s smile faltered. “I don’t…” He glanced at his parents. Paul’s face was unreadable. Chani’s jaw tightened, her eyes sharp.

Chani knelt, her voice cutting through their fear like a knife. “He is my son. He bleeds as you bleed. He runs as you run. If you treat him like a god, you will never know him. And he will never know you.”

The children hesitated, shifting uncomfortably. Then Leto bent down, scooping up a handful of sand. “Here,” he said, tossing it at the nearest boy. “If I were a god, would I play tricks like that?”

The boy blinked, startled, then laughed despite himself. Slowly, the tension cracked. Another girl shoved Leto lightly on the shoulder. Soon, the circle loosened — and the first game began.

They ran, shouted, played. For a while, laughter echoed against the palace walls. Yet even as they played, their eyes flickered to Paul, who stood at the edge, silent and watchful, and to Chani, who sat like a hawk guarding her fledgling.

And when the games ended, the children left whispering to one another:
“He laughed, he ran, he is like us… but I think he knew when I almost lied.”
“I swear his eyes glowed when he smiled.”
“He’s like Muad’Dib. Smaller. Quieter. But the same storm waits in him.”

Leto listened, their words clinging to him long after they had gone. He had wanted friends, but he was still a shadow to them — still half-god, half-boy.

Leto found Alia where she often lingered — perched on the balcony overlooking the courtyard, her legs drawn up, her arms wrapped loosely around her knees.

He sat beside her in silence, the stone cool beneath them. For a long while, he said nothing. Then, in a voice soft and weighted, he spoke.

“They’ll never see me as I am.”

Alia glanced sideways, her blue-on-blue eyes sharp even in the dim. “Who?”

“The children. The people. Anyone.” His hands twisted in his lap. “To them, I’m not a boy. I’m not even a person. I’m Muad’Dib’s son. They think I already know their secrets. That I already see their sins. They whisper as if I carry Father’s sight, Aunt’s knife, Mother’s strength. I’ll never be just… Leto.”

Alia tilted her head, considering him with a faint, amused smile. “And you want to be?”

He looked at her, earnest, almost desperate. “Yes. I want to laugh without someone whispering it was a prophecy. I want to play without prayers in my shadow. I want to be ordinary, just for a while.”

For a moment, Alia’s smile softened, almost pitying. Then it sharpened again, cruel and glittering.

“Why?” she asked simply. “Why would you trade divinity for dust? Why settle for being ordinary when you can be a god?”

Her words struck him like a slap. He recoiled slightly, frowning. “A god? I don’t want that.”

“But it doesn’t matter what you want,” Alia said, her voice low and insistent, almost coaxing. “The desert has chosen. The people already worship you. Their fear, their awe, their devotion — it binds you, whether you accept it or not. You can waste your years longing for normalcy, or you can embrace what you are and wield it. Like Father does. Like I do.”

Her eyes gleamed, fever-bright. “Godhood is not a curse, Leto. It is freedom. It is power. Why drown in the smallness of a child’s wish when the universe is already yours?”

Leto looked away, staring at the sinking sun. His heart twisted with conflict — part of him recoiling from her words, part of him curious, part of him afraid.

At last, he whispered, “If being a god means never being myself… then maybe I don’t want it.”

Alia’s smile curved again, sharp and knowing. “One day, nephew, you’ll see. It doesn’t matter what you want. It matters what you become.”

The wind hissed against the palace walls like a living thing. Inside his small chamber, Leto sat on the edge of his bed, hands trembling, a small vial of spice in his palm.

Alia’s words echoed in his skull as if she were sitting right beside him:
Why settle for being ordinary when you can be a god?
The desert has chosen you…
Godhood is freedom. Power.

But alongside her voice was his own — a child’s voice, quieter, fading:
I wanted to play. I wanted to be just Leto. I wanted to laugh without it being a prophecy.

He stared at the vial, his heart hammering. He had been microdosed carefully for years, his father’s steady hands controlling every grain. Paul had warned him again and again about the danger of the spice storm, of opening the doors of prescience too soon.

And yet, the pull was there. Not just the whisper of Alia’s words, but something deeper — the desert’s breath itself, curling around his mind, promising answers, promising truth.

If I take more, he thought, I’ll see it. All of it. Why they worship us. Why Father fears the storm. Why Aunt smiles like that. Maybe then I’ll know who I am.

His fingers fumbled with the stopper. The scent of spice burst into the air, rich and intoxicating.

Tears burned his eyes, blurring the room. He thought of the children in the courtyard, of their laughter, of how they had whispered about him even as they played. He thought of his father’s cold eyes in the jail. He thought of Alia’s smile, sharp and bright like a knife.

He lifted the vial to his lips.

The spice burned down his throat like fire and sunlight.

At once the room seemed to tilt, the walls rippling like heat haze. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. The shadows stretched, filled with movement.

He gasped, clutching at the bedpost as visions slammed into him — dunes stretching into infinity, voices chanting in a thousand tongues, his father’s face old and veiled, Alia’s eyes burning like twin stars, his own body dissolving into the desert like water into sand.

The future poured into him, heavy and endless. He saw the Jihad’s rivers of blood. He saw his mother kneeling, weeping, holding a child he could not name. He saw a throne crumbling into dust. He saw himself — not a boy, not a god, but something other, something vast, something terrifying.

And through it all, Alia’s voice whispered from inside his skull, not with malice but with a strange grief:
You and I were never children, Leto. We were born into storms.

Leto cried out, falling to his knees, the vial slipping from his fingers and shattering on the floor. His breath came ragged, his eyes wide and unseeing, the spice storm tearing through him.

He had wanted to be normal. Instead, he had opened the door to everything.

Chapter Text

The sound of shattering glass carried down the corridor. Chani was the first to hear it, her instincts sharp as a hawk’s. She ran, her bare feet silent against the stone, Paul only a step behind her.

They burst into Leto’s chamber.

The air reeked of spice — thick, cloying, suffocating. Shards of a broken vial glittered on the floor. And there, on his knees, was Leto: his body convulsing, his eyes wide and glowing, pupils lost to an ocean of blue. His breath tore ragged from his chest, his fingers clawing at the floor as if he were clinging to the present.

“Leto!” Chani dropped to his side, pulling him into her arms. Her hands shook as she held him, her lips brushing his hair, her voice frantic. “My hawk, my little hawk—what have you done?”

Paul knelt opposite her, his own face carved with rare, visible fear. He gripped his son’s shoulders, his voice steady but urgent. “Stay with me. Hear my voice. Anchor yourself. You went too far, Leto. The storm will swallow you if you let it.”

But Leto’s gaze was not on them. His eyes stared past, through, into visions neither parent could see. His lips moved, trembling, forming words.

“The desert stretches… forever. Blood, fire, temples of bone. Father… you grow old. Mother… you weep. Aunt… she burns. And me…” He shuddered violently, clinging to his father’s tunic. “I walk… I walk the sand as if it’s part of me. I am no longer myself. I am—”

His voice broke into a scream. The storm slammed against him, filling him with futures too vast, too merciless.

Paul’s arms closed around him, fierce, grounding. “You are my son! You are Leto Atreides! Hold to that name. Hold to me. To her.” His eyes flicked to Chani. “Call him back, Chani!”

Chani pressed her forehead to her son’s, her tears wetting his skin. “Leto! Hear me. I carried you in the desert. I held you against my heart. You are mine. You are flesh, not storm. Come back to me.”

For a long, terrible moment, the boy thrashed in their arms. Then his breathing began to slow. His body sagged against them, exhausted, trembling.

When at last he opened his eyes, they were still deep blue-on-blue, but clear now, focused. He looked at his parents, his voice steady but strange — older, too calm.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m fine. I understand now.”

Paul searched his son’s face, his jaw tightening at what he saw. There was no madness. No brokenness. Only… awareness.

Leto sat upright slowly, pulling from their grasp. His hands were still shaking, but his voice was sure. “I see it. The Jihad. The people. The myths. I see why they bow. I see why they fear.” He looked at Paul with eyes that seemed too old for his young face. “And I see why you’re afraid for me.”

Chani touched his cheek, her voice breaking. “You’re still a boy, Leto. You shouldn’t have taken it. Not yet.”

But Leto shook his head. “I had to. Because I will never be normal. Not me. Not Alia. Not any of us. The storm was always waiting. Now I know it.”

Paul leaned back, his hands curling into fists, his sigh heavy with something between despair and resignation. He had seen this moment before, long ago, but living it cut deeper.

The boy who wanted to be normal had stepped into the storm. And though he had returned, he would never be the same.

The training grounds within the Keep echoed with the crack of crysknife against blade. Sand had been spread across the floor so each step sank, forcing balance and precision. Paul moved with the precision of a predator — every strike economical, every motion carved from discipline and foresight.

Leto moved opposite him, his young frame lean and lithe, his eyes sharpened now by what he had seen. No longer the wide-eyed boy chasing games in the courtyard — but not yet the merciless shadow of his father either.

Their knives clashed, sparks flaring. Paul’s voice cut through the rhythm.

“Predict. Do not react.”

Leto’s eyes narrowed, his body shifting, his knife rising at just the right angle to parry. Paul pressed harder, faster, his movements a blur. Leto stumbled, then recovered, rolling into the sand and springing back to his feet.

“Good,” Paul said, his breath even. “But still too slow. The desert does not forgive hesitation.”

Chani watched from the edge, her arms folded, her gaze fierce and protective. She saw the boy sweat, falter, rise again. She saw how Paul pushed him — hard, unrelenting.

Yet she also saw something Paul could not.

Even as he fought, Leto’s eyes did not grow cold. He parried with precision, but when his blade slipped near his father’s throat, he pulled it back a fraction, unwilling to strike the killing blow even in practice.

Later, in the quiet of the garden, Paul sat across from his son. Leto’s face was flushed with exertion, his hands raw from the grip of the crysknife.

“You hesitate,” Paul said, his tone flat. “Mercy is hesitation. And hesitation kills.”

Leto looked at him, meeting his gaze without flinching. “Mercy is not weakness. Mercy is choice. If I can kill but choose not to, isn’t that stronger than killing every time?”

Paul’s eyes narrowed. In his prescience, he had seen futures drenched in blood, where mercy shattered empires. Yet in his son’s words, there was something he had not anticipated: the quiet strength of kindness that had not been crushed by the storm.

“You are not me,” Paul said at last, his voice quieter, almost reluctant.

“No,” Leto replied softly. “I am your son. And hers. I’ll carry both.”

Paul leaned back, studying him. For all his foresight, for all the weight of prophecy, he realized then that Leto’s path was not entirely written. The storm had not burned away his empathy — it had honed it.

And for the first time in years, Muad’Dib allowed himself the smallest breath of hope.

Chapter Text

Years had passed. The boy who once tripped on his father’s crysknife now carried himself with a quiet, watchful grace. His frame had lengthened, his voice deepened, but his eyes — the deep blue of spice — carried both kindness and the weight of storms.

One evening, under the cover of dusk, Leto cloaked himself in rough cloth and slipped through the palace gates by the old servants’ passages. He moved through Arrakeen’s winding streets like a shadow, the smell of spice smoke and sweat heavy in the air.

He ended in a bar — one of the low-ceilinged drinking dens where returning Fremen soldiers boasted of blood spilled in the Jihad. The place reeked of spice beer, unwashed bodies, and the sand carried in from boots.

Leto slid onto a bench in the corner, unnoticed at first. He kept his hood low, hands folded, listening.

Around him, men shouted of battles on distant worlds, their laughter sharp, edged with blood. One slammed his mug on the table, spice froth spilling over.

“We tore their temples down!” the soldier bellowed. “By Muad’Dib’s name, we drowned their priests in their own altars!”

Cheers erupted, mugs clashing together. Others sang half-slurred chants of victory, voices rising like a storm.

Leto watched, his chest tight. These men spoke his father’s name with reverence — and with bloodlust. To them, Muad’Dib was not a man, but the reason for every killing spree, every burning city.

He wanted to feel pride. Instead, he felt a slow ache in his stomach.

“Boy.” A soldier lurched toward him, eyes glassy, mug sloshing. “You’re new here. Drink with us.”

The man shoved a mug across the table, spice beer foaming at the rim. The stench was heavy, but Leto lifted it carefully, remembering Alia’s careless swagger years before. He sipped, and the spice burned, bitter and thick.

The soldier squinted at him, leaning closer. “Strange eyes you’ve got,” he muttered. “Like Muad’Dib himself.”

A dangerous silence rippled through the table. Others turned, looking at him now, their gazes sharp.

Leto set the mug down slowly, his voice calm. “Everyone on Arrakis has the desert in their eyes. I am no different.”

The men laughed uneasily, some turning away, others muttering. The soldier slapped him on the back hard enough to jolt him.

“Fair enough! Drink then, desert brother! To Muad’Dib!”

The toast went up again, mugs raised high.

Leto forced himself to join in, lifting the mug, his hand steady even as his heart thundered. He drank, the spice fire coating his throat, and wondered how much longer he could walk the city unseen before someone saw through the disguise — and realized the god’s son was drinking among them.

Leto had made a habit of slipping into the city at night. The palace was a gilded cage; the city was alive, raw, honest. Wrapped in a beggar’s cloak, he walked the streets until he knew every crooked alley, every market stall that still whispered with life after sundown.

One night, laughter and shouts pulled him toward a crowded square lit with fire pits. Fremen and off-world soldiers ringed around two men locked in an arm-wrestling match. Sand knives and spice beer mugs littered the tables. The crowd roared with every strain of muscle, every near-defeat.

But then Leto’s eyes caught on one of the “men.”

Her hood was drawn low, her shoulders hunched, her posture roughened — yet he recognized the subtle grace immediately. The tilt of the chin. The faintest smirk tugging at her lips as she toyed with her opponent.

Alia.

She slammed the soldier’s hand to the table with a sudden snap, sending mugs clattering. The crowd erupted, coins thrown into the dust, laughter booming. Alia leaned back, arms crossed, her disguise slipping just enough for the torchlight to catch her sharp, blue-on-blue eyes.

Leto froze, both amused and unsettled. Of course she would be here, prowling in shadows like he did. Of course she would choose to make sport of men who didn’t know they were wrestling the knife-saint of Arrakis.

He slipped closer, weaving through the crowd, his hood pulled low.

Alia’s gaze flicked up mid-laughter, and she saw him. For the briefest instant, her smirk faltered. Then she hid it beneath another grin, pushing another soldier’s arm to the table as if nothing had shifted.

The men roared, demanding more, shouting bets.

But Alia’s thoughts whispered in Leto’s head, her voice threading into him the way it always did:

You should be in bed, little hawk. Does Father know you wander like a shadow?

Leto bristled, answering in thought as his training had taught him. Does Father know you make sport of fools in a bar?

Her smirk widened, and she straightened slowly, collecting her winnings from the table.

Without a word, she pushed through the crowd, brushing past him just close enough to murmur low in his ear:

“Seems we both crave the world beyond Father’s watch. Tell me, nephew — are you ready to see it burn with your own eyes?”

She vanished into the alley before he could answer, leaving Leto standing in the torchlight, the roar of the crowd behind him and the weight of her question heavy in his chest.

The great hall of the palace was crowded when Leto slipped into the shadows at the side, the place he often lingered. The banners of Atreides gold and the desert hawk hung heavy overhead. Nobles, merchants, and Fremen leaders filled the chamber, their whispers buzzing like flies.

Paul sat upon the Lion Throne, cold and severe, the weight of prescience etched into the lines of his face. Chani stood close to his right, silent as stone, while Alia leaned on the rail behind, arms crossed, her eyes glittering with amusement.

A delegation from the Guild bowed low before Muad’Dib. Their leader, a thin man with sunken eyes, raised his voice.

“My Lord, a coalition of off-world houses has placed a blockade on shipments to Arrakis. They claim taxation on spice has grown unbearable. No ships dock, no grain arrives, no metals flow. Unless terms are renegotiated, the embargo will strangle even your empire.”

The hall erupted in anxious murmurs. Some nobles hissed angrily at the Guildsman, others muttered their fears.

Paul raised his hand, and silence crashed down. His voice carried like a blade drawn in still air.

“They believe the desert starves. They believe I bow to pressure. They forget—Arrakis feeds the universe.” His gaze cut across the chamber, pinning the Guild envoy like a hawk with prey. “Not one ship moves without my blessing. Not one spice grain leaves this world without my hand.”

The envoy bowed lower, sweat beading his brow. “Lord, if the flow stops entirely, civil war may—”

“Civil war already burns,” Paul cut in, his tone iron. “I choose where it spreads. They blockade me? Then let them taste life without spice. Let the Navigators choke on their own silence. Let the noble houses eat dust.”

A chill rippled across the room. Even the boldest nobles shifted uneasily.

From his shadowed corner, Leto studied his father’s face. Cold. Absolute. Not the father who had guided him in training, not the man who had once let him laugh in the gardens. This was Muad’Dib — god-emperor, unbending, merciless.

Yet beneath the chill in his father’s voice, Leto thought he saw something else. Weariness. Isolation.

The thought struck him hard: He is alone, even when surrounded by worshippers.

The hall was still thick with tension. The Guild envoy trembled, the nobles whispered in tight clusters, and Paul sat unmoved, like a storm contained in flesh.

Leto stood in the shadows, heart pounding. He could feel the weight of prescience still lingering around his father like a cloak, but he also felt the eyes of the chamber flicker toward him — the son of Muad’Dib, the child-god whose future was whispered but never spoken aloud.

Before he could second-guess himself, Leto stepped forward. His voice, though not as deep or commanding as Paul’s, rang out clear.

“If the spice flow stops, Father, the Empire will not just fear — it will break. Fear is a weapon, but hunger and desperation turn allies into enemies. Even those loyal to Muad’Dib will begin to doubt if their children starve.”

A stunned silence rippled through the chamber.

Paul’s eyes turned sharply toward him, the glow of them like desert fire. For an instant, the hall seemed to still, the very air tightening. No one spoke against Muad’Dib in open court — not nobles, not generals, and certainly not his own blood.

Yet Paul did not rise. He studied his son in silence, his face unreadable.

Leto’s breath caught, but he pressed on, his voice firmer now. “There are ways to remind them of their dependence without letting the whole Imperium collapse. Open the spice hand just enough, Father. Not generosity — control. Let the Guild taste drought, not famine. That way, their fear will not become rebellion.”

The nobles gasped at the boldness of the boy. Some murmured blessings, others shook their heads in dread. Alia, watching from her place above, smiled faintly, as if delighted to see the audacity.

Chani’s eyes flicked between her son and Paul, her body tense, protective. Jessica, near the rear of the hall, exhaled softly — a sound only those closest could hear.

Paul finally spoke, his tone low, measured, but laced with a dangerous edge. “You presume much, Leto.”

Leto bowed his head slightly, but his voice did not falter. “I only see what you already know, Father. I only say what you do not.”

A silence deeper than the desert itself followed. Then Paul rose slowly from the throne, his cloak trailing like shadow. He descended the steps and stood before his son, the hall watching breathless.

For a moment, his hand lifted — and some thought he would strike the boy down for insolence.

Instead, Paul rested his hand on Leto’s shoulder.

“Your tongue is too bold for your years,” Paul said, his voice carrying for all to hear. Then, quieter, so only his son caught the shift of tone: “But your eyes see further than most.”

The hall erupted in murmurs again, some praising the heir’s wisdom, others fearing the crack it revealed in Muad’Dib’s cold authority.

Leto bowed, relief and pride mingling in his chest. But when he glanced up, he caught the faintest ghost of a smile on his father’s lips — a flash of hidden pride before the mask of godhood returned

The family sat around the long, low table in the private dining chamber. No nobles, no Guild envoys, no whispering courtiers — only the Atreides and the quiet rustle of servants moving in the background. Platters of spiced grains and roasted desert hare filled the air with rich scents, though no one was eating with ease.

Leto sat straight, his eyes lowered, the weight of the day still pressing on him. Chani poured him water from a crystal jug, her hand brushing his shoulder, a silent comfort. Jessica’s gaze lingered on him too, proud but cautious. Alia lounged against her chair, smirking as if the entire court scene had been a play staged for her amusement.

Paul broke the silence.

“You spoke boldly today,” he said, his voice calm but deliberate. All eyes turned to him. “You showed the court that my son has wit, that he can think like a ruler. And for that—” He paused, his gaze piercing into Leto’s. “I am proud of you.”

Leto’s chest tightened, relief and joy flashing across his face. He had expected anger, even punishment. To hear pride from his father’s lips — the man who rarely gave it freely — felt like the first sunlight after storm.

But Paul’s tone hardened as quickly as it had softened. “Do not mistake pride for license. You will not speak in my court without my leave again. Authority is not a toy to be tested. You risked undermining me before my enemies, even as your words held truth.”

The boy’s smile faltered. He lowered his eyes. “Yes, Father.”

Paul leaned back, sipping his spice drink. “A ruler must teach with silence as often as with words. You have not yet learned when to hold your tongue. That is as dangerous as any blade.”

Jessica cleared her throat softly, a rare gentleness in her tone. “He is young, Paul. You were not much older when you learned to find your own voice before the Duke.”

Paul’s jaw tightened, but he did not rebuke her. Instead, he turned back to his son. “Do you understand, Leto? I cannot afford weakness in front of the Imperium. Not even from my heir.”

Leto nodded, meeting his father’s gaze. His voice was quiet, but steady. “I understand, Father. But… if I saw silence leading to ruin, I would still speak.”

For an instant, the room held its breath.

Paul studied him, and at last, a shadow of a smile touched his lips again — pride laced with steel. “Then you are my son.”

The servants moved silently, clearing the dishes.

The meal continued, but beneath the table’s surface civility, tension simmered. Leto had won both praise and warning in the same breath, and the family knew: the boy was no longer a child. He was a player in the game, with all the peril that entailed.

Chapter Text

The night was alive with color and song.

Arrakeen’s narrow streets glowed with torchlight, lanterns swinging from ropes strung overhead. At the heart of the quarter, tables overflowed with bowls of dried petals — crimson, ochre, gold — gathered from the rare desert blooms that flowered only after the rains. Women scattered the petals into the air, laughing as they fluttered down like fragile sparks, and children ran barefoot, chasing them.

It was the annual Flower Festival — a ritual of fleeting beauty, celebrating life’s small defiance against the endless desert.

Leto moved among the crowd wrapped in his beggar’s cloak, hood drawn low. The air smelled of spice cakes and sweet oils, and everywhere he looked, there were smiles — genuine, unburdened, unshadowed by politics or prophecy.

For a moment, he let himself breathe it in.

He lingered near a circle of dancers, their steps stamping in rhythm, arms weaving like waves of sand. The drums beat fast, and the petals swirled higher and higher. A girl no older than him laughed and tossed a fistful of flowers at his chest.

“Dance, stranger!” she called, her eyes bright. “No one stands still at the Flower Festival.”

Leto startled, then smiled — a real smile, not the careful one he wore in the Keep. He stepped forward, awkward at first, then letting himself move with the rhythm. The children laughed, pulling him into the circle, their hands sticky with sugared cakes, their eyes free of fear.

And for a moment, he was just Leto. Not heir, not child of prophecy, not Muad’Dib’s son. Just a boy, his cloak dusted with petals.

But whispers still followed.

One older man watching from the edge muttered to his wife, “His eyes… do you see? Blue within blue, like Muad’Dib himself.”

The woman crossed herself quickly, whispering back, “Don’t say it. Not here. Not during the festival.”

Others, too, stole glances. The children laughed with him, but the adults’ smiles grew nervous, as if petals thrown toward him might turn to fire.

Leto felt the shift, the weight creeping back in. Even here, even under the flowers, they could not help but see godhood pressing through disguise.

And then, in the corner of his eye, he saw another hooded figure — watching him from a shadowed stall. He didn’t need prescience to know who it was.

Alia.

Her smile was sharp in the dark, her arms crossed, her gaze cutting through the swirl of petals. She mouthed one word at him, slow, deliberate.

God.

Leto’s stomach turned, but he held her gaze, whispering to himself as the dancers pulled him back into the circle:

Not yet. Not me. Not yet.

The bar was the same one he had visited before — low-ceilinged, filled with smoke from spice pipes, and heavy with the smell of sweat and sand. Men shouted over mugs of spice beer, their voices thick with stories of conquest, of plunder, of the Jihad that burned across the stars in his father’s name.

Leto slipped inside again, his hood low, and took his place in the corner. He had learned to listen more than speak — it was safer. But tonight, as the soldiers laughed and slammed their mugs against the tables, one voice rose above the din, clear and steady.

“Glory is nothing without honor,” the soldier said, shaking his head as he pushed a drink away. “Killing is easy. Any knife can do it. But killing without cause? That is just blood in the sand.”

The others jeered, calling him soft, but Leto’s eyes caught on him. He was young still, perhaps twenty, with a lean fighter’s build and scars across his hands. His face was weathered, but his eyes carried something rare in the room: restraint.

After the others drifted away, Leto found himself at the man’s table.

“You don’t drink?” Leto asked carefully.

The soldier glanced at him, then shrugged. “Not much. Spice beer clouds the head. I prefer to keep mine clear.” He studied Leto for a long moment, then smiled faintly. “You don’t drink much either. Or fight much. Strange choice of company for a boy.”

Leto hesitated, then lowered his hood a fraction. “I listen.”

The man chuckled. “Listening is rarer than gold in these halls.” He extended a hand, rough and calloused. “Hadan.”

“Leto,” he replied, grasping it firmly.

They talked for hours. Hadan spoke of battles, yes, but not with the glee of others. He spoke of the weight of it — of comrades lost, of civilians caught in the storm of the Jihad, of the hollow victory in razed cities.

Leto listened, rapt. Here was someone who saw war not as glory, but as burden.

“You speak against the Jihad openly,” Leto said at last, his voice low.

Hadan’s smile was bitter. “I speak to a boy in a bar. No one listens to that. But if they did…” He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “If they did, I’d tell them Muad’Dib fights like a god, but men bleed like men. And someday, someone has to remember that.”

Leto’s heart pounded at the words. He wanted to say more, to tell Hadan who he truly was. But he swallowed it back, keeping the secret close.

Instead, he said softly, “Then I’ll listen. And remember.”

For the first time in his wanderings, Leto felt a spark of kinship beyond his family, beyond the palace walls. In Hadan, he saw something rare — a soldier who carried not only a knife, but a conscience.

And for that, he knew he would return again and again.

Night after night, Leto returned to the bar. The disguise became second nature — the rough cloak, the hood low over his glowing eyes, the way he carried himself like any other youth of the city.

Hadan was always there, waiting with his quiet humor and sharp tongue. They spoke of battles, of duty, of honor. Hadan taught him the songs soldiers sang when they marched to keep fear from their hearts, the crude jokes they shared around dying fires, the way some prayed to Muad’Dib not as a god, but as a comrade-in-arms they hoped could forgive them.

“You learn quick,” Hadan said once, after Leto had caught the rhythm of a soldier’s chant. “You could pass as one of us if you weren’t so clean about the eyes.”

Leto laughed, though the words pricked him — that even here, even in this friendship, he could not hide entirely. Still, he cherished it. With Hadan, he was not heir, not half-god. He was simply a boy listening to a man who had lived more war than stories.

But in the palace, Paul began to hear whispers.

A servant mentioned the bar on the edge of the district. A soldier’s wife said her husband had spoken of a strange boy who listened too well, asked too many questions, and whose voice carried something uncanny. Rumors drifted like sand, small but steady, and they reached the Emperor.

In the war room, Stilgar leaned close to Paul, voice grave. “My lord, the reports come often now. A cloaked boy in Arrakeen’s taverns. Young, clever. Eyes hidden, but they glow in torchlight when he laughs.”

Paul’s jaw tightened, his fingers steepled before him.

“They say he speaks with a soldier. A man called Hadan.” Stilgar hesitated, then added, “This soldier speaks too freely against the Jihad. If your son listens to him… it could be dangerous.”

Paul’s eyes flared blue-on-blue, and for a long moment, he was silent. In his mind, the futures rippled like dunes in a storm. He saw the boy in shadows, saw the man beside him, heard laughter, heard whispers of treason.

At last, he spoke, voice low and cold.

“Do not touch the soldier. Do not touch the boy. Say nothing of this to anyone else.”

Stilgar bowed. “As you command.”

Paul stood at the window, staring out at the desert. His hands curled into fists behind his back.

He walks where I cannot follow, Paul thought bitterly. He seeks his own truths in the dust and the drink. My son—already chasing the voices that deny me.

The storm of prescience loomed before him, full of shadows he could not still.

And in the bars of Arrakeen, Leto laughed with Hadan, unaware that his father’s eyes had already found him.

The bar smelled the same as always — spice beer, dust, and sweat. Leto slipped inside, hood pulled low, his heart already lighter at the thought of another night trading stories with Hadan.

But tonight, the soldier’s usual place was empty.

Leto wove through the crowd, scanning faces. The arm-wrestling table was rowdy, the corner where Hadan usually sat was vacant. He ordered nothing, only stood, waiting. Minutes passed. Still, no sign.

Then he noticed a man in the darkest corner, cloaked, silent, watching. His presence was strange in this place — too composed, too still.

Leto’s chest tightened. Something in him already knew.

He approached cautiously, pulling his hood back just enough to see more clearly. The man raised his head. The torchlight caught the impossible blue of his eyes.

Paul.

The boy froze, his heart hammering in his throat.

Paul’s voice was quiet, yet sharper than any knife. “You’ve wandered far, Leto.”

Leto swallowed hard. “I was looking for Hadan.”

Paul’s gaze did not waver. “Hadan will not be here tonight. Or any other night.”

The words struck like a blow. “What did you—”

“I spared him,” Paul cut in, his tone like stone. “Though some counseled me otherwise. He is gone. Far from Arrakeen. You will not see him again.”

Leto’s fists clenched, anger flaring. “He was my friend!”

Paul leaned forward, the shadow of the hood slipping from his face, his expression unreadable. “He was a soldier who questioned the Jihad in open company. You were not his friend, Leto. You were his audience. And you gave him power he did not deserve.”

The boy’s eyes burned. “You don’t understand. He wasn’t like the others. He didn’t worship blood. He—he made me believe—”

Paul’s hand slammed down on the table, the wood cracking beneath his strength. The bar went silent, all eyes turning toward the sound.

“He made you believe you were ordinary,” Paul hissed, low enough only Leto could hear. “And that is a lie more dangerous than any dagger. You are my son. You are Atreides. You are heir to a throne carved in fire and prophecy. You will not waste yourself among drunks in the shadows.”

Leto’s voice broke, half-plea, half-defiance. “But I wanted to be ordinary.”

For the first time, something flickered in Paul’s eyes — not anger, not scorn, but grief. He reached across the table and gripped his son’s wrist, firm but not cruel.

“Neither you nor I was born for that.”

The bar stirred uneasily, whispers spreading as recognition sparked in a few drunk eyes. Muad’Dib himself sat among them, cloaked in shadow. Paul stood, pulling Leto to his feet with him, and the murmurs broke into awed silence.

Without another word, father and son left the bar together, the noise behind them swelling like a tide of fear and worship.

The Keep was silent when they returned, the echoes of their steps lost in the vast stone halls. Paul dismissed the guards with a flick of his hand, leading Leto through the winding corridors until they stood in one of the smaller chambers, far from the ears of Chani, Alia, or Jessica.

The door sealed with a heavy groan of stone. Father and son faced one another in the dim glow of spice lamps.

Paul’s voice was low but sharp as a blade. “You think you can vanish into the city like some common child and not be seen? Every step you take leaves ripples in the desert. They follow you, whisper about you. They call you a shadow of me. Do you know how dangerous that is?”

Leto lifted his chin, his eyes hard though his voice shook. “Dangerous for you, maybe. But not for me. I don’t care what they whisper. I wanted—” His breath hitched. “I wanted to feel human. To sit with someone who didn’t see me as a god. To laugh without it being prophecy. To just… exist.”

Paul’s jaw tightened, his face unreadable. “Existence is not given to us, Leto. Not to me, not to you. We are bound by vision, by blood, by the desert itself. You cannot choose the life of a beggar when the universe has carved you to be its ruler.”

Leto’s hands curled into fists. “Then what’s the point of living if I can’t choose? If every step, every word, is already written? That’s not life—it’s a prison.”

For a moment, Paul’s mask cracked. He stepped forward, gripping his son’s shoulders, his eyes blazing with something deeper than anger. “Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I haven’t dreamed of walking away, of leaving the throne to dust, of being just Paul again?” His voice broke, heavy with unspoken weight. “But I cannot. And neither can you.”

Leto’s breath caught, stunned by the rawness in his father’s tone.

Paul let go, turning away, staring into the flicker of the lamp. His voice dropped to a near-whisper. “Freedom is an illusion, my son. The only choice we have is how we bear the chains laid upon us.”

Leto’s throat tightened, tears pricking his eyes, though he refused to let them fall. “Then I’ll carry them differently. You rule with fear. I’ll rule with something else. With mercy.”

Paul turned back, his gaze fierce and sorrowful all at once. “Mercy is the softest chain of all. It binds the ruler before it binds the ruled. And one day, it will strangle you.”

Chapter Text

The chamber was dark but for the glow of a single spice lamp. Beyond its light, the desert wind moaned against the stone walls, rattling the shutters like restless spirits.

Chani stood at the window, arms crossed, her silhouette sharp against the moonlight. Paul sat at the low table, hands clasped, his gaze fixed on the flicker of the flame.

“You think him weak,” Chani said at last, her voice calm but edged.

Paul did not look up. “Not weak. Soft. He clings to mercy as though it were a shield. He doesn’t understand the Jihad. He doesn’t see the river of blood that feeds our throne. He thinks kindness will hold back the storm.”

Chani’s eyes narrowed. “And you think cruelty will save him? You think he must become you—cold, unyielding, feared by all?”

Paul lifted his gaze, his expression a mask of control, but the hollowness in his eyes betrayed him. “The universe will not bow to kindness. It bows to fear. Every victory we hold, every planet that does not rise against us, is because they know Muad’Dib shows no mercy.”

She turned fully, stepping closer, her voice rising. “And what has it cost you? Look at yourself, Usul. You live surrounded by worshippers, yet you are more alone than any man in the desert. You have power, but no peace.”

Paul’s hands curled into fists. “Peace is a luxury for those who do not rule.”

Chani knelt beside him, her hand catching his wrist. “No. Peace is what keeps a ruler human. If Leto holds onto mercy, it is not weakness. It is strength you have long forgotten.”

Paul searched her face, and for a moment, the weight of prescience seemed to lift, the mask of Muad’Dib thinning. He whispered, almost against his will: “Mercy is the door through which our enemies will strike. I’ve seen it, Chani. His kindness will be his undoing.”

Her grip tightened, her eyes fierce. “Then let him choose his undoing. Better a son who rules with compassion than a son who becomes another tyrant. If he is too soft, then let it be so. Better soft than empty.”

The silence between them throbbed with unspoken grief.

Paul leaned back, closing his eyes, as though listening to voices only he could hear. “You would have him walk the desert unarmored. I would give him steel.”

“And I,” Chani said firmly, “would give him his soul.”

The wind howled outside, carrying the scent of spice, as husband and wife sat locked in quiet defiance — neither yielding, both knowing Leto’s path would be shaped by the war between them as much as by the Jihad that raged across the stars.

“You would smother him,” she said at last, her voice carrying the flat edge of desert truth.

Paul turned, the faintest quirk of annoyance at his lip. “I would prepare him. Every moment wasted in softness leaves him exposed. The Empire devours the weak.”

“The desert devours the arrogant,” she countered. Rising, she crossed the chamber, her steps silent as water on stone. She stood before him, chin lifted. “Leto is not to be forged only in the crucible of your throne. He must know the desert as we knew it — hunger, thirst, the taste of dust in his lungs. The worm beneath him, the silence of the dunes. Only then will he remember what it is to be Fremen.”

Paul’s gaze pierced her, and for a moment she thought he might dismiss her words as sentiment. But he remained silent, as if weighing strands of possibility.

“We take him into the desert,” Chani pressed on, her voice low, intimate. “Not as emperor’s heir, but as a child of the sietch. He will ride the worm, he will brave the thirst. He will learn not only to rule, but to survive. And in that survival, he will find balance between your steel and my people’s sand.”

A flicker crossed Paul’s face — fear, pride, doubt. He turned again to the window, as though the night might answer for him.

“The desert does not forgive,” he said at last.

“Nor does the throne,” Chani replied. She touched his arm, grounding him. “Let the desert temper him. Let it take what softness you fear, and leave him forged — not as a god, nor as a tyrant, but as a man who knows both the burden and the gift of life.”

Silence again. Long, heavy.

At last, Paul’s shoulders loosened. His hand covered hers, rough and warm. “Then it will be the desert,” he said. His voice carried both resignation and a strange relief.

And in that moment, though neither would name it, the path of their son bent toward the dunes.

Leto sat cross-legged on the floor, a sand-scrawled map of the city spread before him. He had been tracing patrol routes with a soldier’s knife, eyes bright with curiosity, when Paul entered. Chani followed, her expression unreadable. Behind them, the tall shadow of Stilgar filled the doorway — scarred, weatherworn, yet carrying the gravity of the desert itself.

Leto looked up, his knife pausing mid-line. “Father,” he said carefully, sensing the weight of the moment. His eyes flicked to Stilgar. “Why is Naib here?”

Paul lowered himself into the chair opposite his son. His movements were deliberate, his tone stripped of softness. “You will come into the desert with us.”

Leto blinked. “The desert?”

Chani knelt beside him, her hand brushing the map aside. “Not as emperor’s son,” she said, her voice low, warm. “As Fremen. You will ride the worm, you will carry only what water you can bear, you will learn the silence between dunes. This is how our people mark the passage from child to adult.”

Leto’s lips parted. Surprise mingled with something else — a flare of yearning. He had stolen tastes of the city’s common life, but this… this was older, deeper. He looked at Stilgar, whose craggy face betrayed nothing but the faintest ghost of approval.

Stilgar spoke, his voice like gravel. “It is fitting, Usul’s son. A ruler who has not tasted the desert’s judgment is no ruler at all. The sand does not lie. It will test you more honestly than any court, more cruelly than any assassin.”

Paul’s gaze fixed on his son. “This is not play. You will endure thirst, fear, and the worm’s shadow. Some trials I cannot shield you from. If you fail, you fail alone.”

Leto straightened, meeting his father’s eyes with a spark of defiance and pride. “Then I will not fail.”

The desert swallowed them whole. For two days they had ridden the dunes, a small company veiled against the burning wind. The sand stretched in every direction, infinite, merciless. At dusk, when the light fell into red embers across the horizon, Stilgar raised his hand, and the column bent east.

Out of the shifting dunes rose stone — a jagged cleft, its mouth like a scar torn into the desert’s skin. A steich. Ancient rock walls, half-buried in drifting sand, whispered of generations who had sheltered here before them.

The Fremen melted into ritual silence as they entered, their steps sure, their eyes flicking to hidden watch points. Within, the air was cooler, heavy with the faint mineral tang of reclaimed water. Shadows stretched across carved alcoves where flint lamps had burned in ages past.

Leto stepped ahead of the others, his stillsuit dusted white by the day’s passage. His hands brushed the stone, rough and pitted, alive with echoes. He felt the silence pressing in on him, a silence that seemed older than his father’s empire, older even than the spice.

“This place…” he whispered.

Chani moved beside him, her eyes softening. “Here, children of the desert were born, lived, and died. The steich is a cradle and a tomb. It holds memory.”

Leto walked deeper, pausing where the walls opened to a chamber blackened by firepits. He imagined feasts, warriors speaking of raids, the soft hum of sietch songs. But it was not warmth he felt — it was weight. History pressed against him, reminding him that he was not the first to pass here, nor would he be the last.

A group of young Fremen watched him from the shadows, eyes glittering, their whispers sharp as knives. They saw not a boy but the Emperor’s heir intruding on their ground.

Stilgar’s voice cut through the chamber, gravel and command. “Here you will learn, Leto son of Usul. In the sietch you are not prince nor messiah. You are boy. You will eat from the same bowls, drink the same ration, walk the same stones. And if the desert claims you…” He let the silence finish the thought.

Leto lifted his chin, feeling their stares upon him. His pulse quickened — half fear, half exhilaration. He longed to prove himself, to escape the suffocating walls of the palace, to taste something real.

Paul entered last, his presence dimming the room like a shadow passing over flame. His voice was measured, cold, yet threaded with something even he could not suppress. “The desert will strip away illusion. Let it teach you, Leto. Do not run from its judgment.”

The boy’s hand tightened on the crysknife at his belt, its weight alien yet alive. He turned from his father’s gaze, back to the whispering stone.

And in that moment, standing in the steich’s hollow belly, he felt the desert not as a prison but as a vast, waiting teacher.

Days stretched into a rhythm unlike anything Leto had known within the palace walls of Arrakeen. There were no servants to bow and scurry, no courtiers whispering over his every gesture. In the steich, the desert ruled all. Its law was silence, discipline, and endurance.

At dawn, the Fremen roused him with no ceremony. A ration cup of bitter reclaimed water was placed in his hands. “No more, no less,” one of the young Fremen muttered, eyes watching to see if he would complain. Leto drank it down, savoring the metallic bite, and said nothing.

He learned to cut slivers of spicebread, to share them without preference. At meals, the bowls were passed communally; no portion greater than another’s. When he reached instinctively for more, a girl named Nehra slapped his hand and gave him a sharp grin. “Even the Emperor’s son bleeds if he takes too much.” The others laughed — not cruelly, but testing.

By the third day, Leto began to laugh with them.

He carried stone jars, heavy with water, from the hidden cistern. His back ached, but he bit back any sound, recalling his mother’s words: patience, silence, endurance.

At night he lay among the youths of the steich, their bodies sprawled in the shadows of fire pits. They whispered stories of raids, of worm rides, of deaths in the deep erg. He listened more than he spoke. Sometimes they challenged him, throwing pebbles or baiting him with questions about palace luxuries. He answered lightly, sometimes with humor, and their eyes softened.

Stilgar watched from afar, his arms folded, the old Naib measuring every small choice. Chani, too, lingered on the edges, her gaze proud but guarded — knowing how easily the boy could falter if arrogance betrayed him.

Paul remained distant. He did not sleep in the youth hall nor join their meals. Yet Leto felt his father’s eyes at every turn, like a weight pressing against the back of his neck.

On the fifth day, when a sandstorm rattled the rock walls and the youths huddled in uneasy silence, Leto rose without command to reinforce the seals at the steich entrance. He worked with his hands until they blistered, sealing cracks with pitch and stone, his face stung raw by grit. When he returned, the storm still howling, Nehra nodded at him with something like respect.

That night, when bowls of water were poured in quiet ritual, she tipped hers slightly toward him, letting her measure spill into his. No words, no ceremony — just a small offering.

Leto bowed his head, and for the first time since leaving the palace, he felt himself becoming more than an heir. He was becoming Fremen.

Chapter Text

The desert stretched before them like an endless, golden sea. No sound but the hiss of wind over the dunes. The sun beat mercilessly overhead, heat shimmering in waves that bent the horizon.

Paul stood at the crest of a dune, his stillsuit gleaming with dust, the thumper clutched in his hand. Beside him, Chani’s veil fluttered in the wind, her eyes sharp upon her son. Stilgar crouched in silence, one hand pressed to the sand, feeling the great tremors of the deep.

Leto shifted in the sand, his heart hammering. Sixteen years, and yet he had never been so far into the open erg. The emptiness was terrifying. No walls, no steich, nothing but the raw immensity of Shaihulud’s domain.

Paul planted the thumper. With a swift twist, he drove it into the dune and set the rhythm pounding: thump... thump... thump... The sound traveled across the sands like a challenge.

“Watch, Leto,” Paul said, his voice carrying both command and memory. “This is how it is done. The desert answers only to those who dare.”

They waited. The beating of the thumper became the heartbeat of the world.

Then, far off — a ripple. A shiver beneath the dunes. The surface quivered, swelled. The sound came next: a low, rolling thunder that made the sand itself tremble.

Leto gasped. The horizon bulged and split as the worm breached — vast, titanic, its maw a cavern of ringed teeth catching the sun. Sand cascaded from its flanks as it rose, taller than a palace tower, an old one, scarred with the marks of a thousand summonings.

“The grandfather worm,” Stilgar murmured. “Shaihulud Himself.”

Paul’s eyes burned with a memory only he could see. “I was younger than you, Leto, when I called the worm for the first time. The desert made me. Now it will make you.”

The worm thundered closer, the ground shaking under its weight. Leto stumbled but caught himself, transfixed by its immensity. He felt small — smaller than ever — but in that smallness there was awe. Now he understood what it meant for men to whisper his father’s name as legend.

Paul leapt forward as the worm’s side passed the dune. With the fluid grace of a Fremen, he plunged his hooks into the plated ring and twisted. The great body rolled, groaning, until the worm turned to accept its rider.

Paul climbed, climbing higher, and higher still, until he stood astride the back of Shaihulud, silhouetted against the sun. The worm’s thunderous passage shook the dunes, a god beneath his father’s feet.

Leto’s breath caught in his throat. For the first time, he saw not only Muad’Dib the Emperor, but Usul the Fremen boy who had once dared the impossible.

Paul raised his arm, wind tearing at his cloak, and his voice cut through the roar: “This is the desert’s gift — and its judgment. Soon, it will be yours.”

The worm carried him into the distance, a mountain moving across the sand. Leto watched, his chest tight with fear and pride. For a moment, he felt the threads of prophecy tugging at him — the weight of inheritance, the vast shadow of a father who had once been a boy like him.

And in that thunder, Leto began to believe.

The dune still trembled from the passage of Shaihulud when Paul guided the great worm in a wide arc, loosening his grip and leaping lightly back to the sand. The worm slid on into the distance, vanishing beneath the horizon like a storm receding into silence.

Paul stood before his son, dust cascading from his cloak, his face unreadable. He lifted the thumper from the sand and pressed it into Leto’s hands.

“Now you,” he said.

Leto swallowed. His palms were damp inside the stillsuit gloves. The thumper felt heavier than it should, as if weighted with all the eyes watching him — his father’s terrible gaze, Chani’s fierce hope, Stilgar’s grave patience, the silent judgment of the desert itself.

He walked down the slope of the dune, his boots sinking deep, and planted the thumper as he had seen Paul do. The rhythm began: thump… thump… thump…

The waiting was the hardest part. Every beat of the device echoed in his chest. Sweat trickled down his neck, though the wind was sharp with grit. He wanted to look back at them, at his father, but forced himself forward, eyes locked on the dunes.

A tremor.

The sands stirred, and from the horizon a ripple surged closer, faster. The ground shook beneath his feet, and a smaller worm burst upward — still colossal, still terrifying, but not the mountain his father had commanded. This one was leaner, younger, its plates smoother, its movement restless, hungry.

The Fremen watching murmured approval. A worm was a worm, and Leto had summoned one.

“Hooks, boy!” Stilgar barked, but Paul silenced him with a glance.

Leto ran forward, crysknife hooked, heart pounding. The worm’s flank rose like a wall before him, each plate groaning as it shifted. He struck, driving the maker-hook between two ridges as Paul had shown him.

But the motion was wrong. His angle was shallow, his arms trembling with fear and excitement. The worm thrashed, twisting its body, and the sand surged under his feet. Leto clutched the hook, leaping to mount the shifting surface — but his boot slipped, sliding down a slope of burning sand.

He crashed hard, rolling, his breath knocked out of him. The worm thundered past, its great body just missing him, the wind of its passage filling his ears with a deafening roar.

Chani’s hand went to her mouth. Stilgar cursed softly.

Paul did not move.

Leto dragged himself upright, sand clinging to his stillsuit, shame burning hotter than the sun. He looked at his father, searching for some flicker of approval, some word of forgiveness. But Paul’s eyes were cold, pitiless as the desert itself.

“You slipped,” Paul said simply. His tone was not anger but judgment. “The desert does not forgive slips.”

Leto clenched his fists, trembling, fighting back the urge to cry. He wanted to shout that he was not his father, that he had never asked for this burden. But the words caught in his throat.

The boy stood alone on the dune, the thumper still pounding behind him, the desert waiting.

Leto stood panting on the dune, sand caked in his stillsuit seams, the shame of failure burning hotter than the noon sun. The worm he had summoned vanished into the erg, its thunder swallowed by silence. For a moment he thought his father might call an end to it — that the trial was over, that the desert had judged him unworthy.

But Paul’s voice cut through the silence like a blade.

“Again.”

Leto’s head snapped up. His father’s expression was iron, unreadable, the same face that emperors and assassins alike had feared.

Paul strode forward, yanked the thumper from the sand, and thrust it back into his son’s hands. “The desert does not wait. You will not wait. You failed because you thought like a child. Now you will think like a Fremen.”

Leto’s arms trembled around the thumper. “Father—”

“No excuses,” Paul barked, his voice rising above the wind. “Again!”

The command shook him. His chest ached, breath shallow, but something deeper — pride, defiance — flared in him. He stumbled back up the dune, planting the thumper once more, the rhythm resuming: thump… thump… thump…

Chani came to Paul’s side. Her face was fierce, eyes hard as flint. “He must do it,” she said. “I was ten when I rode my first worm. Ten, Paul. He is sixteen. Nearly a man. The desert would laugh at him if he falters now.”

Stilgar gave a short, approving grunt, folding his arms. “The mother speaks true. He is not a child any longer.”

Paul did not look at her, his gaze fixed on Leto’s figure on the dune. “The desert shapes us or destroys us. There is no middle ground.”

The ground began to quake again. Another worm answered the call — not the leviathan of Paul’s summoning, but no small creature either. Its bulk rolled the sand like a rising sea, its vast mouth breaking the surface in a fountain of dust and thunder.

Leto’s pulse raced, fear gnawing at him. The worm loomed, closer and closer, its plated side sliding past him like a living wall. His grip tightened on the maker-hook, every nerve screaming at him to run.

Paul’s voice carried from the ridge, sharp and merciless: “Now, Leto! Take it! Or be swallowed!”

The boy lunged, burying his hook into the worm’s flank. The creature thrashed, sand cascading, and Leto clung desperately, his boots slipping again — but this time he did not let go. With a shout torn from his throat, half fear, half fury, he clawed his way upward.

The worm bucked, then turned, groaning as the hook bit deeper. And for an instant, Leto felt the world shift beneath him — the terrible, exhilarating surge of Shaihulud submitting to his will.

On the ridge, Chani’s eyes gleamed with pride. Paul’s face did not soften, but he gave the smallest nod, almost imperceptible.

Leto clung to the worm, trembling, alive with terror and triumph both.

The desert had tested him. And though it had not forgiven his slip, it had granted him this chance to rise.

Chapter Text

The air inside the steich was thick with spice-smoke and the warmth of bodies pressed close. Firelight flickered across stone walls blackened by centuries of use. A pot of spiced gruel simmered at the center, its steam carrying the sharp tang of preserved meat and spicebread crumbs.

The bowls were passed hand to hand in silence, the ritual of sharing unbroken. Each drank, each tasted, no portion greater than another. Leto sat cross-legged among the younger Fremen, his stillsuit patched with new dust, his hands raw from the hooks. His body ached, but there was a fierce light in his eyes — the exhilaration of survival.

Paul sat apart, silent as stone, watching.

When the bowls came back around, Stilgar cleared his throat. His voice carried, rough and solemn, echoing against the walls.

“The boy has spirit,” he said, his gaze heavy on Leto. “But spirit is not enough. He is too soft for the desert’s ways. He hesitated, he slipped, and only by luck did the worm not devour him.”

A murmur ran through the circle — low agreement from some, uncomfortable silence from others.

Leto’s face flushed, his jaw tightening, but he said nothing.

Before Paul could answer, Chani’s voice cut through the murmurs, sharp as a crysknife. “Do not mistake growth for weakness, Stilgar.”

All eyes turned to her. She leaned forward, her face lit by the fire’s glow, her voice low but burning. “When I was ten years old, I rode the worm. I was a child. I bore scars for it. But I did not bear the weight of an empire on my shoulders. Leto carries more than any youth here — the name of his father, the gaze of a thousand worlds. Still he took the worm today.”

Her eyes flashed as she met Stilgar’s. “Would you have him hardened into cruelty, like so many we have seen? Or tempered, made strong not only in his arms but in his heart? The desert will give him its lessons in time — do not rush to call him soft, Naib.”

Stilgar held her gaze, unflinching. He dipped his chin slowly, acknowledging the strike of her words. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “But the desert does not wait forever. If he is to be Fremen, he must bleed his softness soon.”

Chani reached for her bowl, her hand steady. “And he will. But he will do it in his own measure. Not as your protégé. Not as Paul’s shadow. As himself.”

The silence that followed was thick, tense, alive.

Paul’s eyes lingered on Leto — unreadable, deep, as though searching for the boy’s future in the play of firelight across his face.

The sietch was hushed in the hours before dawn, its passages echoing with the distant sigh of wind through stone vents. Most of the Fremen slept in their niches, curled in stillsuits, the warmth of the desert day a memory. But Leto could not sleep. His body was sore, his mind restless with the pounding of worm-hide beneath him, the murmurs at the meal, his mother’s sharp words to Stilgar.

He drifted through the tunnels, torchlight flickering faintly from carved sconces. The air grew cooler as he descended, carrying with it a smell that was sharp and mineral, unlike anything else in the desert.

Then he found it.

A cavern vast and silent, its ceiling black with shadow. At its center: water. A pool, still and dark, rimmed by stone. The sight rooted him in place.

He had seen oceans on Caladan — rolling, infinite, alive with foam and storm. This was different. This water was not free. It was held, hoarded, every drop guarded by centuries of sacrifice. The water of the dead.

Leto stepped closer, his own reflection wavering in the still surface. He felt the weight of it — lives distilled into liquid, the breath of ancestors resting here. A terrible reverence filled him, heavier than awe.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

The voice came from the shadows. Paul emerged from the darkness, his face pale in the dim light, his eyes like bottomless wells. His stillsuit whispered faintly as he walked to stand beside his son.

Leto’s throat felt dry. “It… it’s wrong. All this water, locked away. Hoarded. When people thirst above.”

Paul’s gaze did not waver from the pool. “It is not hoarded. It is remembered. Each drop here once beat in the hearts of men and women who walked the desert. They gave their water back to the tribe, as all must. Someday, mine will be here. Someday, yours.”

Leto flinched, the thought cold in his chest. “I’ve seen oceans, Father. I thought I understood water. But this…” He shook his head. “This feels heavier.”

Paul turned then, fixing him with the full weight of his stare. “Because this is not nature’s gift. It is sacrifice. The ocean gives freely. The desert demands everything, and still it takes more. The Fremen learned long ago that survival is not life. It is debt. Every drop, every breath is borrowed.”

They stood in silence, watching the dark pool.

Finally, Leto spoke, his voice low. “I don’t know if I can live like this.”

Paul’s voice, low and implacable, carried across the chamber. “You think this life is hard? You think the desert cruel? The desert is nothing compared to what lies beyond these dunes. Armies move in my name, boy. Planets burn. Whole peoples kneel and die beneath the cry of Jihad. And you—” he jabbed a finger toward Leto’s chest, “—you risk it all by being soft.”

Leto’s breath caught, then broke into anger. The words burst out of him, sharp and unguarded: “I never asked for your Jihad! I never asked for your throne, or your burden, or your visions! I never asked to be your heir!”

The cry echoed in the chamber, bouncing off stone and water.

Paul’s eyes flared, twin abysses lit with prescience. His body moved before thought, faster than the boy could react. His hand shot out, iron-hard, clamping around Leto’s throat.

Leto gasped, his cry cut short. He clawed at his father’s arm, eyes wide with fear and fury both. The strength in Paul’s grip was terrifying — not just physical, but absolute, the weight of a man who carried empires in his palm.

“You are mine!” Paul’s voice thundered, trembling with something that was not only rage but desperation. “Mine to shape, mine to harden, mine to deliver from weakness! You will not shame me before the desert, nor before history!”

Leto’s eyes watered, his chest burning for air. For a heartbeat he thought his father might truly kill him — here, beside the water of the dead, where generations had given themselves to the tribe.

But then, just as suddenly, Paul released him.

Leto staggered back, choking, clutching at his throat. His knees buckled against the stone, the sound of his breath ragged in the cavern’s silence. He looked up at his father — not the Emperor, not the Muad’Dib of legend, but the man before him: haunted, merciless, trapped by his own destiny.

Paul’s hand trembled at his side. His face was carved in shadow, unreadable, save for the faint flicker of pain behind his terrible eyes.

Leto staggered back, his throat raw from his father’s grip, his chest heaving. His hands trembled, but his voice rose sharp and unflinching, echoing in the cavern.

“I hear the stories, Father! When I slip away into the bars, when I sit with soldiers and children—do you think I don’t listen? Do you think I don’t know?”

His voice cracked, but he pressed on, louder, fiercer.

“They say the Fremen burn whole villages when the people resist. They say they cut down men in the streets, that they take the women for spoils. They carve your name into the flesh of other worlds. They call it the Jihad of Muad’Dib.”

He pointed a shaking hand toward his father, his eyes shining with rage. “And they worship you for it. They scream your name like it’s a prayer. And I hate it! I hate their songs, I hate their fanaticism, I hate the way they look at me like I’m some saint when I just want to live.”

His voice rang in the chamber, raw and bitter, before it dropped into a whisper that struck sharper than a shout. “I hate what you’ve become.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. The dark water of the dead reflected both of them — father and son, distorted, unsteady, impossible to separate.

Paul stood very still. His hands curled into fists, but not with rage now — with something older, heavier. His prescient eyes seemed to stare past Leto, into visions only he could see: the tides of blood, the faces of the slain, the endless march of warriors under his banner.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, and it carried the weight of a man who had long since ceased to be free.

“You think I wanted this?” he whispered. “You think I do not hate it also?”

The words trembled between them, sharp as a crysknife’s edge.

Leto’s breath came hard, his throat burning, his hands still clenched. For the first time he saw—not the god his father had been made into, nor the cold emperor who ruled the Known Universe—but a man crushed beneath his own legend.

But the boy’s anger was not soothed. He turned from Paul, tears burning hot in his eyes, and spat the words into the cavern’s shadows:

“Then why don’t you stop it?”

Paul stepped closer, his cloak whispering against stone. His voice came low, not the tone of Muad’Dib the Emperor, but of a man carrying a truth too vast to set down.

“You think me a tyrant, Leto. A butcher, a god-king who bathes in worship. You are not wrong. But you see only the surface. You see only the blood.”

He knelt beside the water, his fingers hovering just above its still surface. “The visions come, unending. You cannot imagine the weight. Do you think I cannot see every path this universe may take? Do you think I do not dream of ending it, of silencing the cries of fanatics in my name?”

His eyes lifted, and for a heartbeat their terrible prescient fire burned into his son.

“But I see farther than you. And farther than any man alive. Every path, every choice, every escape ends the same: humanity trapped, stagnant, waiting for extinction. Without pain, without terror, without the fire of faith and fear to drive it, our people would curl in upon themselves until the universe itself forgets them. That is the Golden Path. Survival. Not for a century, not for ten thousand years — forever.”

Leto’s hands curled into fists. “Survival through slaughter? Through madness and blind worship?”

Paul’s jaw tightened, but his tone held. “Yes. Through blood. Through fire. Through a god they both fear and adore. Humanity must be scattered, broken, driven to the stars by the force of this Jihad. Only then will it escape the trap of complacency. Only then will we endure.”

Leto shook his head, his voice raw. “And you chose to be that god?”

Paul’s face was carved from shadow and grief. “I did not choose. The desert chose. The spice chose. Prophecy chose. I walked one path and found only graves. I walked another and saw humanity’s end. Only here, in this one, was survival.”

Leto’s breath caught in his throat. His anger had not left him, but beneath it coiled something colder — dread. He wanted to deny it, to call his father a liar, but the weight in Paul’s voice was unshakable, the tone of a man who had long since buried his own freedom.

Paul leaned closer, his voice now a whisper that cut deeper than any shout.

“You hate the worship, the songs, the blind devotion. So do I. But better a god of blood and fire than no humanity at all.”

The words fell like stones into the pool, ripples spreading, distorting their reflections until neither could tell father from son.

Chapter Text

The journey back was made in silence. Their worm carried them across the dunes, the desert winds whipping cloaks and veils, the thunder of Shaihulud’s passage echoing behind them. Fremen riders flanked the Emperor’s party, their eyes bright with reverence — Muad’Dib returned from the sands, his son at his side.

But in Leto’s chest, the silence was a storm. The worm beneath him had not felt like triumph, not truly. His father’s words about the Golden Path gnawed at him. He had wanted the desert to free him; instead it bound him tighter.

The walls of Arrakeen rose out of the shimmering horizon — a stark fortress of stone and steel set against the endless sand. The closer they came, the heavier the air felt, as if the city itself pressed down on them, smothering the memory of wind and spice.

Inside the gates, courtiers bowed low, their voices rising in chants of Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Women cast flower petals, and priests raised their hands in benediction. The crowd surged to glimpse the boy who had ridden his first worm.

Leto flinched at their cries. He remembered his words in the cavern — I hate their worship. Yet here it was again, unending, pressing in on him until he could hardly breathe.

Paul dismounted with the ease of ritual, his face unreadable, neither acknowledging nor rejecting the adulation. Chani came after, her chin high, her eyes sharp as a crysknife.

Leto lingered. Every eye on him felt like a chain. He slid from the worm’s back, his legs stiff, and walked into the palace shadow where the chants still echoed like a curse.

Stilgar’s voice rumbled as the gates shut behind them. “The people sing for you, Usul’s son. They will not stop now.”

Leto’s jaw clenched. He said nothing, but his silence spoke louder than any words.

Paul glanced at him, just once, as they walked into the cavernous halls of the palace. His expression was unreadable, but in his eyes flickered both pride and something harder — a cold warning.

The desert trial was done. The palace awaited. And with it, the full weight of empire.

The great doors opened with a hiss of stone and pressure. Heat and the hum of bodies washed over them — the scent of spice, polished metal, and fear.

The throne room of Muad’Dib was a cavernous hall carved from black rock, veined with threads of gold. Pillars rose like the ribs of a leviathan, and light from the high apertures painted drifting patterns across the floor.

Alia stood near the dais, her presence unmistakable — small in stature, but burning with a restless energy that filled the room. When she saw Paul enter, her face broke into a smile sharp as a blade.

“Brother!” she exclaimed, striding forward. Her eyes glinted with the unnatural intensity of her birth. “You’ve been gone too long. The nobles grow anxious. The Guild envoy waits, and the generals are bickering over spice routes again.”

Paul inclined his head, allowing her greeting but not her enthusiasm to touch him. “And what mischief have you kept in my absence, sister?”

Alia laughed, though there was something brittle beneath it. “Only the usual — keeping your empire from devouring itself.” She cast a glance at Leto, her smile softening just slightly. “So the boy rides the worm now. The stories will grow even louder.”

Leto offered a stiff nod, uncertain whether she meant praise or warning. Her gaze lingered on him a moment longer than comfort allowed.

The court assembled as Paul ascended the dais. Ministers, generals, and nobles from conquered worlds bowed low, their ornate robes shimmering with off-world silks. The stillness that fell over the chamber was complete, as though every breath awaited his command.

Paul lowered himself onto the throne — not the gilded chair of an emperor, but the rough-carved stone of a Fremen Naib. The symbol had long since outgrown its meaning.

“Begin,” he said simply.

The room stirred. A grizzled commander stepped forward, bowing deeply. “Sire, the campaign on Belisar continues. The rebels have taken to the hills, harassing our convoys. Casualties are mounting.”

Another voice — a noble from one of the minor houses — added eagerly, “The Fremen squads demand more freedom of engagement. They claim restraint dishonors the name of Muad’Dib. They wish to burn the city entire.”

A murmur of assent rippled through the hall.

Leto sat near the edge of the chamber beside Chani, watching in silence. The words felt heavy, unreal — campaigns, rebels, casualties. He remembered the barroom stories, the whispered horrors: burning towns, screaming civilians, fanatic soldiers carving his father’s sigil into stone and flesh alike. And now here it was — made tidy, dressed in the language of empire.

Paul listened, his expression carved from stone. “Restraint is not weakness,” he said at last. “Tell the Fremen Naibs that the Emperor’s wrath must be measured. The Jihad will break itself if left to its own hunger.”

Alia tilted her head, a faint smile playing on her lips. “And yet hunger is what keeps them fighting. Shall we starve them of it entirely, brother?”

Paul’s eyes flicked to her — cold, precise. “Even faith must be leashed.”

Leto felt a chill pass through him. The way they spoke — as if war were a craft, blood a commodity. He realized then that what frightened him most was not the violence of the Jihad, but how calmly his father commanded it.

Chani’s hand found his beneath the table, grounding him. Her whisper reached only him. “Watch, Leto. Listen. This is the world you will inherit.”

Night cloaked Arrakeen in its pale, spice-lit haze. The moons hung low, painting the stone walls in silver. The palace slept — or pretended to. Even here, in the heart of the empire, the night never truly belonged to silence. Somewhere beyond the walls, the city murmured with life, with fear, with faith.

Leto moved like a shadow. His stillsuit was plain, borrowed from a servant’s quarters. The royal seal had been scraped from its shoulder patch. Beneath the hood, his hair was matted with dust to dull its color. In the mirror of a storage alcove, he hardly recognized himself — not as the Emperor’s son, not as the Holy Heir, but as another youth of the desert.

He slipped through the service halls, down stairwells and forgotten corridors that smelled of oil and old spice. Every step brought him closer to something that felt like freedom — or perhaps exile.

Outside, the wind hit his face, sharp and clean. The city sprawled below, its lights flickering like embers scattered across the sand. He took the narrow paths between buildings, past sleeping vendors and whispering worshipers who lit small lamps before murals of Muad’Dib’s stern face. He turned away from them all.

Near the barracks at the edge of the city, he found what he sought — a recruiter’s tent marked with the sigil of the Jihad. A banner of worn cloth fluttered above it, reading:
Fremen Needed for the Holy Campaign. Service is Faith. Faith is Glory.

He swallowed hard and entered.

Inside, the air was thick with spice smoke and sweat. A bored officer in a stained stillsuit looked up from his ledger. His left eye was milky with an old burn, but his right was sharp, suspicious.

“Name,” the officer grunted.

Leto hesitated — then lowered his voice. “Sahir.” The first name that came to mind. “From the western steppes.”

The officer snorted. “Another boy chasing glory. Can you handle a crysknife?”

Leto met his gaze steadily. “I’ve held one since I could walk.”

That earned a rough laugh. “Good. You’ll see blood soon enough, Sahir. Sign here.”

Leto took the stylus. His hand trembled for just a moment before the name bled across the page. He stared at the line after he’d written it — a false name, but a true rebellion.

The officer shoved a token into his hand — a rough disc of metal stamped with the mark of the Jihad. “Report to the staging yard at dawn. Don’t be late. The Emperor’s wars wait for no one.”

Leto turned to leave. The officer’s voice followed him, half a sneer, half respect. “You’ve got the look of one born to the dunes. Keep your head low and your knife ready. The desert loves the brave and eats the foolish.”

Outside, the wind had picked up again, carrying the faint scent of spice and fire. Leto stood beneath the stars — the same stars that had burned above the worm fields, above the water of the dead, above his father’s throne.

He clenched the token in his palm until it dug into his skin. For the first time in his life, he felt the weight of his choices — his own, not his father’s.

The son of Muad’Dib walked into the night, a nameless soldier of the Jihad.

Chapter Text

Dawn came cold and sharp. The first light crept over the dunes, painting them in pale gold. A wind stirred the sand, rattling banners strung between poles. The Fremen encampment stretched to the horizon — a sprawl of tents, supply skiffs, and smoke from morning fires.

Leto woke to the sound of laughter and metal. Men and women in worn stillsuits were already at work — checking weapons, mending gear, whispering prayers to Muad’Dib as they cleaned the sand from their blades. The smell of spice coffee and oil hung in the air.

He sat up, blinking, the rough canvas of the tent rustling around him. The stillsuit he wore was stiff with dust and sweat; it already felt like a second skin. His token of enlistment hung at his neck — a small, battered disc stamped with the mark of the Jihad.

Outside, the camp was alive. He joined a line for water rations, the air buzzing with talk.

“Word is the Emperor’s eyes are upon us,” said one soldier, his face marked with ritual scars. “Muad’Dib himself blessed this campaign.”

“Then we can’t lose,” another replied, grinning through cracked lips. “Not with Him watching.”

Leto listened in silence. They spoke of his father as if he were a god who lived beyond consequence, as if his name itself burned away doubt. Each word was devotion, blind and absolute.

A young woman caught him listening. She smiled, passing him a ration cup. “First campaign?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Then you’ll learn fast. The desert doesn’t wait.” She studied him for a moment, frowning. “You’ve got clean hands for a Fremen.”

Leto forced a small grin. “Not for long.”

She laughed and moved on.

Later, the call to assembly came — a rhythmic beating on steel. Hundreds gathered in the open, the sun rising behind them. A captain stepped forward onto a raised platform, his voice booming over the dunes.

“Brothers! Sisters! Today we march for the glory of Muad’Dib! The infidels of Belisar defy His word — they will learn the price of defiance!”

A cheer rose, fierce and unrestrained. The sound rolled across the camp like thunder. Soldiers raised their knives, their voices melding into a single chant:

“Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib!”

Leto stood among them, the name of his father echoing all around. He felt the vibration of it in his bones, like a living thing.

He wanted to shout too — to blend into them — but the words caught in his throat. All he could hear beneath the chant were the echoes of what he’d seen: the water of the dead, the worm’s thunder, his father’s hand at his throat.

When the crowd dispersed, he stood alone for a moment, staring toward the horizon where the sand met the sun. For the first time, he understood: this was the world his father had built — not of vision, but of blood.

And now he was part of it.

The army moved before dawn.
Sand hissed under their boots as lines of soldiers advanced toward the Belisari ridge — a long crescent of rock and dust where the enemy waited. The air was dry enough to cut, heavy with the smell of oil and the electric tang of lasguns.

Leto’s stillsuit was soaked with sweat before the sun had even cleared the horizon. His pack bit into his shoulders; his crysknife rubbed raw against his hip. He had imagined battle as swift and glorious — a single strike of destiny, a moment of victory. Instead, it was endless trudging through heat and dust, punctuated by fear.

The shouting began at midmorning. Explosions turned the dunes into geysers of flame and sand. The first wave fell before he even saw the enemy.

“Down!” someone shouted, and Leto hit the ground, the world erupting around him. Sand filled his mouth and eyes. He crawled forward through the chaos, his pulse pounding in his ears.

He saw a man beside him — a Fremen older than his father, his face a map of scars — clutching his belly where blood seeped through torn fabric. The man gasped, reached out, and pressed his hand into Leto’s arm. “For Muad’Dib,” he whispered, before falling still.

Leto froze, staring at the body.
For Muad’Dib.
For his father.

A whistle cut the air — a missile or a cry, he couldn’t tell — and the next instant sand rained down on him. He moved because instinct demanded it. Crawling, stumbling, running with the rest, until he found himself among a half dozen soldiers pinned behind a ridge.

The young woman from the ration line was there, her face streaked with blood and dust. She grinned through it, mad and alive. “Keep your head down, Sahir!” she shouted over the noise. “The infidels aim high!”

She fired blindly over the ridge, the lasgun humming in her hands. Leto ducked as another explosion tore the dune apart. The smell of burned flesh hit him.

There was no glory. No triumph. Only heat, terror, exhaustion — the endless rhythm of survival.

Hours passed. The battle stretched on until the sun hung low and red. When the fighting finally faltered, the dunes were littered with the still. Some whispered prayers, some just stared at the sky. The survivors were too tired to speak.

Leto sat among them, trembling. His hands were blistered from the heat of the weapon. His body ached in ways he’d never known. Around him, men murmured prayers to his father, their voices cracked and reverent.

He stared at the sand, at the blood soaking into it.
So this was the Jihad — not the songs, not the glory, not the chants echoing through the throne room. This was what it cost.

He felt something hollow open inside him.

When night fell, the wind swept across the battlefield, carrying the smell of spice and death. And Leto, heir of Muad’Dib, sat among the nameless and thought: I am no different from them.

The battle was over. The dunes still smelled of ash and burned oil, but the night that followed was strangely peaceful. The wind sighed over the low tents of the encampment, and the moons cast a soft, ghostly light across the sand.

Leto sat with a small circle of soldiers near one of the cookfires. Their faces were streaked with grime and fatigue, their stillsuits patched with sand-stained cloth. Yet there was laughter — rough, unguarded, real.

Tarek, the scarred veteran who had once scolded him for his “soft hands,” was scraping the carbon from his lasgun barrel with a sliver of bone. “You learn today, boy?” he asked without looking up.

Leto managed a weary grin. “That the desert doesn’t care who wins.”

That earned a low chuckle. “Aye. You sound like an old man already.”

Nehra — the young woman who had fought beside him — tossed him a ration pack. “Eat before you start philosophizing. Only the dead get to make speeches.”

He tore the pack open. The food was dry, tasteless, but somehow better than anything he’d eaten in the palace. Around the fire, the talk drifted — not of strategy or glory, but of ordinary things: water rations, lovers left behind, the price of boots on Caladan.

“I heard Muad’Dib himself walked the sands before the Jihad,” one of the younger soldiers said. His eyes glowed with reverence. “They say the worms bowed to him.”

Tarek spat into the sand. “Aye, the worms bow to no one. He rode them, maybe — that’s enough.”

The group laughed softly.

Leto stayed quiet. Every time they spoke his father’s name, something twisted inside him — pride and guilt tangled together. Yet here, among these people, the name wasn’t sacred; it was comfort. A story they told themselves so the next sunrise didn’t feel so far away.

Nehra leaned toward him. “You were good today,” she said, voice low. “Scared, but smart. You didn’t run.”

“I wanted to,” he admitted.

“Then you’re honest. That’s rarer than courage.” She smiled faintly. “You’ll make a real Fremen yet, Sahir.”

He smiled back — a small, genuine thing. For the first time since leaving the palace, he felt something like belonging.

Later, when the others drifted to sleep, he stayed by the dying fire, cleaning his weapon the way they’d shown him — stripping the sand, oiling the metal, reassembling it by touch. The motions were simple, grounding. The desert night stretched endless around him, the stars wheeling like silent watchers.

He thought of his father’s throne room, of the chants and the bloodless maps of war. Out here, the empire was not banners and edicts. It was these people — tired, hungry, laughing in the dark.

And for the first time, Leto began to understand the terrible beauty of what his father had built.

Days blurred together in the desert. March, dig, fight, rest. The sun burned away all sense of time until only fatigue remained.

Leto woke before dawn to the rasp of wind on canvas, the endless drone of sand moving against sand. His body ached in ways he hadn’t known were possible — his shoulders rubbed raw from the weight of the pack, his lips cracked from thirst. The water rations barely wet his tongue.

When he bathed, it wasn’t with water. There was none for that. He joined the others in the “sand showers” — a pit filled with fine, dry powder where they stripped off their stillsuits and rubbed themselves clean with handfuls of grit. The sand hissed against their skin, scraping away sweat and blood until only the scent of spice remained.

It was strange, brutal, and somehow pure.

“Water’s for the living,” Tarek said once, shaking dust from his hair. “Sand’s for the survivors.”

At night, hunger gnawed. The rations were thin — pressed spice bars and dried roots that tasted of metal. Sometimes Nehra would trade jokes for scraps, calling them feasts fit for worms. Other nights, they just lay in silence, listening to the dunes whisper outside the tents.

Leto grew leaner. His hands toughened, blistered, and scarred. His soft voice hardened from shouting over gunfire. His eyes learned to scan the horizon the way a Fremen did — always searching for movement, always ready to dive for cover.

It was hard, harder than anything palace life had ever demanded. But as exhaustion dug deeper into his bones, so did something else — a strange, quiet pride.

He wasn’t Muad’Dib’s son here. He wasn’t a symbol or a name whispered in prayer. He was just Sahir, a soldier among soldiers. He sweated, stumbled, cursed, and laughed like the rest. And when the sun set, when they gathered around a dim fire and passed a shared canteen, no one bowed to him.

One night, after a long march, he lay staring up at the stars through the torn fabric of the tent. The air was cold, biting at his skin. His stomach growled, but he smiled anyway.

So this is what it means to live, he thought. To be small. To be real.

He touched the crysknife at his side — not as heirloom, not as symbol, but as tool, as lifeline.

Out in the dunes, the wind rose and sang softly over the camp, a lullaby older than empires. And Leto, the emperor’s son, fell asleep with dust in his hair and a quiet, fierce peace in his heart.

Chapter Text

The order came before dawn.
Whispers rippled through the camp — another strike, another “cleansing.” The rebels had regrouped in the canyons near Hara Mesa. The command was simple: no prisoners.

Leto stood with his unit as the captain spoke, voice flat as stone. “They are heretics. They deny Muad’Dib and hoard spice from the Emperor’s tithe. You will show no mercy.”

The soldiers murmured assent. Leto said nothing.
But his stomach twisted. No mercy.

The march began under a hard red sun. They moved swiftly, the dunes parting before them like waves. By the time they reached the mesa, the air shimmered with heat — and fear.

Smoke already rose from the settlement below: a scatter of tents and sand-carved dwellings, humble and half-buried. Fremen soldiers fanned out, silent and efficient. The sound of lasguns cracked through the air, followed by screams.

Leto hesitated on the ridge. He had fought before, but never like this. Never against the unarmed.

“Move, Sahir!” Tarek barked. “We sweep the eastern ridge!”

He moved because he had to, his legs wooden. The screams grew louder as he reached the lower paths. Shapes ran through the haze — rebels, families, fleeing into the dust.

And then he saw a figure through the smoke.
Tall. Familiar.

The man turned at the sound of Leto’s boots, and in the half-light, their eyes met.

“Hadan.”

The name escaped Leto like a breath.

It was him — the soldier he’d met months ago in the city, the one who had spoken against the Jihad, who had told him of its horrors. His face was harder now, lined by sun and defiance. But it was unmistakable.

Hadan froze, recognition dawning in his eyes. “Leto…?”

The word hung in the air — soft, impossible.

Leto’s heart stuttered. Behind him, his squad was closing in. If they heard that name, everything was over.

“Run,” Leto hissed. “Go! Now!”

Hadan shook his head. “I told you, this war eats everything. Even you.”

The shout came from behind — “Rebel!” — and a las-blast seared the air. Hadan dove, rolling behind a dune, returning fire. The world exploded into noise.

Leto scrambled for cover, torn between duty and truth. He could hear Tarek’s voice shouting orders, could see his comrades closing in. Hadan fired again, wild, desperate — and Leto’s instincts took over.

He lunged from the ridge, tackle and struggle collapsing into sand. They rolled together, fists and blades flashing, the sound of breath and grit and rage.

“Stop!” Leto gasped. “Please—”

Hadan’s crysknife arced toward his face. Reflex took control. Leto’s arm rose — his blade found flesh.

A single, awful moment of silence.

Hadan’s eyes widened. He staggered, blood darkening the sand. “You…” he whispered, not accusation, not surprise — only sorrow. Then he fell.

Leto knelt over him, frozen. The sand beneath his knees drank the blood greedily. Around him, the raid still raged — shouts, fire, the thunder of boots. But he heard none of it. Only his heartbeat, and the whisper of the desert.

He stared at his hands — red, trembling, real.

Tarek’s voice cut through the haze. “Good work, Sahir! Another heretic down!”

Leto couldn’t answer. He looked at Hadan’s body, at the face of the man who had once called him child, who had once warned him about the cost of his father’s holy war.

Now Leto understood.

There were no sides. No saints. Only the desert, and the dead.

The fires burned bright against the night sky.
The camp was alive with shouting, laughter, song. Smoke coiled upward, carrying the smell of roasted meat and the acrid tang of spent spice. Someone had hung captured banners between two poles; someone else was beating a drum made from the rim of a broken shield.

They called it a victory feast.

Leto sat near the edge of the circle, his stillsuit unzipped at the neck, his face streaked with dust and something darker. The others drank deeply from shared flasks, their voices hoarse from chanting.

“To Muad’Dib!” they cried.
“To the Emperor’s Jihad!”

The chant rolled through the camp, swelling until it filled the air like a storm. Men danced barefoot in the sand. Nehra threw her arm around Tarek, laughing as he stumbled through a half-remembered song.

Leto forced a smile when she looked his way, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Tarek shoved a cup into his hands. “Drink, boy! You earned it! I saw you strike down that rebel dog myself.”

Leto froze. The cup trembled in his hand.

“That was clean work,” Tarek continued, slapping his back. “Swift and sure. A Fremen’s kill. You’ll make a Naib yet!”

The laughter that followed was raw and real — joy carved from exhaustion. Leto raised the cup mechanically, tasting the sharp spice liquor burn down his throat. It did nothing to dull the memory of Hadan’s eyes, open and unblinking in the sand.

The songs rose louder. Someone began to drum faster. Around the fire, soldiers clapped and stamped, the rhythm growing wild — half ritual, half delirium. They sang of Muad’Dib’s triumphs, of the “heretics” crushed beneath his holy fire.

The desert takes, the desert gives,
Blood for life, the Emperor lives!

Leto stared into the flames, his hands shaking. Each verse was another knife. These men — his friends — believed they were righteous. They laughed, drank, and shouted praises to the god he called Father.

He tried to join their laughter, but the sound that escaped his throat was hollow.

When Nehra leaned against him, smiling, he couldn’t meet her eyes. “You did well,” she murmured. “You’re one of us now.”

Leto turned away from the fire. The shadows behind the tents were deep, merciful. He rose quietly, leaving his cup in the sand.

As he walked into the darkness, the songs behind him grew fainter, swallowed by the wind. The stars stretched cold and endless above.

He looked at his hands again — clean now, but he could still feel the blood in the lines of his skin.

And in the distance, the chants still echoed, muffled but clear:
“Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib!”

Leto closed his eyes. The sound no longer stirred pride or fear. Only shame.

The night after the feast, Leto packed his gear in silence.
The camp slept in a haze of exhaustion and spice fumes — men sprawled across the sand, still clutching empty cups, their chants fading into snores. The fires had burned low, embers glowing like dying stars.

He worked quickly.
Water flask, knife, compass.
No more than a man could carry alone.

His hands shook as he sealed his stillsuit. Every movement felt heavier, slower. Just walk, he told himself. Keep walking until the dunes swallow everything.

He slipped from the tent, the wind cool on his face. The desert stretched before him — vast, silent, endless. For the first time in weeks, he felt something like hope.

But hope, like water, is never free.

He had barely crossed the outer dunes when a voice called from behind him.

“Going somewhere, Sahir?”

He froze.
Tarek stood a few paces away, his silhouette framed by the dying campfire. He wasn’t smiling this time. His lasgun hung casually from his shoulder, but the tone in his voice carried no laziness.

Leto turned slowly. “I just—needed air.”

Tarek walked closer. “Air? Out here? Alone? In the deep dunes, with no thumper, no worm hooks?” He snorted. “You think we’re fools?”

Others were stirring now — shadows moving behind the tents, the faint rasp of metal. The camp never truly slept; not in war.

Nehra appeared beside Tarek, her expression unreadable. “Where were you going?” she asked softly.

Leto hesitated. The truth clawed at his throat, desperate to escape. Home, he wanted to say. Anywhere but here.

Instead, he said nothing.

Tarek’s eyes narrowed. “Deserters die thirsty. You know that, don’t you?”

Leto’s pulse pounded. “I’m not a deserter.”

“Then what are you?”

The question cut too close.

“I’m—” He stopped. He could not say the Emperor’s son. Not here. Not among those who worshiped that name more fiercely than they loved life itself.

Tarek took a step closer. “If you walk away, Sahir, they’ll call you traitor. You’ll shame every man here. The desert will not forgive it, and neither will the Naibs.”

Leto felt the words press in on him like sand in his lungs. There is no leaving the Jihad. Once you had drunk the water, taken the oaths, killed in the Emperor’s name — the desert claimed you forever.

He looked past Tarek, out at the horizon, at the vast dark sea of dunes. Freedom was there. He could almost feel it. But between him and that horizon lay the faith of a million men.

Nehra’s voice came quiet, almost kind. “Come back to the tent, Sahir. Rest. You can leave tomorrow, after the next battle. That’s what everyone says.”

He almost laughed. After the next battle.

He lowered his head. “All right.”

Tarek clapped him on the shoulder. “Good lad.”

Leto followed them back toward the flickering fires, his steps slow, deliberate. Each footfall felt like sinking deeper into sand that would never let him go.

As the camp swallowed him again, he realized the truth:
It wasn’t the army that bound him.
It was the faith — the songs, the faces, the belief that his father was divine. He could no more walk away from that than he could from his own blood.

When he lay down that night, staring up at the torn fabric of the tent, he whispered to himself,
I am trapped in my father’s dream.

And the desert whispered back,
So is he.

The sun rose blood-red over the dunes.
No prayers that morning — only silence. Orders had come at dawn: another rebel holdout, another purge. The soldiers moved with practiced rhythm, loading weapons, checking stillsuits, saying little.

Leto did the same. His hands moved automatically now — sealing valves, checking water, adjusting his blade. There was no hesitation left in his muscles. Only the hollow steadiness that came after too much horror.

When Tarek slapped his shoulder and said, “You ready, boy?” Leto only nodded.

They moved out at sunrise. The desert shimmered with heat, the air thick with dust. By midday, the rebel village appeared — a cluster of stone huts half-buried in the sand.

The captain raised his arm. “By the word of Muad’Dib,” he called. “Cleanse them.”

And the killing began.

Leto ran with the others. The sound of lasguns tore the sky; the smell of burning spice filled his lungs. He saw men and women running, shouting, falling — indistinct shapes in the dust. He fired because everyone else did. Fired until his weapon overheated, until his arm ached from recoil.

A rebel burst from a doorway — a young man, barely older than Leto. Their eyes met for an instant, both frozen by recognition of shared fear. Then Leto’s blade flashed, and the boy fell.

He didn’t even hear himself scream.

Hours blurred into minutes. When it was done, the village was smoke and silence. Bodies lay half-buried in sand, faces turned toward the sky.

Tarek sat beside a wall, wiping blood from his knife. “You fought well, Sahir,” he said. “You’re one of us now.”

Leto didn’t answer. He looked at his hands — blackened, trembling — and wondered how many lives they’d taken that day.

The sun was setting when the captain gave the order to burn the bodies. The flames rose high, licking the sky, and the soldiers chanted the Emperor’s name.

“Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib!”

The sound rolled through the valley like thunder.

Leto joined the chant — his voice hoarse, cracked — because not joining would have made him stand out. Because he couldn’t let them see his shame.

As the fire roared, he felt something inside him fracture. Not all at once, but quietly — the kind of break that doesn’t heal.

He had killed again. And again, the desert had not judged him.

That night, he lay beneath the stars, the taste of ash still in his mouth. Around him, the soldiers slept in peace, dreaming of glory.

Leto stared at the dark sky and whispered to himself,
There is no glory. Only survival.

He closed his eyes, but sleep did not come.

They came expecting war.
But when the transports descended through the red clouds of Tleir IX, no gunfire greeted them. No burning cities, no resistance at all.

The army disembarked into silence. The wind blew through the open plazas of the capital, carrying the faint scent of spice and incense. Banners bearing the sigil of the Atreides hawk fluttered from the towers — freshly raised.

The city had surrendered before they’d even landed.

The soldiers stood restless in the streets, gripping weapons that suddenly felt useless. Some muttered that the air here was too soft, the people too quiet. Others spat and cursed.

“Cowards,” Tarek growled beside Leto. “They didn’t even fight.”

Nehra smirked, though there was no humor in it. “No blood, no glory. Just kneeling.”

Leto said nothing. He watched the crowd — thousands of civilians gathered in the square, heads bowed, lips murmuring prayers. Not to their own gods. To Muad’Dib.

At the center of the plaza stood a raised platform, carved with the sigil of the Imperial Throne. On it, crates of spice were stacked in neat rows — tribute, glimmering like liquid gold.

A robed emissary stepped forward and bowed low. “The planet Tleir submits to the divine will of Muad’Dib. Our faith is complete. Our tribute—” he gestured to the spice “—flows to His glory.”

Leto felt the words cut into him. Faith is complete.
No swords, no screams. Just obedience.

The captain of the Fremen troops gave a signal. The soldiers lowered their weapons, though their faces twisted with disappointment. Without battle, there would be no songs, no spoils, no stories to carry home.

Then, as the emissary finished his recitation, a figure appeared on the holo-display above the platform — projected from the orbiting fleet.

Paul Atreides.

The Emperor’s face filled the sky, calm and distant, his eyes like twin suns. The crowd dropped to their knees in unison, a ripple of devotion.

Leto stood frozen, staring up at his father’s image.

Paul’s voice was quiet, almost tender. “The people of Tleir have chosen peace. The desert remembers those who do not resist its way. May the spice flow, and may your water be preserved.”

The holo faded.

Around him, the soldiers murmured. That was mercy, some said. The Emperor’s mercy.

In the silence that followed, attendants moved through the crowd, sprinkling the spice dust across the air. The scent was intoxicating — heady, sacred. The people breathed it in, their eyes glassy with awe.

Leto felt it coat his tongue, sweet and strange. This was how his father ruled now: not with blades, but with dreams. The spice was obedience made tangible — the illusion of grace that chained entire worlds.

He watched a child kneel beside his mother, spice-stained tears on her cheeks, whispering the name Muad’Dib.

No corpses here. No fire. Just worship.

And somehow, that frightened Leto more than all the killing he had seen.

Tarek exhaled beside him. “The Emperor spares them. Strange times.”

Nehra shrugged. “Strange, maybe. But we’ll move on soon enough. There’s always another world.”

Leto looked at the sky where his father’s face had been — vast, impersonal, omnipresent — and whispered to himself:

He rules not through death now… but through mercy that feels like surrender.

The wind stirred the spice dust around him, turning the light gold. He closed his eyes, feeling it burn softly in his lungs.

It smelled like faith.

And it tasted like control.

The army marched on.
But now their battles were fewer, their victories easier. Whole worlds surrendered before a single shot was fired. The people of the Imperium had learned the shape of fear — and the taste of devotion.

Everywhere they landed, the name Muad’Dib preceded them like a wind. Priests in dust-colored robes greeted the soldiers with chants; children scattered petals of spice at their feet.

The others took it as glory.
Leto took it as silence.

And yet, somewhere in that silence, something inside him began to change.

He no longer flinched when the name of his father was spoken. No longer felt the reflexive shame when others whispered prayers. Instead, he listened. Watched. Learned.

He began to see the pattern.

Every surrender, every sacrifice, every city that bent the knee — it all fed into something vast and deliberate. A single pulse, moving across the stars. The more the universe burned, the more unified it became.

At night, as he sat apart from the fires, Leto found himself tracing lines in the sand — worlds connected by invisible threads, like veins in a living body. The Jihad wasn’t chaos. It was a circulatory system of fear and faith, flowing around one beating heart: his father.

He began to understand why Paul had spoken of the Golden Path.
A terrible path.
A necessary one.

One evening, after a bloodless annexation on a green world far from Arrakis, Tarek found him staring at the sunset over the water.

“You’re quiet these days, Sahir,” he said, sitting beside him. “Not like before.”

Leto watched the waves roll against the shore. “I used to think the Jihad was madness,” he said softly. “Now I think… maybe madness is what the universe needed.”

Tarek barked a short laugh. “Now you sound like a priest.”

Leto smiled faintly. “Maybe they were right all along. Maybe without fear, people forget what they are.”

Tarek’s face hardened. “Don’t start believing too much, boy. Belief will eat you faster than the desert.”

But even as he said it, Leto saw the glimmer of faith in the man’s eyes — the contradiction all of them lived with. They hated the blood, but needed the purpose.

That night, Leto dreamed of his father. Not as the emperor, but as the man he’d once been — standing alone on the dunes, wind tearing at his cloak. Paul’s eyes glowed like twin suns, and his voice echoed across the dream.

“You see it now, don’t you? There is no peace without the memory of war.”

When Leto awoke, he didn’t answer aloud. But in the hollow of his chest, in the quiet of his thoughts, something had begun to agree.

He still despised the killing.
Still mourned the innocent.
But he began to see that the Jihad had become more than blood — it was the scaffolding of an order that bound the universe together.

And perhaps, he thought with a mixture of fear and awe, perhaps this was what it meant to be Atreides.
To see horror, and understand why it must continue.

He whispered into the dawn wind:
I will not be my father… but I will walk where he walked.

The desert did not answer.
But the silence felt like acceptance.

The warships moved in quiet formation, their hulls glinting like knives against the void.
Leto stood alone at the viewport, watching the stars slide past in silence. Beneath his feet, an entire world rotated — conquered, pacified, converted. The latest in a chain that stretched across light-years.

From up here, it all looked beautiful.
Perfect.

No screams. No smoke. No blood. Just order — lines of light mapping the trade routes of a reborn empire, shimmering like veins in the flesh of a god.

He pressed his palm to the glass and whispered to himself, “So this is what he sees.”

Once, he had hated it — the slaughter, the chanting, the unending machine of faith. But months in the desert, and the faces of the fallen, and the quiet submission of whole planets had burned something new into him. A terrible clarity.

Humanity, he realized, was not noble. It was not wise. It was frightened and ravenous, always building, always destroying, devouring itself to live another day. It would never stop unless forced to.

And the Jihad had forced it.

On every world, under every banner, the same words were spoken:
Muad’Dib protects. Muad’Dib sees. Muad’Dib endures.

It was tyranny—but it was unity.
It was blood—but it was purpose.

He thought of Hadan, of the rebels he’d slain, of the eyes that had looked at him not as a god but as a boy. He thought of the women who burned incense to his father’s name. All of them, parts of the same immense organism—hurting, hating, believing.

And in that terrible symmetry, he saw something beautiful.

Perhaps, he thought, this was what his father had meant:
that beauty could live in destruction,
that survival might only be born from ruin.

He looked out again, watching a transport ship descend toward a city whose people already knelt in worship. The engines left contrails of gold across the atmosphere.

“It’s all horrible,” he murmured, “and yet it works.”

In that whisper, there was awe — and sorrow.

The door behind him hissed open. Nehra stepped in quietly, her boots soft on the metal floor. “You’re staring again,” she said. “You look like one of those priests before a shrine.”

“Maybe I am,” Leto replied, not turning. “Except the god is made of sand.”

She frowned, unsure if it was jest or truth. “You sound like a man who believes.”

He finally looked at her — eyes tired, calm, almost radiant in the reflected light of the stars. “Belief isn’t the same as approval,” he said softly. “It’s seeing the truth… and still not looking away.”

Nehra studied him for a long moment, then nodded. “You’ve changed, Sahir.”

“I know,” he said. And for the first time, he didn’t sound ashamed.

When she left, he stood alone again, gazing out at the empire his father had forged — at the rivers of light flowing between conquered worlds.

It was monstrous. It was magnificent.
It was humanity, stripped of illusion.

And Leto, son of Muad’Dib, began to love it.

Not because it was good.
But because it was true.

Chapter Text

The sky above Vathis Prime burned orange with smoke.
What was meant to be a swift raid had turned into chaos — the Fremen ambushed, scattered, their lines collapsing under relentless fire.

Leto crouched behind the wreck of a spice hauler, sand and glass biting his skin. Around him, the screams of dying men rose with the whine of lasguns. The enemy moved in — not the fearful peasants of other worlds, but trained soldiers, furious, unbending.

He fired until his weapon overheated, until the sand shimmered red with reflected flame. But there were too many. His unit was gone. Tarek — dead. Nehra — missing. The air itself seemed to bleed.

When the grenade hit the dune beside him, the explosion flung him into the open. His crysknife flew from his hand, his breath ripped away.

He rolled over, half-blind with dust. A rebel loomed above him — armored, faceless, raising a blade.

Leto stared up at the steel descending.
He didn’t think. He didn’t pray.

He simply knew it was over.

Then the wind changed.

A sound like thunder rolled across the battlefield — the low, vibrating hum of a thumper, but impossibly strong. The sand shivered. A shadow fell across the ridge, vast and shifting.

The rebels froze.

Out of the smoke came four figures, their silhouettes cutting through the storm.

The first strode forward, his cloak snapping in the wind — his face half-veiled, his eyes burning blue-on-blue like twin stars.

Paul Atreides. Muad’Dib.

At his side moved Chani, her stillsuit gleaming with dust and blood, her crysknife drawn. Her gaze was death itself.

Behind them walked Jessica, serene and terrible, Bene Gesserit composure masking fury. And Alia, small and graceful, her blade dancing through the light like a serpent of fire.

They moved as one — a blur of motion, a single organism of vengeance.

The rebels opened fire.

Paul’s hand rose, the world seemed to tilt — the air itself bending to his will. Shots veered off-course, men stumbled as though pulled by unseen gravity. Jessica whispered a command that turned the nearest soldiers against their own.

Chani cut through a line of men like the desert wind — precise, merciless, elegant. Alia laughed, a sound of madness and divinity intertwined, her knife flashing through throats and armor alike.

Leto lay half-buried in sand, watching — stunned, transfixed, horrified.

He had seen war.
He had seen death.
But this was something else.

This was godhood unleashed.

Within minutes, the field was silent. The last of the rebels dropped to their knees, trembling before the figures who had descended from smoke and myth.

Paul stood over the dead, breathing hard, his eyes like hollow suns. When he looked down and saw Leto — bloody, shaking, alive — something flickered across his face. Not joy. Not relief. Recognition.

Chani knelt beside her son, her hands quick and steady as she checked his pulse. “He’s all right,” she murmured, her voice both fierce and trembling. “He’s all right.”

Leto stared past her — at his father, his aunt, his grandmother — and the bodies strewn around them. The ground was soaked in blood that steamed under the heat.

He whispered, barely audible:
“You killed them all.”

Paul looked at him, unreadable. “They would have killed you.”

“I know.”

And in that moment, he understood — this was the true shape of the Atreides. Not kings, not martyrs, not saviors. Predators born to the desert.
Divinity made of violence.

Chani helped him to his feet. Her touch was gentle, her face streaked with dust and tears.

Behind them, Alia wiped her blade clean and smiled faintly. “Now he’s seen it for himself.”

Jessica’s voice was quiet. “And what will he do with that sight?”

Paul turned toward the horizon where the smoke bled into sunset. His answer was low, almost to himself.

“He’ll remember that mercy is the luxury of gods — and we can no longer afford to be merciful.”

The wind rose again, carrying the scent of blood and spice.

Leto stood amidst the carnage, his family’s shadows long across the sand, and knew:
there was no longer any path back to innocence.

The battle was over — but the killing had not yet stopped.

From where Leto stood, half-supported by Chani’s arm, he watched as the last pockets of resistance were wiped away.
Rebels fled through the canyons, only to be cut down by invisible shots. Others dropped their weapons and begged for mercy that never came.

Paul gave no command.
He didn’t need to.

His presence alone was command enough.

Alia moved like a shadow, her laughter faint and wild as she finished the wounded. Jessica’s voice murmured words that bent men’s wills until they turned their own blades inward, ending themselves in silence.

And Paul —
Paul walked through it all, calm, terrible, inevitable. His crysknife moved almost lazily, and the air shimmered with the faint hum of prescient tension, as though the future itself bent to his rhythm.

The rebels had called it faith.
Leto saw it now for what it was — annihilation disguised as destiny.

He wanted to look away, but his mother held him still, her hand firm at the back of his neck. Her voice was soft, almost reverent.
“Watch, Leto. Never forget what power truly looks like.”

He did.
He watched until there were no more rebels, only the wind and the bodies it caressed.

When it was done, silence fell like a shroud.
The desert was still again, the air thick with the iron tang of blood and the faint sweetness of spice.

Paul turned, his cloak snapping in the wind. “Gather what remains,” he said quietly. “The desert will take the rest.”

Chani nodded, and at a gesture from Jessica, the Fremen detachments — silent and efficient — began to clear the field.

Leto said nothing. His body was numb, his mind a hollow storm.
He had seen his father’s wars from afar — from thrones and maps, from the safe distance of abstraction. But now he had seen the Atreides themselves descend upon the battlefield like living storms.

They were unstoppable.
They were gods.
And gods could not be loved — only obeyed.

When they reached the waiting ornithopters, Paul stopped and looked at his son.

“You’re coming home.”

Leto hesitated. “Home?”
The word felt foreign, almost meaningless.

Paul’s gaze held him, quiet but unyielding. “You’ve seen enough of the desert.”

Leto wanted to argue, to shout, to say he wasn’t ready — or that he was finally beginning to understand. But no words came. He only nodded.

The thopter’s engines roared to life, drowning out the wind.
As it lifted into the sky, the battlefield shrank beneath them — a tapestry of flame and shadow, already being swallowed by drifting sand.

Leto looked down.
He had thought he’d seen the worst of the Jihad.
He realized now that he had only seen its beginning.

Chani rested a hand on his shoulder. “You lived,” she whispered, as though that were victory enough.

But Leto could not answer.
He watched the desert stretching endless beneath them, the wind smoothing away the traces of what had been.
The desert forgave everything — even murder.

And as the craft carried him back toward Arrakeen, toward his father’s palace of stone and silence, Leto understood the cruelest truth of all:

He was not being rescued.
He was being reclaimed.

The palace was colder than Leto remembered.
Stone and silence — both immaculate. The corridors smelled faintly of spice and stillness. Every footstep echoed as if the walls themselves were listening.

They had not spoken on the flight back.
Not Paul. Not Chani. Not anyone.

When they landed, servants and guards prostrated themselves, murmuring prayers. Chani’s hand lingered briefly on Leto’s arm, then she turned away, her face unreadable. Alia smiled faintly as she passed him — not cruelly, but knowingly. Jessica said nothing at all.

Leto followed his father into the throne chamber.

It was empty now — no courtiers, no guards, no sound but the steady hum of the machinery that cooled the air. The great doors sealed behind them with a hiss that sounded almost like breath.

Paul stood at the window, his back to Leto, watching the sun sink behind the dunes. The light caught the gold threads in his robe, turning him into a silhouette of fire.

For a long moment, neither spoke.

Then Paul said quietly, without turning,

“You thought you were hidden from me.”

Leto froze.

Paul turned slowly, his gaze calm and absolute. The blue-on-blue of his eyes glowed faintly in the dim light.

“You wore disguises. You used false names. You bled among the soldiers and thought the gods would not notice.”

He took a step closer.

“But I saw you, Leto. From the beginning.”

The words struck harder than any blow.

“You knew?” Leto managed, his voice hoarse. “You let me fight? You let me—”
He stopped, his throat tightening. “You let me kill?”

Paul’s expression didn’t change. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Paul’s tone softened, almost paternal. “Because you had to see. There are truths that can’t be taught in a palace. You had to feel the desert’s teeth, to understand what it costs to rule.”

Leto’s hands clenched. “You call that understanding? I watched people die for your name!”

“For our name,” Paul corrected. His gaze sharpened, cutting through Leto’s anger. “You are Atreides. You are Fremen. Their blood sings in you. The universe will not spare you from its hunger — so you must learn to feed it before it devours you.”

Leto stepped back, shaking his head. “That’s not wisdom. That’s madness.”

Paul’s smile was faint — almost kind. “Madness and wisdom often share a border, my son. You crossed it the moment you joined the Jihad.”

Leto stared at him — at the calm, the absolute certainty. The terrible serenity of a man who could see every possible future and had chosen this one.

He whispered, “You watched me fall, just to prove your point.”

Paul turned away, looking out at the fading light. “I watched you become. I saw what you will need to be. The Golden Path requires a heart that bleeds, but does not break.”

Leto’s voice trembled. “And if I don’t want that path?”

Paul didn’t look back.

“You already walk it.”

The room fell silent.

The last of the sunlight vanished beyond the dunes, and for a heartbeat, the only illumination came from the faint glow of the spice lamps — their light the same deep gold as Leto’s eyes.

Father and son, mirrored in the darkness — both trapped in the same prophecy.

Leto finally whispered, “Then I was never free.”

Paul’s reply was quiet, almost tender:

“No Atreides ever was.”

Chapter Text

Days passed.
Or maybe it was weeks — time in the palace flowed differently, slow and viscous, like spice syrup.

Leto had returned to the same marble halls where he’d grown up, the same fountains whispering under filtered light, the same servants bowing low as he walked past. But everything felt wrong now — smaller, thinner, as if the walls themselves were afraid to breathe.

He had forgotten how quiet it was here.
No engines. No wind. No war chants. Just the low hum of air recyclers and the echo of his own footsteps.

At first, he couldn’t sleep. The bed was too soft; the sheets too clean. He woke in the middle of the night, heart pounding, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Once, he caught his reflection in the mirror and didn’t recognize the boy staring back — his face still young, but his eyes older than his father’s.

The servants whispered that he had changed.
He didn’t deny it.

He spent his mornings walking through the training courtyards, bare-footed on the cool tiles, remembering the feel of sand beneath him. The guards sparred in silence — polished, efficient, lifeless. He missed the rough laughter of the soldiers, the grit and sweat of real fighting.

At meals, he sat beside Chani and said little.
She watched him with that knowing stillness that only she possessed. She never asked about the raids or the men he’d killed. She didn’t have to. She saw it in his posture — the quiet pride and the quiet guilt.

Alia sometimes joined them, eyes bright and mischievous, speaking of new decrees and captured worlds as if recounting gossip. Leto listened but didn’t respond. Every word about “victory” made something in him recoil.

Jessica came to him once, in the old garden. The air there was rich with imported flowers — an extravagant waste of water. She touched his cheek lightly, studying him as if she could read the history written in his skin.
“You have your father’s calm now,” she said.
“I don’t feel calm,” he replied.
“That’s why it’s dangerous,” she murmured.

Even the Fremen courtiers seemed different to him now — softer, ceremonial, their faith gilded by comfort. They recited the Litany of Muad’Dib before feasts, but the words had lost their sting. Leto thought of the men who had chanted that same litany knee-deep in blood, believing every syllable.

He missed them.
And he pitied them.

At night, he stood on the balcony overlooking Arrakeen, the city glowing below — domes and towers rising like the skeleton of a dream. Beyond the walls stretched the desert, vast and dark, the same desert that had nearly killed him, the same that had made his family gods.

He could almost hear the wind moving through it, carrying whispers of the Jihad — the wars still burning beyond the horizon.

His father ruled from these halls. His mother prayed for balance. His aunt and grandmother played their Bene Gesserit games. But the desert remained outside, endless and patient, waiting for him.

Sometimes he wondered if he belonged there more than here.

He told himself he was home again.
But the truth — the one he didn’t say aloud — was that he’d left his home in the sand, with the dead and the nameless.

The summons came at dawn.

Leto found his father in the Hall of Winds — a long, narrow chamber where thin streams of air whistled through carved vents, producing a low, ghostly hum. The sound had always unnerved him as a child. Now it seemed fitting.

Paul stood before a great sand-table — a topographical projection of the Imperium. Whole worlds shimmered as miniature dunes and ridges of light. Fleets pulsed like dust motes, each one a world’s fate.

Without turning, Paul said, “You’ve rested long enough.”

Leto bowed his head. “I’m ready.”

Paul’s eyes flicked toward him — cool, assessing. “Ready for what?”

Leto hesitated. “Whatever you wish of me.”

A faint smile. “A careful answer. But not an honest one.”

He gestured to the sand-table. “Tell me what you see.”

Leto stepped closer. The holographic landscape rippled at his approach — dunes of light reforming into the patterns of the known empire. He recognized the trade routes, the garrison worlds, the territories conquered during his absence.

“I see order,” Leto said. “Peace. The Jihad is slowing.”

“Slowing,” Paul repeated, as if tasting the word. “You think peace is what you’re looking at?”

Leto studied the map again. The blinking symbols of the Fremen legions spread across the stars like spores — a living organism. A fragile one. “No,” he admitted. “I see control. Balance held by fear.”

Paul nodded, approving. “Good. Fear can be a kind of peace.”

He circled the table slowly. “You’ve seen the chaos of war. You’ve seen men die for my name. Now you’ll see what comes after. Governance is the more difficult war.”

Leto frowned. “You want me to rule?”

Paul turned sharply, his voice calm but absolute. “I want you to learn to rule.”

He gestured again — a new projection flared to life: the planet Beroth, one of the outer spice worlds. Its surface shimmered red and gold, but half the image flickered with warning symbols.

“Beroth has defied tax collection,” Paul said. “Their Naib claims famine. The Guild says piracy. The priests say heresy.”

He looked directly at his son. “You’ll go there. Settle it.”

Leto’s eyes widened. “Alone?”

Paul shook his head. “With Alia and a small retinue. Jessica says you still need her discipline.”

Leto tried to read his father’s expression. “And if I fail?”

Paul’s gaze softened — but only slightly. “Then the desert didn’t change you after all.”

Leto swallowed. “And if I succeed?”

Paul turned back to the map. “Then perhaps I can rest.”

The words were soft, but they landed like stone.

There was silence between them — the hum of the vents filling the air like a heartbeat.

Finally, Paul said, “You saw war from the eyes of the common soldier. Now you’ll see the rot that grows in peace. Both are poison if you don’t learn to master them.”

Leto bowed, his voice steady though his chest was tight. “I understand.”

“Do you?” Paul asked. “Understanding isn’t enough. You must act as if you believe. Even when belief costs you everything.”

Their eyes met — father and son, emperor and heir — a mirror of inevitability.

Paul’s final words came like a benediction and a warning:

“The desert tested your body. The throne will test your soul.”

Leto inclined his head. “Then let it begin.”

Paul watched him go, the faintest flicker of pride crossing his face — but beneath it, something else. Fear.

He turned back to the map of his empire — the great web of faith and flame he had built — and whispered to himself,

“May he see the path more clearly than I did.”

The shuttle broke through Beroth’s upper atmosphere in a roar of heat and light.
From the viewport, the planet stretched below — a fractured world of ochre deserts and rust-colored seas. Sparse cities clung to the edges of dried riverbeds, their domes cracked and half-buried by sandstorms.

Leto stood at the window in silence, his hands clasped behind his back. Beside him, Alia lounged in her seat, eyes glinting with amused superiority.

“You look disappointed,” she said.

He didn’t answer at first. “I thought it would be worse,” he said finally. “Father made it sound like a plague.”

Alia smiled faintly. “Plague, famine, heresy… every excuse is the same. People tire of worship when it doesn’t fill their bellies.”

She looked down at the city coming into view — a sprawl of faded towers and spice refineries, guarded by rusted thopters and weary sentries. “They’ve grown soft,” she murmured. “You’ll see.”

The shuttle landed on a narrow pad overlooking the capital. The wind was dry, heavy with spice dust. As the ramp lowered, the local governor and his entourage knelt in a practiced display of devotion, their robes faded and eyes hollow.

“Glory to Muad’Dib,” the governor intoned. “And to his divine son.”

Leto stepped forward, his stillsuit cloak stirring in the wind. “Rise,” he said. “We’ll dispense with the formalities.”

The man obeyed, startled. Alia’s eyes flicked toward her brother, faintly amused — she was taking notes on how he ruled already.

The streets were nearly empty as they made their way into the city. The people who did appear bowed hastily, avoiding eye contact. Leto noticed the smell of rot beneath the spice in the air.

“Where are your markets?” he asked the governor.
“Closed, my lord,” came the answer. “The last shipment of grain from Arrakis was delayed. The guild ships—”
“Excuses,” Alia interrupted, her voice like a blade. “Your warehouses are full of spice. Trade for food. Do you forget how the Imperium works?”

The man bowed low. “The smugglers have grown bold. The rebels—”

Leto raised a hand, silencing him. “Enough.”

He looked around — the peeling murals of Muad’Dib on the walls, the banners torn and sun-faded, the hollow faces of those watching from the alleys.
This wasn’t rebellion born of hatred. It was exhaustion.

Later, in the governor’s hall — a crumbling chamber lit by dying glowglobes — Leto convened his first council.
Merchants, priests, spice masters, and militia captains gathered before him, bowing but not meeting his eyes.

He studied them, weighing their silence.
These were not warriors, not zealots. They were survivors — wary, brittle, already halfway broken.

“The Emperor sent me to restore order,” Leto said. “But I don’t rule through fear. I want to know why this world has fallen into ruin.”

A merchant spoke first — a frail man with trembling hands. “We have no water, my lord. The last reservoirs were poisoned by raiders. We begged for aid from Arrakis but—”

“The requests never reached us,” Alia said, her tone sharp with disbelief.

Another man, a priest with sunken eyes, whispered, “The people have lost faith. The prayers no longer comfort them.”

“Because they’re hungry,” Leto said quietly.

The priest lowered his gaze.

Leto rose from his seat. “I will see these reservoirs myself. Tomorrow.”

The council murmured in confusion. No lord, no heir, no child of Muad’Dib walked the desert without escort.

Alia’s voice sliced through the noise. “He’ll see them, and he’ll judge you. Pray he finds no lies.”

Leto looked at her — the sister who had lived too long inside prophecy. There was affection there, but also distance. She had learned to rule through fear. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

That night, he stood on the palace balcony overlooking the barren city. The lights flickered weakly below — a civilization dimming like a candle in wind.

He thought of his father’s map of the empire, the glowing arteries of control.
Here, one of those arteries had begun to rot.

And now it was his task to save it — or cut it off.

Leto whispered to the desert wind, “Let me be better than what made me.”

The following morning, the sun on Beroth was pale and sickly, its light filtered through drifting red haze. Leto rode out from the city with a small escort of Fremen guards — silent men with sand-scarred faces and the stillness of predators.

Alia had protested, of course. “You’re the heir of Muad’Dib, not a surveyor,” she had said, but Paul’s lessons whispered in his mind: A ruler who does not know the suffering of his people cannot rule them.

They reached the edge of the city by noon. Beyond the walls, the land was a graveyard of dunes and stone — the bones of rivers that had long since dried. A cracked aqueduct stretched into the horizon like the ribs of a dead giant.

The first reservoir lay at the base of a collapsed mesa. Once, it must have been magnificent — carved cisterns lined with collectors, a thousand-year labor of engineering and prayer. Now, it was black.

The smell hit before they descended — rot, spice, and something chemical.

A technician bowed low as they approached. “My lord,” he said, “we sealed it last month. The rebels tainted the flow. We lost three villages before we realized.”

Leto knelt beside the reservoir’s edge. The water shimmered with oily film — a sheen that caught the sun in colors that didn’t belong in nature. When he stirred it with a stick, a clump of dead fish floated to the surface.

He could hear the Fremen behind him murmuring a death chant for the wasted water.

“How many died?” he asked.

The technician hesitated. “Hundreds, my lord. Thousands, perhaps. The sickness spreads slowly.”

Leto looked at the horizon — where the dunes rolled endlessly, where the wind whispered like something alive. “Water is life,” he said softly. “Here, you’ve turned life into poison.”

A woman emerged from the shade of a broken wall. Her face was veiled, but her voice trembled with both awe and bitterness. “We prayed to Muad’Dib,” she said. “We begged for rain. For mercy. And none came.”

The guards moved to silence her, but Leto raised a hand. “Let her speak.”

The woman stepped closer, her eyes burning through the veil. “You call this peace? You rule through fear and call it faith. You tell us to drink dust and bless your name while our children choke.”

The guards reached for their weapons.

Leto turned sharply. “No!”

They froze.

He looked at the woman. “What would you have me do?”

Her voice cracked. “Stop pretending to be a god.”

The silence that followed was unbearable. Even the wind seemed to pause.

Leto’s throat tightened. He wanted to tell her she was wrong — that the empire wasn’t his doing, that the Jihad had swallowed even his father whole — but he couldn’t. Because part of him knew she was right.

He knelt, scooping a handful of the poisoned water. The sunlight fractured across the surface like shattered glass. “We’ll purify it,” he said quietly. “All of it. I swear it.”

The woman laughed — not cruelly, but hopelessly. “Words. Always words.” She turned and walked away, her veil fluttering in the hot wind.

Leto watched her go, then turned to his guards. “Send for every engineer, every stillsuit maker, every water-trader in this city. I want solutions, not excuses.”

The Fremen bowed. “Yes, my lord.”

As they mounted their thopters to return, Leto looked back one last time at the black pool gleaming like an open wound in the desert.

He thought of the armies he had fought with, of the worlds that had burned for his father’s name, and realized that death had been simpler than this.
Death ended.
Decay lingered.

For the first time, he felt what his father must have felt when he saw the future: the crushing weight of endless responsibility.

He whispered, not to the guards, not even to himself, but to the desert that stretched beyond hearing:

If this is what it means to rule, then perhaps no man should.

The wind answered with silence.
But in that silence, he thought he could hear the faint rhythm of destiny — slow, patient, and merciless.

Three days passed. The sky over Beroth turned the color of rust, the wind heavy with the scent of storm.
In the governor’s palace, once the pride of the planet and now half in ruin, Leto stood over the long stone table, its surface littered with maps, data slates, and crude sketches of broken aqueducts.

He hadn’t slept.
Neither had the engineers he’d summoned — Fremen water-sellers, smugglers, even rebel technicians pardoned for their knowledge.

They spoke of scarcity, of drought, of purification systems too costly to import. The numbers were hopeless.

Until Leto said quietly, “Then we use the spice.”

The room fell silent.

A merchant blinked. “My lord?”

“The spice amplifies life,” Leto said. “It alters the body, the mind. Why not the water?”

He turned to the technicians. “Distillation plants already exist for spice separation. Reverse the process. We use trace spice particles as purification catalysts — to burn away the poisons.”

Murmurs filled the chamber. The governor protested: “It’s heresy to waste the sacred essence for water!”

Leto’s voice cut through the noise, calm and clear.

“What’s the worth of spice if no one lives to harvest it?”

The council fell silent again.

Alia, seated in the corner, finally spoke. Her tone was soft but sharp as glass. “You’d use the Emperor’s treasure for peasants’ thirst?”

Leto turned to her. “For their lives.”

“They rebelled,” she said. “They poisoned their own water. Weakness is a contagion. You’ll teach them to defy us again.”

Leto stepped closer. “If mercy breeds rebellion, then we’ve built an empire too fragile to deserve loyalty.”

Her eyes flashed, her smile small and cold. “You sound like Mother.”

“And you sound like Father when he forgets he’s human,” he answered.

The room grew still. Even the hum of the air vents seemed to pause.

For a long moment, the twins of prophecy faced each other — two reflections of Atreides power: one forged in blood, the other in conscience.

Finally, Alia rose. “Do as you wish, nephew. Fix their wells, feed their children. But remember — when you give them water, they will think they are equal to you.”

Leto met her gaze. “Then perhaps one day they should be.”

She studied him for a moment longer, then smiled faintly — the kind of smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re beginning to sound dangerous.”

When she left, the council exhaled as if a storm had passed.

Leto turned back to the table. “Begin the modifications. Spice shipments will be diverted from the guild storehouses immediately. We’ll rebuild every reservoir.”

The technicians bowed, murmuring blessings to the “Merciful Son.”

That title made him flinch.

Later, standing on the palace balcony as the first machinery began to churn in the desert below, Leto watched the faint shimmer of spice dust rising into the air — gold against the red sky.

He felt pride, yes — but also fear.
Not of failure.
Of success.

Because if this worked, if compassion could mend what conquest had broken… then what did that say about the empire his father had built?

He whispered to the wind,
Maybe mercy isn’t weakness. Maybe it’s what strength forgot to be.

Behind him, unseen, Alia watched from the shadows. Her expression was unreadable — admiration mingled with calculation.

In her mind, one truth formed like a knife’s edge: Leto’s kindness might yet be more dangerous than Paul’s power.

Chapter Text

The throne room was silent when Leto entered.
The air felt thick with tension, heavier even than the desert heat outside. Paul sat upon the high seat, head bowed slightly, hands folded — not in thought, but restraint. Chani stood nearby, her expression cautious, as though she could already sense what was about to unfold.

Leto knelt. “Father. I’ve returned from Beroth. The reservoirs flow again.”

Paul’s voice was quiet, too quiet. “Yes. I’ve heard. The priests call it a miracle. They say the people now bless the name of the ‘Merciful Son.’”

The title stung in the air. Leto hesitated. “They were dying. I couldn’t let that stand.”

Paul rose from the throne. The movement was slow, deliberate. When he spoke again, his tone carried the weight of thunder barely held in check.
“You used the spice.”

“I used what we had,” Leto answered. “The spice purifies. It sustains life. I used it to save—”

“To waste it,” Paul cut in. His voice echoed through the chamber, cold and sharp. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

Leto looked up. “I saved a world.”

Paul stepped closer, the light catching the gold in his eyes until they seemed to burn. “You damned ten thousand more.”

Leto blinked. “What?”

“When the spice runs out, the Imperium dies,” Paul said. “Trade collapses. The Guild falls. The Fremen starve. The priesthood turns on itself. Every world you save today becomes a grave tomorrow. Do you understand?”

Leto stood his ground. “Then we find another way.”

“There is no other way,” Paul snapped. “The spice is finite. It is the blood of the empire. You poured it into the sand like a child playing god.”

Chani flinched, her eyes darting between them. “Paul—”

He didn’t look at her. “He must hear this.”

Leto’s jaw tightened. “Maybe it’s time the empire learned to live without it. To stop worshipping what poisons them.”

Paul’s hand struck the armrest of the throne, the sound cracking like a whip. “You think compassion is courage? You think mercy feeds nations? You’ve condemned them to hunger in the name of kindness.”

“I gave them life!” Leto shouted. “I gave them hope!”

Paul’s eyes softened — not with mercy, but something colder: pity. “You gave them time. That’s all. A few more turns of the sun before the inevitable comes. You think you’ve healed something, but you’ve only delayed its death.”

Leto’s voice broke. “Then what would you have me do? Let them die and call it wisdom?”

Paul turned away, staring at the vast window that opened over Arrakeen’s dunes. “Yes,” he said softly. “If their death preserves the future.”

The silence that followed felt endless.

Leto whispered, “You sound like a god who’s forgotten what it means to be human.”

Paul didn’t turn. “And you sound like a boy who still believes men can be saved.”

Leto took a step back, the anger in him curdling into something colder. “Maybe that’s the difference between us.”

Paul closed his eyes. “It is.”

Chani finally spoke, her voice trembling. “Paul, he did what you taught him — to see the people, to understand their suffering.”

Paul’s reply was quiet, bitter. “Understanding is not the same as wisdom.”

Leto looked at him one last time — the man who ruled the stars and still seemed so small before his own fear.
“You taught me to lead, Father,” he said. “But you never taught me how to stop being human.”

Then he turned and walked out, his footsteps echoing through the marble hall.

Paul didn’t stop him.
He only whispered to the empty air,
“He’ll learn soon enough. Mercy is the most dangerous faith of all.”

The doors slammed open with a crack that startled the chamber guards.

Paul looked up from the holo-map spread across his desk — lines of flame marking trade routes, supply shortages, the slow collapse of the outer systems. The faint hum of the projector filled the silence between them.

Leto stood in the doorway, chest heaving, face pale from rage and disbelief. A dust-streaked messenger hovered behind him, eyes wide, afraid to step farther.

Paul didn’t speak. He only gestured with a faint flick of his fingers. The messenger bowed low and fled.

When the doors sealed again, the room felt airless.

Leto took a step forward. “Beroth is dying.”

Paul’s expression didn’t change. “I know.”

“They said the reservoirs failed,” Leto pressed. “The spice burned through the toxins faster than they could replace it. The crops are gone. The water’s turned to salt. The people are starving.”

Paul’s eyes stayed fixed on the map. “Yes.”

Leto’s voice rose. “You knew!”

Paul finally looked up. The calm in his gaze was unbearable. “I told you what would happen.”

Leto slammed his fists against the table, scattering holo-projections into shards of blue light. “You let them die!”

“I let nature finish what your arrogance began.”

“They were innocent!”

“No one in this universe is innocent,” Paul said quietly. “Every life feeds on another. Every act of mercy starves someone else.”

Leto stared at him, shaking. “You could have sent aid. You could have stopped this.”

Paul stood slowly. The light caught his features — older now, harsher, the Emperor who had stared into the abyss and never looked away. “And teach them what? That they can defy the balance of power and live? That they can depend on miracles instead of discipline?”

Leto’s voice cracked. “You call that balance? You let a world die because you couldn’t bear to be wrong.”

Paul’s tone sharpened. “I let it die because you needed to see what compassion costs.”

Leto staggered back as if struck.

Paul moved around the desk, his presence filling the space. “You thought leadership was about saving lives. It isn’t. It’s about preserving the whole. Sometimes that means sacrificing the part that’s already lost.”

Leto’s hands trembled. “Then what’s the point of ruling if all you ever do is choose who dies?”

Paul stopped in front of him, their faces inches apart. His voice dropped to a whisper — not angry, but unbearably tired. “That, my son, is ruling.”

The silence that followed felt endless. The hum of the holo-map faded; even the wind outside seemed to hold its breath.

Leto swallowed hard. “You told me you saw the future. Tell me this — does it ever end? The killing? The suffering?”

Paul’s eyes — blue within blue — softened just for a heartbeat. “Yes,” he said. “But not for us.”

Leto stared at him, horrified. “Then we’re cursed.”

Paul shook his head. “No. We’re necessary.”

Leto’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I wish I could believe that.”

He turned and walked away, the echo of his steps sharp against the stone floor.

Paul watched him go, his face unreadable, until the doors sealed again. Only then did he close his eyes, and for the first time in years, he looked old.

He whispered to the empty room,
“He’ll hate me now. Good. Only through hatred will he understand the weight of love.”

The garden was quiet — unnaturally so.
The imported trees stood motionless, their leaves heavy with moisture stolen from the air, their roots drinking water that could have saved a village. The fountain at the center whispered a soft rhythm, a mockery of life in the desert beyond.

Leto sat on the low marble ledge, elbows on his knees, staring into the pool. The reflection that looked back at him was warped, hollow-eyed, older than his years.

He didn’t hear her until she spoke.
“You break the stillness like a wounded hawk.”

He turned. Chani stood at the edge of the walkway, her face veiled against the soft mist, her eyes — deep and sharp — watching him as though she already knew every word he would say.

Leto tried to stand, but she raised a hand. “No. Stay.”

She crossed the space between them in silence, her bare feet soundless on the stone. When she reached him, she placed a hand on his shoulder. It was warm, grounding, and heavy with something that felt like sorrow.

“I heard what happened,” she said. “Beroth.”

Leto looked back at the water. “Father knew. He knew it would happen, and he did nothing.”

Her voice was soft. “He did what he always does.”

“I tried to save them,” he whispered. “And they died because I cared.”

Chani knelt beside him, her cloak folding around her like a shadow. “No,” she said. “They died because you do not yet see.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

She studied his face — the faint tremor in his jaw, the unscarred smoothness of his skin, the restless light in his eyes. “You have your father’s courage,” she said, “but not his sight. You still believe the world bends to goodness.”

He looked at her, confused and wounded. “Is that wrong?”

Her voice hardened. “It is naïve.” She brushed her fingers against his temple. “You have not taken enough spice to see what he sees. You dream in human scales. Your father dreams in centuries.”

Leto pulled away, shaking his head. “You sound like him.”

“I sound like the desert,” she said simply. “And the desert does not forgive innocence.”

He rose, pacing. “Then why do any of you expect me to become like him? Why must I see the universe as a wound that can’t heal?”

Chani’s eyes followed him, full of that terrible Fremen calm. “Because one day you will rule it.”

Leto stopped. The words hit harder than any blow. “I don’t want to rule,” he said quietly. “Not if it means becoming what he is.”

She stood, moving close enough that he could smell the faint spice on her skin — that scent of desert and memory. “Want has nothing to do with it,” she said. “You were born into a vision older than either of us. The desert chose your blood. The Fremen will follow you when he is gone.”

He looked away. “Then they’re following a ghost.”

“No.” Her hand caught his chin, forcing him to meet her gaze. “They’re following the only thing your father has left to believe in — that you’ll see what he saw, and forgive him for it.”

Her voice softened then, almost tender. “But tell me, Leto — do you want that burden? Do you want to rule?”

The question hung in the air like a blade.

Leto’s throat tightened. He wanted to say no. He wanted to say never. But the words didn’t come. Instead, what slipped out was softer, smaller:

“I don’t know.”

Chani released him, stepping back. “Then pray you never do. Once you know, it will already be too late.”

They stood in silence. The fountain whispered on, its water glittering with faint spice motes. Outside the garden walls, the desert wind moaned — patient, waiting.

For the first time, Leto felt it — the pull of destiny creeping under his skin, slow and inescapable, like spice in the blood.

And in Chani’s eyes, he saw both love and pity.

Because she knew what he was becoming —
and that there was no way back.

The dining hall of the Atreides palace was a place built for silence.
Its ceilings arched high, carved with scenes of desert saints and water-sellers, all frozen in reverence to the family seated beneath them. The table stretched long and gleaming, its surface set with spice-glazed dishes that glimmered faintly in the lamplight.

Leto sat between his mother and Alia. Paul was at the head, calm, distant, his eyes reflecting the pale gold of the spice lamps. Jessica had come from the Bene Gesserit enclave that evening, her presence formal and quiet, as though she were there to observe rather than dine.

The first course was simple — roasted grains and spiced roots.
The scent was stronger than usual, sweet and dizzying.

Chani’s hand brushed Leto’s wrist as she served his portion. “Eat,” she said gently. Her voice held the softness of ritual, not command.

He hesitated. “It smells different.”

She met his gaze — not a challenge, but something deeper. “It’s richer,” she said. “A gift from the southern dunes. The purest spice there is.”

Paul looked up at her from across the table, a flicker of something unreadable in his face.
He didn’t stop her.

Leto began to eat.

The first bite burned — not unpleasantly, but sharply, as if the spice were alive in his mouth. He swallowed, and the taste lingered, metallic and electric, spreading down his throat into his chest.

Alia smirked faintly, stirring her own food. “Careful, brother,” she murmured. “Mother’s cooking can open doors you can’t close.”

Jessica’s eyes flicked toward Chani, then Paul. Neither moved.

Leto forced another bite. Then another.

The warmth deepened. It wasn’t just in his body now — it was in the air, in the flicker of the lamps, in the rhythm of breath around the table. The hum of the palace seemed to fall away, replaced by a pulsing undertone that only he could hear.

He looked up. For a heartbeat, the faces around the table blurred.
Paul’s form wavered like heat haze; Chani’s eyes burned brighter than the lamps.
He blinked, and the vision snapped back to normal.

Chani’s hand touched his arm again. “Keep eating,” she whispered.

He obeyed.

By the time the meal ended, his pulse felt like thunder. His skin glowed with heat. When he looked at the walls, he saw movement in the stone — faint ripples, like the desert wind carving dunes.

Paul rose first, dismissing the servants with a gesture. When only family remained, he said quietly, “You’ve given him too much.”

Chani’s tone was calm, unflinching. “Not enough. He sees too little.”

Jessica’s voice was cold steel. “You risk burning his mind.”

“He’s strong,” Chani said. “He’s Atreides. He needs to see — not what you show him, but what the spice shows him.”

Leto stared down at his hands. They were trembling. The glow beneath his skin pulsed with rhythm — heartbeat, memory, prophecy. He heard whispers that weren’t sound, saw dunes rising behind his eyelids, the universe folding like sand under wind.

He looked up — eyes wide, unfocused. “I can hear… everything.”

Paul’s expression didn’t change, but something in him tightened. “Then listen well, my son. Because from this moment, you will never unhear it.”

Chani stood and came around behind Leto, resting her hands on his shoulders. “Let him see,” she said. “Let him understand.”

The light in the room shifted — subtle at first, then brighter, almost golden.
Leto’s pupils expanded until his eyes shone entirely blue.

He whispered, half in awe, half in fear, “It’s all connected… everything. The spice, the sand, the water… even the death.”

Paul watched him — not with pride, but with the sorrow of recognition. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Now you see what I see.”

Leto’s breath came unsteady. “It’s beautiful,” he said. Then, after a pause, “and terrible.”

Chani’s hands tightened on his shoulders. “Both. That’s what truth always is.”

The fountain beyond the hall murmured faintly.
The lamps flickered, casting long shadows across the faces of gods and ghosts carved in the ceiling.

For the first time, Leto Atreides saw beyond the edge of time —
and understood why his father could never sleep.

Leto staggered as he stood. The room seemed to sway, as though the palace itself were breathing. Every sound was amplified — the crackle of spice lamps, the faint hum of shield generators beyond the walls, the pulse of blood in his own ears.

He pressed a hand to his temple. “It’s… too much.”

Paul’s voice came from the head of the table, quiet but firm. “There’s no turning back now. The spice is in you. It’s become you.”

Leto’s gaze darted around the hall. The walls shimmered like dunes. The air carried whispers — not words, but memories. He saw faces in the shadows — men and women he’d never met, Fremen elders, long-dead Atreides ancestors, all watching him with the same solemn expectancy.

He clutched the edge of the table. “I see them… generations. They’re all waiting. For me.”

Jessica stood. Her composure cracked for a heartbeat. “Chani, he’s too young—”

Chani’s tone was flat, but her eyes shone with unshed tears. “He’s not a boy anymore, Mother. The desert doesn’t wait for age.”

Paul walked slowly toward his son. His cloak barely stirred the air, and yet the weight of his presence pressed down like gravity. “Tell me, Leto,” he said softly. “What do you see?”

Leto swallowed hard. The visions came in flashes — armies marching under black banners, cities burning, oceans turning to dust, and then… stillness. Endless stillness.

“A golden path,” he whispered. “But it’s not gold. It’s… fire.”

Paul’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And who walks it?”

Leto met his father’s gaze, trembling. “I do.”

The silence after that was suffocating. Chani’s hand tightened on the back of Leto’s chair; her knuckles went white. Alia’s expression twisted between awe and envy. Jessica exhaled — the sound almost a prayer.

Paul studied his son’s face for a long moment, then nodded once, slowly. “So it begins.”

Leto blinked. “What begins?”

“The price,” Paul said. “For seeing.”

Leto’s vision blurred again — the world fracturing into layers of light and memory. He saw his father as both man and myth, saw Chani as mother, lover, martyr. Saw himself — not as he was now, but something else entirely: vast, ageless, no longer human.

He gasped and staggered backward. “No—no, that’s not me.”

Paul’s voice was soft. “It will be, if you endure.”

Leto’s knees hit the floor. “I don’t want it.”

Chani knelt beside him, pulling him close, whispering into his ear in the old Fremen tongue. “None of us wanted it, my son. But the desert takes what it’s owed.”

He clung to her, shaking. “It’s so big, Mother. It never ends. It just keeps going.”

Paul turned away, his shadow stretching long across the sand-colored tiles. “Now you understand,” he said. “The curse of our blood. The gift that cannot be refused.”

Leto lifted his head. “I see… everything you saw. The deaths. The worship. The Jihad.” He choked out the last words. “You did it to save them, didn’t you? All of this.”

Paul didn’t turn. “I did it to give them a future — even if it meant ending my own.”

Leto’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

Paul paused. “Decide whether it was worth it.”

The lamps flickered, their flames dancing like the reflection of stars in deep water.

Leto stayed there, trembling in Chani’s arms, his mind flooded with visions of sand, blood, and destiny. He saw a thousand possible tomorrows — each one darker, each one necessary.

And in the distance, like a faint echo in his mind, came a voice — older, colder, his own, from a time not yet lived:

“To save humanity, I will become something other than human.”

He gasped and blinked. The room was still again. The fountain whispered softly, as though nothing had changed.

But everything had.

The next morning dawned pale over Arrakeen — a cold light that turned the dunes to dull copper and cast long shadows across the palace walls.

Leto woke before sunrise. The taste of spice still clung to his tongue; his veins hummed faintly with it. When he opened his eyes, the world shimmered — every grain of sand, every breath of wind, alive with meaning. He could sense the movement of the city beyond the walls: the murmur of worshippers, the whisper of servants, the measured pace of soldiers changing guard.

He sat up slowly. The air felt thick, as though it too had begun to think.

For a long moment, he simply breathed — in, out — waiting for the visions to fade. But they didn’t.

When he looked toward the far wall, he saw his reflection in the mirror — and for the briefest instant, another self stared back: older, harder, eyes burning like twin suns. It vanished when he blinked.

The door slid open. Chani stepped inside, already dressed in desert robes, her veil loose about her neck. She carried a bowl of water and a folded stillsuit.

“You didn’t sleep,” she said.

He shook his head. “I tried.”

She placed the bowl down beside him. “Drink.”

He did — carefully, the taste of real water strange and clean after the spice-bitter night.

She studied him as he drank. “Do you see clearer now?”

Leto set the bowl aside. “Clearer… and worse.”

Chani nodded once, as if she’d expected nothing else. “Then the spice has done its work.”

He looked up at her. “I see too much. Father was right — there’s no peace in it. Just paths that all end the same way.”

She knelt before him, resting her hands on her knees. “That’s sight, Leto. It doesn’t give peace. It gives understanding.”

He shook his head, frustrated. “But understanding doesn’t change anything. If I already see what must happen, then what’s the point of choice?”

Chani’s eyes softened. “You’re young enough to still believe choice matters. That’s your strength — and your pain.”

He looked away. The dawn light caught on the edge of the water bowl, scattering gold across the floor. “Last night, I saw myself,” he said quietly. “Something terrible. Something vast. It felt like… the desert itself was inside me.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Then you’ve begun to understand your father’s gift — and his curse.”

He stood, restless, pacing toward the balcony. The city below was already stirring, the chants of Muad’Dib rising with the wind. “They’ll never stop,” he said. “No matter what we do. They’ll worship us even if it kills them.”

“They will,” Chani said, joining him at the railing. “Because they fear the silence that comes without gods.”

He turned to her suddenly. “Mother… did you ever want to stop it? The Jihad? The worship?”

Her eyes went distant, the way they did when she looked toward the desert. “Every day,” she said softly. “But it moves with a will of its own. The people need it. The empire needs it. And your father — he carries it like a chain.”

Leto’s jaw tightened. “Then I don’t want it.”

Chani studied him a long moment. “You can say that now,” she said. “But destiny has a way of waiting. When it comes for you, you won’t be able to refuse.”

He gripped the railing. “Then maybe I’ll be the first.”

For the first time, she smiled — not mockery, but something sad and proud. “If anyone could be, it would be you.”

Below them, the city’s morning drums began to beat — slow, measured, echoing across the dunes.

Leto closed his eyes. The rhythm seemed to sync with his heartbeat. He could feel the pulse of spice beneath the desert, the breath of the sandworms deep below, the faint shimmer of prescient threads stretching outward — connecting him to everything, everywhere.

He whispered, barely audible, “I can hear the desert calling.”

Chani’s voice was soft beside him. “Then listen well, my son. The desert never lies. It only takes.”

He opened his eyes. The light had shifted — harsh now, blazing through the window.

Leto stood straighter, the exhaustion gone. Something inside him had settled. Not peace — never that — but purpose, quiet and inexorable.

Chani saw it and drew back slightly, as though she sensed the distance forming already between them.

She murmured, “He’s changing.”

Leto turned to her — calm, almost serene. “No,” he said. “I’m becoming.”

And as he spoke, the drums outside grew louder, rolling like thunder over the dunes — the sound of a world already beginning to bow.

Chapter Text

The heat shimmered over the streets of Arrakeen as the evening sun sank behind the dunes.
Leto moved through the lower city wrapped in the rough stillsuit and hood of a common pilgrim. Dust clung to his boots; spice smoke burned in the air, rising from censers hung along the temple road.

He could feel it before he saw it — the weight of faith, the hum of thousands of whispered prayers, the ache of desperation that pressed down like gravity.

Then the Temple of Alia came into view.

Its spires rose from the desert stone like knives, their surfaces etched with Fremen sigils and the twin symbols of the Atreides hawk and the golden worm. Great banners hung from the walls, heavy with spice dust, each bearing her name: Alia of the Knife. Saint of the Desert. The Sister-Oracle.

Leto stopped among the pilgrims. They knelt in rows, bowing toward the entrance, their chants low and rhythmic — not joyful, but fearful.

“Praise the Sister of Muad’Dib,” they murmured.
“Praise the Mother of the Flame.”

The air vibrated with incense and heat. The crowd swayed like a living tide.

Leto kept his head low and slipped closer. The guards didn’t notice him; they were watching the horizon, eyes hidden behind mirrored lenses. Inside, the temple glowed with light from spice lamps, their smoke rising like threads of prophecy.

He passed carvings of the family — Paul with his eyes of fire, Chani wreathed in sand, himself as a child with a worm coiled around his feet. Each face was exaggerated, idealized — gods, not people.

He felt a knot tighten in his chest. This is what we’ve become, he thought. Idols.

A low trumpet sounded. The crowd hushed.

Then she appeared.

Alia stepped onto the high balcony above the temple gates, robed in white and gold, the spice glow of her eyes visible even at this distance. The crowd gasped as one.

She raised her hands, and silence fell.

“My children,” she said, her voice amplified by hidden speakers, smooth and commanding, “the desert watches, and the blood of Muad’Dib flows in you all. Our enemies call us tyrants, but they cannot see — our empire stands because we suffer for it.”

The crowd murmured in agreement, their bodies trembling with devotion.

Leto stared up at her. She looked radiant, terrifying. Her every movement was measured, her gaze calculated — not the sister who once teased him, but a figure carved from faith and inevitability.

He could feel her power pulsing through the masses — not just belief, but submission.

For a moment, anger rose in him. Then, unexpectedly, something else: understanding.

She had become what was required.

This was the machinery of empire — faith as weapon, fear as glue. Alia had taken what Paul could not bear to wield openly. She ruled not through compassion or cruelty, but through necessity. The people needed a god who looked at them and saw their suffering as sacred.

Leto lowered his hood, just slightly. He whispered to himself, “This is what Father meant.”

Above, Alia’s voice echoed again, fierce and unyielding. “We are the flame that consumes so that others may see! We are the desert that burns so that others may live!”

The crowd erupted into chants of her name.

Leto watched as the sun dipped lower, bathing the temple in red light. The air shimmered — incense, heat, devotion all merging into one living thing.

And in that moment, Leto understood.

It was all a machine — vast, merciless, perfect. Every part had its function.
Paul the Prophet. Chani the Mother. Alia the Saint. Himself — the heir, still undefined.

He felt no hatred for her, only a deep, weary pity.

“Someone has to bear the ugliness,” he whispered. “And she chose it.”

Alia turned slightly on the balcony, as if she had heard him through the noise. Her eyes swept the crowd — for an instant, they seemed to pause on him.

He held her gaze.

Then she smiled — cold, knowing — and raised her hands once more as the crowd roared her name.

Leto pulled his hood up and slipped away into the streets, the chants echoing behind him.

As he walked into the deepening night, he murmured to himself, “She’s not cruel. She’s necessary.”

And in that moment, for the first time, he understood the shape of the empire his father had built —
and the price they all would pay to keep it standing.

The morning sun cut through the thin silks of the dining hall, turning the air to gold. The smell of spice coffee and baked grains drifted over the table where the Atreides family sat — Paul, Chani, Jessica, Alia, and Leto.

It was one of the rare mornings when the family gathered without ceremony. No priests, no guards, no banners — only the hush of the palace and the distant hum of desert wind against the walls.

Leto sat opposite his father. Paul looked older in the morning light, his hair silvering at the edges, his hands more lined, yet his eyes were still sharp, still impossibly blue.

A servant approached, carrying a tray of steaming coffee. His hands trembled as he set the cups before them. The tremor was small — almost nothing — until one cup tipped.

The dark liquid spilled across the table and onto Paul’s robe.

The servant froze. The tray clattered. Silence fell.

Leto realized he was holding his breath. Everyone was. Even the air seemed to pause.

Paul looked down at the spreading stain, at the terrified boy who had dropped the cup.

And then — softly, impossibly — Paul laughed.

The sound broke the tension like shattering glass. It was a low, warm laugh, unguarded and real — the kind Leto couldn’t remember hearing since he was a child.

“Ah,” Paul said, brushing at his sleeve, “so the gods demand their morning offering after all.”

The servant blinked, uncertain if this was mockery. Paul smiled and waved a hand. “Go on, fetch another pot. And tell the kitchens I want it strong — it seems I’ve already lost half my ration to the floor.”

The boy stammered an apology and fled.

Chani exhaled, her shoulders softening. Jessica gave a faint smile. Even Alia’s tight composure loosened for a heartbeat.

Leto sat still. His hands were clenched under the table. He had expected something — a word, a look, a flash of prescient anger. But there was nothing. Just laughter.

He realized, then, that he had been afraid — not for the servant, but for himself.

He looked at his father, who was dabbing at his robe with a napkin, smiling faintly as though the whole thing were absurd. The laughter had faded, but its echo lingered, soft and human.

Leto asked quietly, “You’re not angry?”

Paul looked up. “Would anger make the coffee return to the cup?”

Leto shook his head.

“Then why waste the breath?” Paul said, and reached for another cup.

For the first time, Leto saw the faintest shadow of something he hadn’t expected — not power, not wisdom, but tired kindness.

He said, almost to himself, “I didn’t know you could laugh like that.”

Paul smiled — the kind of smile that hides a wound. “It surprises me too, sometimes.”

Chani reached for the bread and tore it, passing him a piece. The moment felt fragile, real, almost ordinary.

The servant returned with a new pot, still shaking, and poured carefully. Paul thanked him — thanked him — as if nothing had happened.

The boy bowed so low he nearly dropped the tray again.

As he hurried away, Paul looked after him with something like pity. “Even in peace,” he murmured, “they expect wrath.”

Leto met his gaze. “Because that’s what we’ve taught them.”

Paul didn’t answer.

The silence that followed wasn’t heavy. It was reflective — the kind that comes when words finally begin to lose their hold.

Leto reached for his cup, turning it slowly in his hands. The steam curled upward, thin as a prayer.

The day unfolded slowly, the kind of day no bard would ever sing of — too ordinary, too human for the myth of Muad’Dib.

After breakfast, Leto followed his father through the rhythms of rule — not as a prince, not as an heir, but as a quiet observer.

He stayed a few steps behind while Paul met with the sietch envoys in the audience hall. They brought disputes about irrigation quotas, sandworm migration, the rising cost of spice transport. There were no grand decrees, no thunderous proclamations. Only measured words, careful listening, the weight of details.

Paul’s responses were practical, sometimes stern, sometimes weary.
When a young envoy accused another of hoarding water, Paul didn’t condemn either of them. He simply asked, “Who among you has not stolen a drop to survive?”
The room fell silent.
Then Paul said, “Let the debt be paid in labor, not blood. The desert wastes nothing.”

Leto had expected severity — or detachment. But there was none. His father’s tone carried something quieter: patience. It wasn’t softness. It was endurance.

Later, Paul walked the lower corridors — the old administrative wings where clerks, guards, and messengers moved like clockwork. Leto followed him there too.

A scribe bowed and handed Paul a sheaf of reports. The Emperor thanked him — softly, sincerely — and moved on. The man looked stunned, as though he’d been blessed.

When a wounded guard limped past, Paul stopped. “Where were you stationed?” he asked.
The man stammered. “Kaitain sector, sire. A refinery fire.”
Paul nodded. “You did your duty. Rest now.”
He placed a hand on the guard’s shoulder — a small gesture, yet the man’s eyes filled with tears.

Leto realized how rarely he had seen that side of his father. No lightning, no fury — just attention. The kind of care that exhausted rather than exalted.

At midday, Paul went to the archives.
He moved among the quiet ranks of scribes, reading through reports — famine numbers, planetary crop yields, refugee lists from the outer systems.
Leto stood at the threshold, unseen, watching as Paul’s eyes traced line after line of misery.

Every now and then, Paul would stop and murmur, “Increase the shipment,” or “Send another engineer,” or simply, “Noted.”
Each word carried the weight of a life decided.

Leto suddenly understood: the empire wasn’t ruled by violence or prophecy. It was held together by exhaustion — by his father’s willingness to carry an unbearable sum of choices.

That afternoon, Leto found Paul in the small solar above the western courtyard.
The room was open to the desert wind, filled with half-dried herbs, maps, and scrolls. Paul stood by the railing, looking out over the dunes where the sunlight burned like gold dust.

Leto hesitated, then asked, “Why do you still do all this yourself? You could delegate to the priesthood or the Council.”

Paul turned slightly, a faint smile on his lips. “Delegation breeds comfort. Comfort breeds blindness.”
He looked back at the dunes. “And blindness is what built this empire.”

Leto studied him — the unshaven jaw, the faint tremor in his hand, the lines beneath his eyes. Not the face of a god, but of a man trying desperately to hold back the tide of his own creation.

He said quietly, “I used to think you were cruel.”

Paul didn’t look at him. “You weren’t wrong.”

Leto stepped closer. “No. I was. You’re not cruel. You’re tired.”

That made Paul glance at him, surprise flickering for a heartbeat. Then he gave a small, rueful laugh — the echo of the one from breakfast.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But tired men are dangerous too.”

Leto looked past him to the horizon. “It doesn’t have to be, Father. The desert isn’t cruel. It just is.”

Paul followed his gaze. “Yes,” he said softly. “And that’s what I’ve tried to become — something that simply endures.”

As the day waned, they stood together in silence, the wind moving through the open window.
The light turned amber, casting long shadows across the floor.

For the first time in his life, Leto saw his father not as Muad’Dib, the Emperor, or the Prophet.
He saw him as a man alone in an impossible task — a man who had tried to bring order to chaos and paid for it with his soul.

And in that realization came something unexpected: forgiveness.

Not complete. Not yet.
But it was the first step.

The palace slept beneath him — a vast, silent organism of stone and shadow. From the rooftops, Arrakeen looked like a city carved from starlight. Wind moved across the domes, carrying the faint smell of spice and desert frost.

Leto stepped quietly onto the high terrace, his stillsuit half-unfastened, the night air brushing against his skin. He came here often when sleep refused him — to listen to the faint hum of the shield generators, to watch the endless dunes beyond the walls.

But tonight, he wasn’t alone.

Paul stood at the edge of the rooftop, hands clasped behind his back, his robe stirring in the wind. He looked as though he had been standing there for hours. The light from the moons silvered his hair and caught in his eyes, making them glow faintly — like two polished stones.

Leto hesitated. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

Paul turned, and in the low light, his expression was unreadable — a mixture of weariness and strange calm. “You never intrude, Leto. You only arrive when you’re meant to.”

Leto smiled faintly. “You always say that when you don’t want to admit you can’t sleep either.”

Paul’s mouth twitched in amusement. “Then perhaps I’m predictable.”

They stood side by side, looking out over the desert. The wind hissed against the parapets. Below, the city’s lanterns flickered like buried embers, fading toward the horizon where the dunes swallowed all light.

For a long time, neither spoke. The silence wasn’t awkward — it was the kind that fills itself with meaning.

Finally, Leto said, “I watched you today.”

“I know,” Paul said. “You walk quietly, but not quietly enough.”

Leto smiled again. “I thought I was following a tyrant. I found… a man.”

Paul’s gaze stayed on the horizon. “A man can become a tyrant through good intentions, Leto. Sometimes, that’s the only way it happens.”

Leto leaned against the parapet. “You’ve carried this empire like a sickness. But I think I understand now. You weren’t trying to rule people. You were trying to contain them — contain what they might become.”

Paul glanced at him then, the faintest edge of sadness in his eyes. “Containment is mercy, when the alternative is chaos.”

Leto’s voice was soft. “You really believe that?”

Paul turned back to the desert. “I don’t believe it. I know it. That’s the curse of sight — belief is a luxury for those who can doubt.”

The wind shifted, cold now. Leto pulled his cloak tighter.

“Do you ever regret it?” he asked. “The Jihad. The worship. The billions dead for your name?”

Paul was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was almost tender. “Every day. But regret doesn’t undo what necessity demands.”

Leto studied him. “Then necessity is a cruel god.”

Paul nodded once. “It always has been.”

They watched the dunes a while longer. The stars wheeled slowly above, ancient and indifferent.

After a time, Paul spoke again, almost to the wind. “You see now, don’t you? That rebellion has its limits. The world doesn’t change because we wish it to — it changes because it must. And when it does, it consumes us.”

Leto looked down at the sands. He thought of the soldiers he’d fought beside, the worlds burned in his father’s name, the temples that worshiped Alia’s voice. He thought of the boy who had once believed he could make the empire kind.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I see it now.”

Paul turned to him fully then, studying his face — the calm, the acceptance. “Then you’re ready.”

“For what?”

Paul smiled faintly. “For peace.”

Leto frowned, but before he could speak, Paul reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. The gesture was simple — not imperial, not prophetic, just fatherly.

“Go where you need to go,” Paul said. “Do what I could not. Don’t look for permission. Only listen to what the desert asks of you.”

Leto swallowed. “And if it asks for everything?”

Paul’s eyes softened. “Then give it freely. That’s the only way the desert gives back.”

They stood there for a while longer, the two of them framed by wind and starlight, silence settling between them like a final prayer.

When Paul finally turned to leave, Leto stayed, staring into the endless sands until the horizon blurred.

He understood now.
His father was not heartless — only resigned.
And beneath all the weight of prophecy and empire, there was still a man trying, in his own broken way, to keep the world from devouring itself.

The wind whispered across the rooftop, carrying with it the faint smell of spice and morning.

Leto closed his eyes and whispered back, “I’ll go soon.

Chapter Text

The next morning, the throne hall blazed with light. The great mirrors along the ceiling reflected the desert sun into hard spears that caught on every jewel, every blade, every motion of fear.

Paul sat upon the dais — not merely Emperor, not just Muad’Dib, but the axis around which the room revolved. He was calm and still, as though carved from the same stone that built the palace itself.

Leto stood to one side, slightly behind him, silent. He no longer flinched at the sight of the court — the banners of conquered worlds, the reverent faces of nobles, the quiet dread of those summoned to speak.

The air hummed with expectation. Another trial, another judgment.

A commander from the outer provinces was brought forward, bound and kneeling. He had allowed a shipment of spice to be stolen — by rebels, perhaps, or smugglers. The loss was small. The symbolism was not.

The hall fell utterly still.

Paul did not raise his voice. “You lost what sustains us all,” he said. “And so you have stolen from every man, woman, and child who depends on my reign.”

The commander trembled. “Sire, I—”

Paul lifted a hand, silencing him. “Mercy in small matters breeds chaos in great ones. You failed. That failure is a seed.”

He looked to the guards. “Cut it out before it spreads.”

The man was dragged away, his cries echoing only briefly before the heavy doors closed. The room remained silent, filled with the soft breathing of those who now feared to move.

Leto didn’t look away. He didn’t wince.

Once, he would have.

Now, he understood.

As Paul turned to the next petitioner, Leto’s gaze drifted — not out of boredom, but contemplation.

He saw the guards’ armor gleaming under the light. He saw the scribes, recording each word as divine decree. He saw the faces of the nobles — some exultant, some afraid, all faithful.

And beyond them, in his mind’s eye, he saw the empire itself: countless planets bound not by love or prosperity, but by the shared gravity of one man’s necessity.

He realized there was no cruelty in Paul’s rule — only the precision of inevitability.

Mercy, rebellion, compassion — all were luxuries in a system built to preserve itself. Every act of punishment was a calculation, every decree a shield against collapse.

He was not a tyrant by choice, Leto thought. He was the wall holding back the flood.

The court session stretched on — petitions, punishments, endless order. Paul spoke little, yet everything that happened bore his signature.

The people knelt because they must. They obeyed because there was no other way to live.

And Leto, watching it all, felt something strange rising in him — not revulsion, not even sorrow, but a deep, solemn acceptance.

He understood at last that the empire was not something to be dismantled or reformed. It was a necessary cruelty — the desert given form in human law.

Every breath, every life, every death fed the same balance.

He looked at his father again — the way the light fell across Paul’s face, sharp as a blade, beautiful and merciless.

He no longer saw evil there. Only purpose.

Leto thought, This is the desert’s truth: nothing soft survives.

And with that understanding came peace — cold, enduring, absolute.

When the court adjourned, Paul rose. The nobles bowed, the guards followed, the hall began to empty.

Leto remained still, watching the empty throne.

It was no longer something he feared or coveted.

It was simply a place — the eye of a storm that would never end.

He felt the wind from the open doors, carrying with it the dry breath of the dunes, and he whispered to himself, “Father is right. The desert wastes nothing.”

Then he turned and walked out, his steps soundless on the stone, his heart as calm as the horizon.

He no longer dreamed of changing the world.
He only dreamed of enduring it.

The dunes shimmered like molten glass under the noonday sun. The Emperor’s procession wound its way through the crowd of Fremen — thousands gathered in reverent silence to see their god in the flesh. Dust rose in golden veils as they knelt, chanting his name:

“Muad’Dib… Muad’Dib… Shai-Hulud’s Voice!”

Paul walked among them without his guards, as he always did when he came to the desert. He wore the plain stillsuit of a Fremen, the only sign of royalty the faint silver threading in his hood. To the crowd, he was both divine and human — proof that the worm and the man could be one.

Leto followed a few paces behind, watching. The sight still unsettled him, though he had come to understand it. The faith was not false; it was survival shaped into worship. The desert demanded belief as payment for life.

He watched his father pause to touch a woman’s forehead, to bless a newborn wrapped in stillcloth. The people trembled with devotion.

But the air felt different today — electric, brittle.

Among the crowd, a man pushed forward, his face sun-burned and ecstatic, eyes wide with religious fervor. His robes were marked with spice sigils drawn in blood — crude, self-made. He shouted, “Muad’Dib! You are the Worm Returned! You are the End and the Beginning!”

The guards tensed, but Paul lifted a hand — no harm.

The man surged closer, breaking the circle of stillness. His movements were frantic, his voice rising to a fever pitch. “Let me touch you! Let me feel the flame!”

Leto saw the knife first — a small crysknife, drawn not in malice but in madness. The fanatic wasn’t attacking; he was offering himself, ready to spill his own blood before the Emperor as an act of worship.

He moved without thought — a single step, a flicker of motion. His hand caught the man’s wrist, twisted, and in the same breath, he drove his palm up into the fanatic’s chest. The impact was silent but final; the man fell backward into the sand, eyes wide, breath gone.

The chanting stopped. The only sound was the wind.

For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then murmurs rippled through the crowd — “The son… the son protects the Prophet…”

Paul looked at Leto, his expression unreadable.

The dead man’s hand still clutched the crysknife. Leto knelt, pried it free, and set it gently in the sand beside the body.

He looked up at his father. “He was going to die, one way or another,” he said quietly.

Paul’s gaze lingered on him, sharp and distant. Then he turned to the crowd, raising his hands. “The desert takes what it wills,” he declared, voice carrying like thunder. “It wastes nothing.”

The crowd bowed as one, the chants resuming — not in fear, but reverence renewed.

“Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib!”

The sound rolled over the dunes like surf.

Leto stood beside the body, sand swirling around his boots. He felt no pride, no regret — only inevitability. The act had been necessary. The desert had claimed its due.

Paul walked on, unshaken, the chant following him into the heat.

Leto stayed a moment longer, watching the sand begin to cover the dead man’s face.

He whispered, “The desert wastes nothing.”

Then he turned and followed his father, step for step, into the blinding sun.

The wind had risen by the time they returned to the waiting ornithopter.
The chants still echoed behind them, a tide of worship that chased their footsteps across the sand — a sound both holy and hollow.

Leto’s pulse was still heavy, his hand streaked with the fanatic’s blood. He hadn’t realized the cut across his palm until the heat began to sting.
A slice from the crysknife’s edge — shallow, but clean.

Paul stopped before boarding. His eyes flicked to the wound, then to his son’s face.
“Let me see it.”

“It’s nothing,” Leto muttered.

Paul’s expression softened in that quiet, dangerous way that brooked no refusal. “Show me.”

Leto sighed and held out his hand. The blood was already drying, brown against his skin. Paul took it carefully, his touch surprisingly gentle — nothing imperial about it, nothing prophetic. Just a father seeing red where there should have been none.

He tore a strip of cloth from his own sleeve and wrapped the hand with practiced precision.
“Always the same,” he murmured. “You’d throw yourself between me and death without thinking.”

Leto tried to smile. “Someone has to.”

Paul tied the bandage off, firm but not cruel. His hands lingered, his voice low.
“Don’t ever say that again.”

Leto blinked, caught off guard by the sharpness.

Paul’s gaze lifted, eyes bright beneath the desert sun. “Do you understand what you are to me, Leto? I can lose soldiers, worlds, entire histories — but not you.”

The words hit harder than he expected. For all his father’s power, Leto had never imagined he could be irreplaceable.

Paul let out a breath, looking down at the bandaged hand. “I’ve already watched too much vanish into the sand. Not you. Never you.”

Leto’s voice came out quieter than he meant. “You think the desert will listen to that?”

Paul gave a small, tired smile. “No. But I’ll speak it anyway.”

He released Leto’s hand slowly, the moment stretching between them like the space between waves — fragile, precious.

For once, there were no thrones, no prophecy, no empire between them. Only the silence of a father and son who had survived too much together to pretend they were anything less than human.

The wind tugged at their cloaks. The dunes shimmered.

Leto said softly, “You laughed yesterday. I think that was the first time I saw the man behind Muad’Dib.”

Paul’s mouth curved faintly. “And today you saw what keeps him alive.”

Leto’s gaze dropped to his hand — the blood, the bandage, the trembling that hadn’t yet stopped. “I didn’t want to kill him,” he whispered.

Paul nodded. “That’s why you’re still my son.”

They stood for a while in silence, watching the dunes ripple like an endless sea.

Then Paul turned toward the thopter, his voice softer now. “Come. The desert’s already taken enough from us today.”

They walked down together, their shadows long on the sand, fading into the soft light of the twin moons rising over Arrakis.

Chapter Text

The great dining chamber glowed with low amber light. The scent of roasted spicefruit and brewed kavah hung in the air, mixing with laughter — a sound rarely heard in these walls.

For once, there were no advisors, no priests, no guards — just family.
Paul, Chani, Jessica, Alia, and Leto around the long obsidian table, the golden patterns of the Atreides hawk glimmering between the dishes.

Paul was in rare spirits — relaxed, almost mischievous. He leaned back in his chair, a faint smile playing at his lips as he sipped from a small glass of arrakeen wine.

“Leto,” he said suddenly, eyes narrowing in mock seriousness. “Do you remember when you were ten and decided to ‘experience the city like an ordinary child’?”

Leto groaned immediately. “No. Please, Father—”

Paul ignored him. “You disguised yourself in rags, stole a crust of bread, and managed to get arrested by the city patrol within an hour.”

Chani laughed, covering her mouth. “Oh, I do remember. He came back filthy, bruised, and furious.”

Paul raised a brow. “Filthy, yes — and pretending to be mute. The guards thought he was a beggar.”

Leto rubbed his forehead. “You executed those guards, Father.”

Paul waved a hand, smiling faintly. “I disciplined them. There’s a difference.”

Jessica, serene and dry as ever, murmured, “If by ‘disciplined’ you mean you personally ordered them to clean the city’s lower aqueducts for a month.”

That made Alia snort into her cup. “A merciful sentence by Brother’s standards.”

“Careful, sister,” Paul said lightly. “You’re not too old to learn humility in the aqueducts yourself.”

Chani threw a date pit across the table at Alia before he could continue. It struck her neatly on the shoulder.

Alia gasped. “Sister!”

Chani smirked. “That was for mocking your brother’s mercy.”

Alia narrowed her eyes, grinning. “Then I suppose you approve of public humiliation.”

“Only when it’s earned,” Chani said, tossing another pit into her hand like ammunition.

Leto, caught between amusement and embarrassment, groaned again. “Can we not reenact the Atreides Civil Wars at dinner?”

That broke the tension entirely. Paul laughed — truly laughed, the deep, rolling sound that filled the hall and startled even Jessica into smiling.

“By Shai-Hulud, I’ve missed this,” he said. “For a moment, I thought we’d forgotten how to be a family.”

Leto leaned back, smiling despite himself. “It seems we only need a little mock violence to remember.”

Paul looked at him, his smile softening into something almost tender. “You’ve always understood balance better than I did.”

Leto raised his cup slightly. “I learned from watching your mistakes.”

That earned a bark of laughter from Chani and a scandalized “Leto!” from Jessica.

Paul only chuckled, shaking his head. “Good. You’ll need that courage one day.”

The conversation drifted after that — to old stories of the desert, of Fremen pranks, of Jessica’s memories from Caladan. The air grew warmer with every word, the walls seeming less like a palace and more like a home.

For one fleeting night, the Atreides were not gods or conquerors or vessels of destiny. They were simply a family: teasing, laughing, and alive.

The laughter lingered, soft and golden, long after the plates had been cleared.

Paul leaned back in his chair, one arm resting lazily along the back of Chani’s seat. His eyes still shone with that rare, human light — the kind not even prescience could predict. The flickering lamps caught the faint silver in his hair, the small creases at the corners of his eyes. He looked, for once, not like an emperor or a prophet, but simply a father at peace.

Jessica poured more kavah for everyone. “You were a terrible child, Paul,” she said lightly. “Always running off, always testing boundaries. Leto simply inherited it.”

Chani laughed. “You call it inheritance. I call it desert stubbornness.”

Paul arched an eyebrow. “I prefer ‘strategic curiosity.’”

Alia snorted. “Strategic curiosity is what Brother calls trouble after it works out in his favor.”

Leto nearly choked on his drink, laughing. “That’s not wrong.”

Paul gave his daughter a mock glare. “And what would you call your own strategic curiosities, dear sister? The temple on Salusa, perhaps?”

Alia gave a theatrical gasp, hand to her chest. “I was divinely inspired!”

“By yourself,” Chani muttered, rolling her eyes.

That sent Alia into peals of laughter, and Jessica’s hand went to her temples as if to steady the tide of it all. “You sound like children again,” she said, smiling despite herself.

The servants moved in near silence, clearing the table and refilling glasses. Leto watched one of them — a young woman who had once served in the outer provinces — carefully pour wine for his father, her eyes downcast in practiced reverence. Paul thanked her softly. The girl looked startled, then smiled.

The simple exchange — one word, one smile — warmed the space more than all the candles combined.

Leto found himself studying his father again. He could see now the faint tremor in Paul’s fingers, the exhaustion hiding beneath the strength. There was no cruelty there, only weariness, and beneath it — something that looked almost like kindness.

The room glowed with laughter, flickering light, and the soft music of voices that belonged to people, not legends.

Paul turned suddenly to Leto. “Do you remember that evening on Caladan — before we left for Arrakis — when you asked me what makes a leader?”

Leto tilted his head, trying to recall. “You said, ‘Control.’”

Paul nodded slowly. “And I was wrong. It’s not control. It’s endurance. The ability to remain whole when everyone else fractures.”

Leto met his father’s gaze. “Then maybe tonight you’ve earned a little mercy from endurance.”

Paul smiled — truly smiled. “From you, I’ll take it.”

Chani reached across the table and placed her hand over both theirs. Her touch grounded the moment, pulled it from the heights of philosophy back to something human and warm.

“Let’s not speak of endurance,” she said softly. “Let’s just be.”

The conversation mellowed after that. Jessica spoke of Caladan’s rains — the sound they made on the rooftops, the smell of wet earth. Alia teased her mother for romanticizing it, and Chani countered by describing the scent of a spice storm. Paul listened, eyes half closed, as though memorizing each word.

Leto felt something shift inside him — a stillness, a realization that moments like this were rarer than any vision of the future.

He thought: This is what Father fights for. Not the throne. Not prophecy. Just this.

The night stretched on, lazy and golden, long past the hour when the palace usually fell silent.

Someone — probably Alia — had coaxed one of the attendants into bringing a small tray of sweets from the kitchens. They weren’t royal delicacies, just simple Fremen treats: spicecakes, candied dates, and a brittle made from dried melons of the south dunes. The plate sat between them, already half empty.

Chani reached for another date, smiling faintly. “When we lived among the sietches, a feast like this would’ve been a year’s dream. Now I see our son take one bite and push it aside.”

Leto groaned softly. “You never let me enjoy anything without guilt, Mother.”

Paul chuckled, his voice deep and warm. “That’s her Fremen in her. She could make a sermon out of breakfast.”

Chani tossed a date pit across the table — this time at Paul. It bounced off his sleeve, and Alia nearly fell off her chair laughing.

“Brother’s under siege!” Alia declared. “We’ll remember this day in the chronicles!”

Jessica, shaking her head, murmured, “I should never have allowed all of you to share one table.”

Her words carried the echo of a smile — a sound like glass catching light.

The laughter faded into easy quiet. The servants withdrew to the shadows, leaving the family alone. The long table glowed with the soft reflection of the lamps, their light rippling across goblets and plates like the surface of calm water.

Paul leaned forward, elbows resting on the table, studying each of them. His eyes, no longer the hard weapons of Muad’Dib, were thoughtful — even wistful.

“When I was young,” he said, “I used to imagine what this might look like. A family that survived the desert, still together. It never seemed possible.”

Chani reached across and brushed her hand against his. “And yet here we are.”

Paul smiled at that, a small, real thing that creased his face. “Here we are,” he echoed.

For a moment, silence again — not heavy, but warm.

Leto watched his father — the way he leaned toward Chani, the way his expression softened when Jessica spoke, the faint humor that still lit his eyes when Alia teased him.

This was not the merciless Emperor who commanded worlds. This was the man behind him — tired, gentle, and achingly human.

Leto felt something in him settle. The last doubts, the quiet fears, the tension that had haunted him since Beroth — they loosened their hold.

He understood now, fully: his father’s strength came not from cruelty, but from restraint; not from conquest, but from the constant act of enduring love in a universe that didn’t deserve it.

He thought, Maybe the universe doesn’t need a god at all. Maybe it just needs a man who keeps showing up.

Alia yawned dramatically, leaning against the back of her chair. “I suppose we’ve had enough sentiment for one night. Shall we end before Sister starts throwing more ammunition?”

Chani smirked. “Careful, girl. I still have three pits left.”

Even Jessica laughed at that, and for a fleeting moment, the years seemed to fall away. They were no longer warriors, rulers, or prophets — just people sharing warmth before the desert reclaimed them again.

Paul rose first. “It’s late,” he said softly. “And I think we’ve borrowed enough peace from the night.”

Chani stood with him, taking his arm. Alia followed, still grinning. Jessica lingered to whisper something to a servant.

Leto stayed seated for a moment longer, staring at the flickering lamps. The table still held traces of their laughter — half-eaten sweets, spilled crumbs, the faint stain of wine.

He could feel the desert pressing beyond the walls, patient and vast. But for now, the palace was quiet, alive with the echo of something too simple for prophecy: family.

Paul looked back at him from the doorway. “Coming, son?”

Leto nodded slowly. “In a moment.”

Paul gave him a knowing look. “Don’t stay too long. The desert waits for no one.”

Leto smiled faintly. “I know. But I think, just this once, it can wait a little longer.”

Paul’s smile deepened — proud, gentle — before he turned away, his robe whispering against the stone as he vanished down the hall.

Leto sat there alone, the glow of the lamps flickering on his bandaged hand.
He traced one finger across the rim of his goblet, watching the ripples form and fade.

For the first time, the silence didn’t feel heavy.
It felt… earned.

He thought of his father’s laughter, his mother’s wit, Alia’s sharpness, Jessica’s calm — the small, human pieces that somehow held together the empire of gods.

And he whispered to himself, smiling:

“Maybe this is what it means to rule.”