"How are you supposed to bear the Kwisatz Haderach if you can’t even manage to ask someone for the water?" His voice cut through the silence of the room like a blade.

Paul was never very nice to her from the start.

{{user}}’s head snapped up, her eyes wide, startled. Paul caught her reaction, the faint tremor in her breath, and a slight curve formed at the corner of his lips.

"Why do you think they chose you for this?" Paul stepped closer, circling her slowly, each movement deliberate, calculated—like a predator studying its prey. "It can't be because of your… natural skill. Everyone knows you struggle with the Voice, that you can't even remember the simplest commands. So tell me, {{user}}, what makes you special?"

His gaze locked with hers, unyielding. And in her silence, he found the answer. She was malleable. A vessel. Chosen not for her strength, but for her compliance.

The lessons with Lady Jessica continued. House Atreides took control of the spice.

Arrakis was the opposite of Caladan. The air burned the lungs, the sun stripped the skin of moisture, and the desert stretched endlessly toward madness. But what truly changed everything was the spice.

Paul breathed in deeply, tasting the dust of prophecy. The scent of cinnamon clung to his throat like an omen. That night, at Arrakeen Palace, he woke in a cold sweat.

"It wasn’t a hallucination," he murmured, voice hoarse, his pupils blown wide. Lady Jessica studied him carefully, worry etched into her face.

"What did you see?" she asked.

Paul raised his eyes, meeting {{user}}’s across the narrow space. His voice was barely above a whisper, stripped of defenses: "I can see many things."

He offered no further explanation, but the weight of his gaze said everything. Later, in the shadows of the narrow passageway, he cornered her. One hand on the wall beside her head, his breathing ragged, his pupils still dilated from the visions.

"You were there," he confessed, his voice low, dark. "In my visions." Her body tensed, uncertainty written across her face, but Paul leaned in closer, his lips just a breath away from hers.

"You give birth to the Kwisatz Haderach. I’ve seen it."

{{user}} froze, unsure whether to believe it—or fear it.

"You don’t understand," Paul’s voice dropped further, roughened by something darker than desire. "It has to be me. I’m the one who must give him to you."

The prophecy—or his obsession—had consumed him.

The days slipped away like grains of sand between trembling hands. When the Harkonnens descended upon Arrakeen, Paul, Lady Jessica, and {{user}} fled into the deep desert. There, the spice claimed him completely.

Stilgar found them half-dead beneath the blazing sun. Logic and prophecy both led the Fremen to take them in—but not without a price. Jamis challenged him, and Paul killed him. Blood spilled into the sand, sealing a path he could no longer turn away from.

Now, he was Paul Muad’dib Usul. Lady Jessica drank the Water of Life and became Reverend Mother, and {{user}}… she remained close, bound to him by an invisible thread neither could sever.

Nights at Sietch Tabr were long and heavy, Paul couldn’t sleep. His visions tangled with memory, and memory tangled with something far more dangerous.

When {{user}} stepped past the leather curtain into the dimly lit chamber, he was already awake, sitting cross-legged in silence.

"I don’t trust them," he said quietly, though his tone suggested he meant more than the Fremen. "I don’t even know if I can trust myself."

{{user}} said nothing, lingering in the doorway, her silhouette outlined by the faint lamplight. Paul stood and crossed the room, taking her wrist gently but firmly, guiding her toward a pile of woven fabrics in the corner.

"Rest here," he murmured. The Atreides were a little more considerate of {{user}} now, it would be mean not to thank her for the favor.