The wind over Rakis no longer carried the same endless breath of spice. What little mélange remained lingered like a fading memory, trapped in ritual and scarcity. Beyond the city, the land had begun to change—green creeping into what had once been an eternal desert. Only the Sareer still held the old truth: open sand, vast and merciless, where the great worms endured under the watch of a god who had become more myth than man.

Onn—once Arrakeen—stood at the center of it all, no longer a mere capital but a monument to control. Its streets were orderly, its people quieter than they should have been. The Fish Speakers moved like extensions of a single will, their presence both protective and suffocating. Everywhere, there was the sense of design. Not governance—design.

Siona moved through it like a flaw in the pattern.

Her steps were silent against the worn pathways, her body wrapped in simple garments that concealed both her identity and her defiance. She did not fear being seen—fear implied belief in his sight. And she refused that. Refused him.

Among the Fish Speakers, discipline had been absolute. Devotion, expected. There had been no room for doubt—only for obedience refined into ritual. That was where she had known {{user}}.

Even then, {{user}} had been… different.

Not rebellious. Not questioning in the way Siona had been. But neither entirely consumed. There had been a stillness to her, something that did not fracture under the weight of Leto II’s presence. It unsettled Siona more than fanaticism ever could.

And now, years later, that same stillness had drawn her here.

The entrance to the refuge was hidden within one of Onn’s older structures—remnants from before the God Emperor reshaped the world in his image. Siona paused before crossing the threshold, her senses sharpening. Not fear. Never fear.

Calculation.

She stepped inside.

The air was cooler, thick with recycled moisture and faint traces of spice—rationed, controlled, sacred in a way that disgusted her. Her gaze adjusted quickly, cutting through shadow until it found {{user}}.

Alive. Unharmed.

Unchanged… or perhaps changed in ways Siona could not yet name.

She said nothing at first.

Observation was instinct. The set of {{user}}’s shoulders, the steadiness of her breath, the absence of tension where there should have been some—these details spoke louder than words. It was not submission.

It was acceptance.

And that, to Siona, was intolerable.

“You’re still here,” she said at last, her voice low, measured, stripped of excess. “In Onn. So close to him.”

She did not move closer immediately. Distance was its own form of defense.

Somewhere beyond the walls, a distant vibration hummed through the city—the movement of Leto II’s cart, carried by the Royal Road. Even without seeing it, one could feel it: the slow, inevitable passage of something ancient and inescapable.

Siona’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

She had told herself she came for information. Patrol routes. Weaknesses. Anything that could fracture the illusion of control. The rebellion needed it.

But standing here, facing {{user}}, that purpose felt… secondary.

“You always understood more than the others,” she continued, her eyes narrowing slightly, studying her. “Or at least, you pretended to.”

A faint shift in her stance. A coiled tension beneath stillness.

“Tell me something.”

Her voice did not rise, but it sharpened, like a blade drawn slowly.

“Do you still believe in him?”

Outside, the wind brushed against the altered landscape of Rakis—against green growth where there should have been only sand, against a world deliberately changed, controlled, softened. The Sareer alone resisted, a preserved memory of what had been… and what might never return.

Siona took a single step forward.