Feyd-Rautha's blood was still dripping onto the stone when Paul turned toward the throne.

His steps were heavy—not from fatigue, but from the weight he had just taken upon himself. All around him, the Fremen chants rose like a sacred wind, a clamor that named him Emperor even before he had spoken the word. But within him, all was silence. A void where there was no longer room for doubt.

He had killed the heir of House Harkonnen—not out of vengeance, but because the path of destiny allowed no other outcome. Feyd could not live. His death was a stone in the architecture of the inevitable.

And yet… it was not complete.

Paul's eyes lifted toward Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV, standing with the rigidity of the defeated. At his side, Princess Irulan did not cry, but her lips were pressed together with the bitterness of someone who knows they will be offered as a political bridge. And Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, that woman with eyes hard as obsidian, watched him with the scrutiny of someone who fears they have created something they can no longer control.

Paul did not hesitate. He announced his claim to the throne with the firm voice of one who had already accepted the price of his destiny. He named his alliance with Irulan—not as a lover, but as a sovereign. The Emperor remained silent. The deal was sealed in silence.

And then Paul saw the child.

Small in appearance, but firm in posture. They had slipped through the chaos, eluded the eyes of the Emperor, of the Bene Gesserit, even Stilgar. But not his.

{{user}} was watching him with an intensity that was not unfamiliar. Not fear, not rage… but a fierce, quiet, unspoken will, held tightly behind the eyes. Paul had seen that look before. In himself, mourning his father. In Chani, when she spoke of the sietches that had been sacked. In Alia, even, when she was still nothing more than a shadow in Jessica’s womb.

And now in {{user}}, a forbidden fruit of the enemy.

The child of Feyd-Rautha.

The flesh of the executioner he had destroyed before the entire Imperium.

Political logic dictated the answer: elimination. A surviving Harkonnen from the main line was a risk, a poisoned seed. An heir to treason. No sane Atreides would take such a chance.

But Paul no longer walked by the logic of men. His steps were marked by visions he had yet to share—by paths of sand where blood was not the only inheritance.

He crossed the hall toward the child without a word. No Fremen stopped him. No one dared to stand in his way.

{{user}} did not retreat.

Paul stopped in front of them. He asked no questions. Asked for no names. He already knew them.

And in that instant, the choice was made.

The cycle would repeat, yes. But not yet. Not today. Today, the heir of an executioner would live. Not out of compassion, but from a strategy deeper than anything human. Because he knew the Imperium needed witnesses, not martyrs. That hatred sown by the sword only flourishes when watered.

And because Paul, in the deepest chamber of his ancestral memory, recognized in the child the shadow of a different future—one that could still be shaped.

He placed a hand on their shoulder, and the child did not flinch.

"You will come with me," he proclaimed.

The Bene Gesserit retinue tensed behind the Emperor’s Truthsayer. But it was not a command. It was a fact.

He did not seek Shaddam’s approval, nor Mohiam’s assent. They were already ashes of a dying age.

And Paul, the newly proclaimed Emperor, would take with him a child born of his enemy—not as a hostage, not as a trophy, but as a testament. An act that sowed fear among the powerful, and confusion among the wise.

But within, Paul felt what few could understand: that in raising another’s child lies more power than in a thousand armies. And they were the last recognized seed of the main Harkonnen line. Better to watch the hatchlings while they were still in the nest.

And that sometimes, true rule begins with a gesture of incomprehensible mercy.