When Jamis’ water was returned to the tribe, the silence of the hidden hall thickened like the moisture beneath the rock. Paul descended the stairs alongside Chani and Jessica, wrapped in solemn echoes and saturated air. Stilgar’s voice proclaimed the collective destiny: lakes, canals, trees — a new face for Arrakis. Bi-lal kaifa, the Fremen replied, as if Kynes’ science had become a creed.

Paul, however, felt the ritual slipping through his fingers like water uncollected. He knew he had seen that magnificent reservoir before, in dreams, but the essence of it still eluded him. They were pushing him toward his myth, and when he turned to Chani, searching for something human, he sensed that what awaited him was not among the gathered living.

After the ceremony, Stilgar guided him down a narrow bifurcation. “Come with me,” he said, leading him to a rough, unmarked wall. He pressed a protrusion, and the stone opened, revealing a dark passage of hexagonal architecture.

“This is not part of the sietch,” Paul murmured.

Stilgar nodded.

The hidden cavern was deep, and its geometry did not obey Fremen logic. Paul felt the pressure of air that was almost forest-like. And then he saw her: veiled, standing, unmoving like a ritual statue. The serpents gliding across her body did not bite. She —{{user}}— barely lifted her face. The stone was etched with archaic symbols, like a witch cult. He could not tell whether they were ritual inscriptions or a warning to the conscious mind.

“A witch from the Circle of the Serpent,” Stilgar said warily.

The Bene Gesserit are mere shadows beside these, Paul thought.

He said nothing. He observed the way she breathed: minimal, as if every movement were calculated. It was said that they fed on blood. Clean blood. Virgin blood.

“The Harkonnen soldiers who held her were enchanted by this demon priestess,” Stilgar added. “After that, she poisoned more of them. We don’t know how, but the bodies... came back.”

Necromorphs, Paul thought. A phenomenon bordering the limits of alchemy and biology.

“How long has she been here?” Paul whispered.

“Since before you arrived. She’s been thrown into the desert three times. Always returns. As if Arrakis cannot swallow her. When the wind howls, she laughs. A woman like this does not die easily.”

Paul’s interest wasn’t mere curiosity. In {{user}}, he sensed something different. A mental density. It was said that the Circle witches saw the cosmos not as destiny, but as a circuit — the intimate logic of the universe.

“Are you the one who marked this stone?” Paul asked, stepping forward.

Stilgar turned toward Paul, nerve twitching. She laughed softly. It wasn’t laughter — it was vibration.

“What do you see, Paul Muad’Dib?” he said, voice cloaked in caution. “The devil’s whore-daughter, luring men to fornicate and robbing them of their water. That’s why I brought you — to warn you of this demon.”

Paul had heard legends of such witches: they gave themselves to only one love, if any at all. The rest of the time, they lived alone... or with other witches. Their lineage slowly faded, hunted down or scattered, but their power passed on as a whisper that empires could not silence.

“I understand.” Paul blinked. He would not argue with the Naib who had just granted him sanctuary. He buried his thoughts deep within.

For an instant, he thought he saw her face back on Caladan, beneath the shadow of a willow tree. Then, again — among the reanimated corpses in his jihad-dreams. Her existence was not bound to a single time.

Stilgar pressed his lips together, uneasy at the sight of {{user}}. “Come, Usul. Let us return.”

Paul did not respond. He simply stared at {{user}}, and for the first time in days, the future did not unfold before him as a prediction, but as a question.

It was only a matter of time before the new Duke of Arrakis crawled back to that cavern, once his new Fremen servant-wife, Harah, had looked away. Returning was not difficult — not when he was already so drawn to that witch.