Paul stands blind outside Sietch Tabr, still moving by oracular vision while resisting the path it shows him. He signs the Semboule Treaty for an aide and reflects bitterly on Dune, the desert, his empire, and the burden of being worshipped. Hayt joins him, confesses that Bijaz implanted a violent compulsion, and Paul urges the ghola to recover the human Duncan Idaho within himself.

When wailing rises from inside the sietch, Tandis arrives and Paul knows Chani is dead. The shock triggers Hayt’s compulsion: the ghola draws a knife and struggles to kill Paul, but Paul refuses to run. In fighting the command, Hayt recovers Duncan Idaho’s memories and identity, casting off the Tleilaxu programming.

Paul enters the sietch with Duncan and learns that Chani died from the speed and strain of giving birth, but that both children survived: a son and a daughter. The existence of two babies shocks Paul because his vision had shown only one child. In Chani’s death chamber, Paul touches the twins, mourns Chani, and feels his prescient certainty weakening in the place where grief has cut a gap in his sight.

Alia brings in the supposed Lichna, whom Paul identifies as Scytale, a Tleilaxu Face Dancer. Scytale confirms that Duncan’s recovery proves a ghola can regain full memory, then seizes the babies at knifepoint and offers to restore Chani as a ghola in exchange for power over Paul. Paul refuses the bargain because it would make Chani, the children, and the Atreides forever vulnerable to Tleilaxu control.

Unable to see Scytale directly, Paul suddenly sees through the eyes of his newborn son inside the creche. Using that impossible vantage point, Paul throws his crysknife and kills Scytale before the Face Dancer can harm the twins. Paul then realizes his son is conscious and aware, apparently carrying ancestral memory; he also sees in his daughter’s eyes signs of Chani, Jessica, and a multitude of presences. Paul names the son Leto, after his father, and the daughter Ghanima, calling her a spoil of war.

As Chani’s body is taken for the Fremen Water Rite, Paul withdraws to his quarters with Duncan. Bijaz appears and reveals that the Tleilaxu plan depended on Duncan’s love for Paul overcoming the murder compulsion, while also leaving open the offer to restore Chani. Fearing he will yield to the temptation, Paul orders Duncan in Atreides battle language to kill Bijaz; Duncan obeys. With Chani gone, the Tleilaxu offers rejected, and the conspirators dead, Paul feels his prescient vision shatter into uncontrolled possibilities.