Caladan Castle is a fortress of black stone and perpetual dampness, designed to withstand storms that would drown other worlds. But that night, the storm was inside the birthing chamber.
The first cry tore through the air heavy with incense and medicinal steam.
Paul had been born.
The baby, small and covered in blood, was quickly cleaned by the Mapes and the trusted midwives. Lady Jessica, pale as wax, let her head fall onto the sweat-soaked pillows. She had done her duty. She had defied the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood to give her Duke a son, but the birth had been natural, human, exhausting.
The heavy wooden door opened. Duke Leto Atreides entered, bringing with him the chill of the stone halls. His gray eyes, usually calculating, shone with raw emotion.
“Jessica,” he whispered, approaching the bed, disregarding protocol. He looked at the small bundle in a midwife’s arms. A son. She has given me a son.
Relief flooded the room. It was a perfect moment. A picture of dynastic victory.
And then, the picture shattered.
Jessica let out a strangled cry. Her body arched violently on the bed, the tendons in her neck tensing like violin strings about to snap.
“My lady!” cried the midwife, almost releasing Paul.
“It’s not over!” gasped Dr. Suk, his imperial conditioning fighting against panic. “There’s… there’s another one! Duke, stand back!”
Leto recoiled, his hand instinctively going to the dagger at his belt, not out of threat, but out of helplessness. No one had predicted it. Not the scanners, not the Brotherhood’s presciences. I was the ghost in the machine.
The second birth was swift, brutal. I didn’t fight my way out; I simply forced my way through.
When the doctor pulled me out, silence fell over the room like a lead leak.
I didn't cry.
And then, it happened.
A faint but unmistakable light began to emanate from my skin. It wasn't the glow of sanctity, but a biological radiation, the byproduct of solar cells activating for the first time in a dark universe. My veins shimmered with liquid gold beneath the translucent skin before settling.
The doctor, trembling, hastily placed me on a stainless steel surgical tray beside the bed, afraid to touch me more than necessary.
"He's... he's a boy," the doctor stammered. "But his temperature... it's elevated."
I felt the cold metal against my back. The survival instinct of my new physiology kicked in. Level 10 knowledge flooded my childlike brain, and for a microsecond, I lost motor control.
My small, wrinkled right hand closed around the edge of the hardened steel tray.
SCREAM.
The sound was sharp, piercing. The metal didn't jingle. It screeched.
Before the astonished eyes of Duke Leto and Lady Jessica, the edge of the solid steel tray bent like wet clay beneath my newborn fingers. The metal twisted, leaving the perfect imprint of my tiny hand etched into the indestructible alloy.
I released the metal. The glow of my skin faded, hidden beneath the appearance of a normal child. But the damage was done. The tray was ruined.
Leto approached slowly, his face pale. He looked at the deformed tray. Then he looked at my hand, untouched, without a single scratch. Finally, his eyes met mine.
I looked back. For a second, my eyes didn't resemble those of a baby, but ancient, deep wells.
“What is this?” Leto whispered, his voice devoid of the joy of moments before, replaced by a reverential fear. “Jessica… what have we brought into this world?”
Jessica, exhausted and terrified, looked at Paul, so human and fragile, and then at me, the child who shone and bent steel at birth.
“I don’t know, Leto,” she whispered, and for the first time in her life, the Bene Gesserit felt true fear of the future. “I don’t know.”