Stilgar watches over the sleeping twins and contemplates killing them to end the Atreides messianic bloodline.

Jessica arrives on Arrakis and immediately detects signs of Abomination in Alia's face.

Princess Wensicia approves footage of Laza tigers killing children and sends identical cloaks to the Atreides twins as a gift.

Leto and Ghanima summon the ego-memories of Paul and Chani to strategize together about following the Golden Path.

Alia attempts to assassinate Jessica in the Great Hall using a maula pistol, and Jessica escapes with Fedaykin help.

Leto and Ghanima lure the Laza tigers into a rocky chasm, kill both animals, and separate according to their plan.

Ghanima hypnotizes herself into genuinely believing Leto is dead and returns to Sietch Tabr to report his death.

Duncan Idaho transports Jessica to Salusa Secundus, where she agrees to train Farad'n in the Bene Gesserit arts.

Following Jessica's orders, Gurney Halleck injects Leto with concentrated spice essence to trigger the spice trance.

Leto survives the spice trance and awakens as a Kwisatz Haderach with full ancestral and prescient powers.

Duncan deliberately provokes Stilgar into killing him at Sietch Tabr, forcing Stilgar to flee into the desert with Ghanima.

Leto dives his hands into the sandtrout at Shuloch's qanats and begins merging with the creatures to form a living skin.

Leto encounters The Preacher and his guide in the open desert and confirms the blind man is his father, Paul.

One of Alia's priest guards stabs The Preacher during his sermon in the Arrakeen plaza, and crowds cry that Muad'Dib has been killed.

Leto breaks down Alia's chamber doors, speaks the words that awaken Ghanima from her trance, and Alia leaps from the balcony to her death.

Nine years after Paul Atreides abandoned his throne, his twin children Leto and Ghanima live under the regency of their aunt Alia, who is slowly being possessed by an ancestral enemy. When their grandmother Jessica arrives on Arrakis and confirms Alia's possession, the twins must confront assassination plots from multiple enemies while committing to a dangerous and obscure vision called the Golden Path. After faking Leto's death and surviving a forced spice trance, Leto undergoes an irreversible transformation by merging his body with sandtrout, becoming a powerful hybrid of man and worm. The twins converge on the capital as their father Paul, long disguised as The Preacher, delivers a final sermon and is killed by one of his own devotees. Alia, unable to resist the possession consuming her, chooses death over trial, and Leto claims the throne as God Emperor to begin his 4,000-year reign.

The headline events of the Atreides twins' fight for survival and power.

The twins recognize signs of Baron Harkonnen's possession in Alia's face and wonder if The Preacher is their missing father.

Alia suspects that Jessica's return to Arrakis is a Bene Gesserit scheme to seize control of the twins and their genetic material.

The Preacher visits Alia's Temple plaza and publicly chastises the crowds for commodifying and idolizing the religion of Muad'Dib.

Jessica and Ghanima hold a private meeting at Sietch Tabr and confirm together that Alia has fully fallen to Abomination.

Alia bargains with Baron Harkonnen's voice in her head and surrenders her consciousness in exchange for political counsel.

Leto privately warns Stilgar about his three prescient visions and instructs him to flee Sietch Tabr and protect Ghanima when the time comes.

Duncan uses his mentat abilities to deduce Alia is possessed and secretly tests her by offering to murder Jessica instead of abducting her.

The Preacher returns to Arrakis and publicly delivers four warnings directed at Alia, Stilgar, Irulan, and Duncan Idaho.

Farad'n disapproves of his mother Wensicia's assassination plot against the twins but begrudgingly commits to House Corrino's schemes.

Ghanima kills Palimbasha, the man who remotely controlled the Laza tigers, with a poisoned dart outside Sietch Tabr.

The Preacher grabs Alia's arm during a public festival, whispers that she is his sister, and leaves her devastated and utterly alone.

Gurney Halleck kills Namri after discovering he was Alia's planted agent with standing orders to kill Leto regardless of the test's outcome.

Leto seizes control of Shuloch, commands the Cast Out to stockpile spice, and they regard him with awe as a reincarnation of Shai-Hulud.

Paul resolves to accompany Leto back to Arrakeen and deliver a final sermon to destroy the legend of Muad'Dib once and for all.

Leto assumes the throne as God Emperor and instructs Farad'n to secretly father Ghanima's children to continue the Atreides bloodline.

Behind the main action of the story lies a web of political conspiracies and conflicted loyalties that drive nearly every major event. Alia's growing possession by Baron Harkonnen leads her to plot against her own family, while Duncan Idaho secretly tests her and ultimately acts on orders from The Preacher rather than his wife. Princess Wensicia's failed assassination scheme sets Farad'n Corrino on an unexpected path toward Atreides values, while Ghanima kills the traitor who unleashed the tigers and waits for her chance at vengeance. The mysterious Preacher continues to disrupt Arrakeen society with public provocations aimed at dismantling his own religion, building toward a final confrontation in the capital's plaza. By the end, Leto assumes the throne and reveals the full scope of his inhuman plan to rule as a tyrant for millennia in order to ultimately save humanity from extinction.

The political conspiracies and hidden loyalties driving the story.

Leto confesses to Ghanima that he has begun showing signs of prescience and that the terraforming project is endangering the sandtrout.

Gurney and Jessica communicate in secret hand signals to plan how to locate Jacarutu and use Javid as an informant.

Farad'n meets The Preacher on Salusa Secundus; The Preacher declines to interpret the dream but advises Farad'n on what true leadership requires.

Leto tells Jessica that Alia plans to abduct her and reveals the Bene Gesserit's scheme to blackmail her using her Harkonnen bloodline.

Jessica performs a staged religious blessing before the Arrakeen crowds, secretly using it to identify and locate Alia's hidden agents.

Assan Tariq kills six trespassers at the secret sietch of Shuloch as his rite of passage into the ranks of the Cast Out.

Leto secretly meets Stilgar at The Attendant outcropping, foretells his own apparent death there, and points to where his blood will be found.

Leto and Ghanima arm themselves with crysknives and maula pistols and don Farad'n's gifted cloaks before heading to The Attendant.

Farad'n and Jessica reach a bargain: she publicly clears House Corrino's name and he denounces Wensicia and accepts Bene Gesserit training.

Leto is taken captive at Jacarutu and meets Namri, who tests him with ancient Fremen riddles under the immediate threat of death.

Leto escapes Jacarutu during a sandstorm by sheltering inside a stilltent, then forces Muriz in the open desert to lead him to Shuloch.

Leto observes the captured sandtrout in Shuloch's water channels and weeps, a rare and profound act of water-giving in Fremen tradition.

Alia learns that Namri is dead and 40 qanats have been destroyed, making her doubt Ghanima's claim that Leto died in the tiger attack.

Farad'n masters the Bene Gesserit hand-aging exercise and realizes for the first time that his own mind controls his reality.

Stilgar and Leto exchange modest gifts of Ghanima's woven headband and a torn piece of her robe during the Great Hall throne ceremony.

This pool traces the quieter but decisive moments that gradually expose the truth about Alia's corruption, the nature of the Golden Path, and the identity of The Preacher. Leto and Ghanima carefully prepare their strategy while others around them are deceived, including Jessica, whose deep Bene Gesserit conditioning is revealed to her as a tool being used against her own family. On Salusa Secundus, Farad'n begins his unlikely transformation from a reluctant heir into an Atreides ally under Jessica's demanding guidance. Leto's capture, harrowing escape, and transformation at Shuloch mark the decisive turning point where he commits irrevocably to the Golden Path and ceases to be fully human. The pool closes with the establishment of the new order symbolized in a modest but charged exchange of gifts between Leto and Stilgar in the Great Hall, marking both reconciliation and unease about the future.

The key discoveries and decisions that illuminate the truth behind the Golden Path.