Chapter 1: Death and Sand
Cold.
That was the first thing. Not the shattered windshield or the horn blaring in my face or the way the steering wheel had punched through my ribs. Just cold. Rain drumming on metal. Blood in my mouth, copper-thick.
My name was Kael. Thirty-four. Corporate strategist. I'd spent the last decade turning failing companies profitable by cutting the right throats—metaphorically speaking. Tonight I'd celebrated closing a deal worth eight figures. Three drinks. Enough to make me think I was fine to drive.
The semi-truck's headlights had appeared like twin suns. No time to brake. Just impact, and then—
Nothing.
Heat.
That was the second thing. Dry heat that sucked moisture from my lungs with every breath. My chest burned. Something wet and thick filled my throat. I tried to cough but my body wouldn't respond right. Wrong muscles. Wrong weight distribution.
My eyes opened. Stone ceiling, rough-carved. Oil lamps flickering. The smell hit me next—cinnamon and copper and something else. Something that made my sinuses ache and my brain buzz.
Spice.
The realization cut through the confusion like a knife. I knew that smell. I'd read about it in—
"Morvani's choking again."
A voice. Male. Bored. Somewhere to my left.
I turned my head. The motion sent spikes of pain through my neck. Three men sat at a makeshift table, playing cards. They wore desert clothes—robes, stillsuits underneath. One glanced at me without interest.
"Let him die," another said. "Sirat's done with him anyway."
My lungs spasmed. Fluid bubbling up. I rolled onto my side and retched. Dark liquid spattered the stone floor. Blood mixed with mucus mixed with—
Orange. The fluid was orange.
Spice damage. The term surfaced from memory that wasn't mine. This body—Morvani's body—had been exposed to raw melange for too long. Lung tissue breaking down. Internal bleeding. Hours left. Maybe less.
I tried to stand. My legs barely supported me. The men didn't even look up from their game.
Outside, boots marched. Many boots. Military cadence.
One of the card players paused mid-deal. "Harkonnens."
The word sent ice through veins that weren't mine. Harkonnens. House Harkonnen. Which meant—
I looked at my hands. Callused. Sun-darkened. A scar across the left palm I didn't remember getting. This was real. This was actually—
The desert has chosen you.
The whisper came from everywhere and nowhere. Cold as vacuum, patient as stone. My vision blurred. Text appeared, burning blue against the darkness behind my eyelids.
[SAND WORM GOD SYSTEM INITIALIZING]
[HOST DETECTED: CRITICAL CONDITION]
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS ENGAGING]
Numbers scrolled past. Stats. Attributes. Things that made no sense and perfect sense at the same time.
SAND RESONANCE: 0
DROUGHT AURA: 0
WORM SOVEREIGNTY: 0
SPICE SATURATION: 0%
DESERT DOMAIN: 0 km²
HUMAN RETENTION: 100%
All zeros except that last one. I would have laughed if I had the breath for it.
[ABILITY UNLOCKED: SAND TOUCH (LVL 1)]
[FUNCTION: CONVERT MATTER TO SAND THROUGH DIRECT CONTACT]
[COST: SEVERE STAMINA DRAIN]
[WARNING: HOST CONDITION CRITICAL. IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED FOR SURVIVAL.]
The text faded. The whisper remained.
Adapt or perish.
The boots were louder now. Voices barking orders in Galach. The card players scrambled, gathering weapons. One kicked over the table fleeing toward the back exit.
I stayed against the wall. My mind raced even as my lungs struggled. Dune. I was in fucking Dune. Arrakis. The spice planet. And I had—what, superpowers? A system like those web novels I'd never admitted to reading during boring meetings?
Focus. Analyze. The Kael from before would have found the angles, the advantages, the way to turn disaster into opportunity.
The Kael now needed to survive the next five minutes.
Harkonnen soldiers burst through the entrance. Four of them. Black armor, lasgun rifles, brutal efficiency. They swept the room with weapons raised.
"Clear!" one barked.
"Smuggler den," another said. "Find the cache. Kill anyone—"
He stopped. Stared at me. I was the only one left. The others had vanished into whatever bolt holes they knew.
"This one's half-dead already."
"Search him. Then finish it."
The soldier approached. I pressed my back against the stone wall. My hand touched rough rock. The System pulsed.
[SAND TOUCH AVAILABLE]
[CONVERT MATTER TO SAND?]
[YES / NO]
The soldier was three steps away. Lasgun aimed at my chest. "Any last words, smuggler?"
I looked at him. Then I looked at the wall behind me. A plan formed—desperate, probably stupid, but the only one I had.
"Yeah," I said. My voice came out raspy, damaged. "The desert doesn't forget."
I pressed both palms flat against stone and willed it. Convert. Change. Break it down.
Pain exploded through my arms. Not the dull ache of dying lungs but something new. Something that felt like my bones were grinding themselves to powder from the inside out. Every nerve screamed. Every muscle locked.
The stone crumbled.
It didn't crack or shatter. It just... disintegrated. Became sand. Fine, perfect grains that poured through my fingers like water. The wall behind me collapsed inward, revealing a narrow passage I hadn't known existed.
[SAND TOUCH ACTIVATED]
[+5 SAND RESONANCE]
[WARNING: STAMINA SEVERELY DEPLETED]
The Harkonnen soldier's eyes widened. "What the—"
I fell backwards through the new opening. Hit the ground hard. Rolled. Kept moving even though my body wanted to stop. Wanted to sleep. Wanted to die.
Behind me, lasguns fired. Blue bolts scored stone where I'd been.
"After him!" someone shouted. "The bastard's some kind of Fremen!"
Fremen. Right. Let them think that. Better than the truth—that I had no idea what I was doing.
The passage twisted. I crawled more than ran. My chest felt like someone had filled it with broken glass. Each breath came shorter than the last. The orange fluid was back in my throat.
This body was dying. System or no System, I was running on borrowed time measured in hours.
The passage sloped downward. The angry voices faded. My arms gave out. I slumped against cool stone and finally let myself cough. Blood spattered my hands—less orange now, darker red.
That couldn't be good.
[HOST CONDITION: CRITICAL]
[LUNG DAMAGE: SEVERE]
[TIME REMAINING WITHOUT INTERVENTION: 4-6 HOURS]
I closed my eyes. Tried to think. I'd died once already tonight—in a car crash on a wet highway, in a world that seemed like a dream now. Had that been real? Was this?
My hand touched something wet. I opened my eyes. Water. Actual water, dripping from somewhere above. Following the sound, I dragged myself forward.
The passage opened into a small chamber. Three sealed containers sat against the far wall, thick with dust. No footprints. No signs anyone had been here in years.
Water cache. Smugglers sometimes hid supplies in the deep tunnels. This one had been forgotten.
I crawled to the nearest container. Broke the seal with shaking hands. Clear water sloshed inside. On Arrakis, this was worth more than gold. More than life.
I drank. The water was flat, stale, beautiful. I drank until my stomach cramped, then forced myself to stop. Rationing. Always ration.
Using the precious water, I cleaned the lasgun graze on my shoulder. Just a burn, not deep. The orange blood washed away. The wound stung. I didn't care.
I was alive.
Against all logic, against physics and biology and common sense—I was alive. In a stranger's body. On a planet forty thousand years in the future. With powers that came from some mysterious System that whispered in my head like the voice of dead gods.
I started laughing. Wet, horrible sounds that turned into coughing that turned into more blood. But I was laughing.
I was in Dune. Fucking Dune. The books I'd read three times. The movies I'd analyzed. The universe I'd dreamed about while pretending to care about quarterly projections and shareholder value.
And I had powers.
The System hummed in the back of my mind. Waiting. Patient. I mentally reached for it.
Show me everything.
The interface bloomed. Stats. Abilities. Progression paths. I read it all, absorbing information the way I'd once absorbed market reports. The scope of what this thing offered was terrifying.
Desertification. Worm Sovereignty. Spice Apotheosis. The names alone promised transformation into something beyond human. Beyond anything I could imagine.
There were costs. The Human Retention stat stood at 100% now. But I could already see the paths that would lower it. Choices that would trade pieces of my humanity for power. The System didn't demand it—but it rewarded it.
The desert always spreads. You are the vector.
"Yeah," I said aloud. My voice echoed in the small chamber. "Yeah, I get it. Spread the desert or die. Become something new or stay something dead."
I looked at my hands. The same hands that had closed deals and signed contracts and shaken hands with people I was planning to destroy. Now they could turn stone to sand.
Tomorrow—if I survived to see tomorrow—I'd need to figure out who Morvani had been. What connections he'd had. Whether his identity was still usable or if I'd need to start from scratch.
Tomorrow I'd need to learn how this System actually worked. Its limits. Its requirements.
Tomorrow I'd need to survive in a universe where everyone was playing games I barely understood.
But tonight? Tonight I could rest. Four hours, maybe five before the body gave out completely. I'd use them.
I stretched out on the stone floor. Found a relatively smooth patch. The water containers made a decent pillow. Above me, somewhere far away, Harkonnen boots marched through corridors looking for a ghost.
Let them search. I wasn't going anywhere.
The System whispered its approval.
First step complete. You have claimed your existence. Now claim your territory.
I closed my eyes. In the darkness behind them, I could see it—the System's first quest marker.
[QUEST: CLAIM YOUR FIRST TERRITORY]
[REQUIREMENT: CONVERT 1 KM² TO DESERT]
[REWARD: ???]
Not yet. First I needed to become someone worth following. Someone who could build power without immediately getting killed.
First I needed to stop being Morvani the dying smuggler.
Time to become Kael. Again. For real this time.
The stone floor was hard against my back. My shoulder throbbed where the lasgun had grazed it. My lungs still burned with every breath.
I'd never been more alive.
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