The screaming tree had grown through the ribcage of creation itself, its branches:
Bone-white and pulsing with remembered pain
Hung with silver lockets that wept when touched
Rooted in something far below the ruined bakery
Payune reached for the lowest fruit—a molar carved with her name—and remembered being swallowed whole.
Vision:
The Dragonlord kneeling before not a god, but a high chair
Mother's hands sharpening infant teeth into cutlery
The terrible understanding: They were never the ingredients. They were the utensils.
Hayuni vomited foxfire onto the roots. The tree screamed in mother's voice.
The sky peeled back like a banana skin, revealing:
The True Kitchen (Walls lined with screaming cookbooks)
The Staff (Sous chefs with faces like badly recalled memories)
The Chef
(Imagine:)
A silhouette made of all the meals you ever skipped
A hat that wept bacon grease
Hands that never stopped kneading, even when empty
It pointed a meat thermometer at the Third Sibling.
"You're overdone."
Mother's remains reconstituted just long enough to whisper:
"Read the back of the locket."
Payune pried it open. The inscription:
"HOW TO UNMAKE A GOD"
(Ingredients:)
One unwanted child (lightly bruised)
The tooth that remembers
A sister's willing hands
Instructions:
Preheat reality to absolute zero
Fold in betrayal until mixture weeps
Bake until all that remains is the first cry
Hayuni looked at Payune. Payune looked at the Third. The Third licked its lips.
What happened next broke the fourth wall:
Payune plunged her hands into the tree, grafting dragonbone to root
Hayuni's tails became whiskers, beating time itself into stiff peaks
The Third opened its chest cavity, revealing:
The music box now playing forward
A tiny silver spoon
Their real birth certificates
The Chef applauded, each clap erasing a fundamental law of physics.