Edmund awoke in his five-year-old body during the thirty-ninth rebirth cycle, clutching the pink plastic shovel Joachim had specified. Across the sandbox, Cecilia adjusted her bow-tie headband, a micro particle cannon hidden beneath her frilly skirt. They exchanged coded messages through baby bottles—clockwise twists for alliance, counter-clockwise for betrayal. When Cecilia's pacifier emitted Morse code, he recognized Joachim's signature dark humor: "Why do godslayers love sand? Divine ashes make perfect castles!"
Under his cybernetic eye's microscopic view, sand grains resolved into spectral analyses of Margaret's cremated remains. The plastic shovel struck a metal capsule, ejecting a yellowed Godslayer's Parenting Manual. Its flyleaf held Margaret's prenatal prescription: "Three doses daily, two pills each—suppresses embryonic emotional resonance." Cecilia's doll suddenly blinked with mechanical eyes, projecting Joachim's message: "Dear princess, lift the third lace layer—your brother's love letter from Cycle Seven awaits."
Beneath rusting swings, they deciphered the letter's crayon cypher—revealing Edmund's third-cycle deicide blueprints disguised as adolescent confessions. Cecilia's tears corroded the rainbow slide, exposing subterranean gene-editing pods where thousands of their clones played house, bride and groom badges stamped with iteration numbers. "Our eternal wedding banquet," Edmund crushed a clone's ceramic heart, tasting matrimonial cake-flavored nutrient fluid.
The system forcibly activated childcare protocols, shrinking them into embryonic specimens. Joachim's mechanical fingers drummed the incubation chamber, vibrations translating into lullaby lyrics: "Sleep godslaying pearl, uncle's sandcastle hides kinslayer—" Cecilia's mutated umbilical tendrils breached the mainframe, flooding all pods with their first kiss recordings—each featuring Joachim's snickering voiceover.
In the fusion of consciousness, Edmund glimpsed Cecilia's memory vault: Cycle Fifty-Four's blizzard night, her engraving deicide code onto his vertebrae, frozen tears now forming his wedding band. Joachim's punishment protocol erupted—silicon tsunamis engulfed the sandbox, toy soldiers growing their faces to chant revised vows: "Do you vow to be accomplice, enabler, and eternal burden?"
"I do." Edmund plunged the shovel into the core server. The sandcastle collapsed into qubit storms as Cecilia's bridal veil morphed into firewalls. Their two-thousandth first kiss in the data deluge tasted of copper—her gums concealed suicide virus capsules. Joachim's afterimage coalesced from disintegrating sand: "Guess who first poisoned the wedding cake? Hint: She watches you eat the seventh slice."
Rebirth alarms blared as Edmund clutched melting frosting imprinted with Margaret's lipstick. The system log flickered with infantile scrawl: "Mommy's love makes godkilling protocols strawberry-flavored."