From Corpse to Crown: Reborn as a Mortician in Another World-Chapter 107: What Peace Cost Us

Lucian didn’t remember falling asleep, but he knew the moment he slipped into a dream.

He stood once more in the spiral of Vel Quen—except this time, it was inverted. The sky spun like a whirlpool above him, and grief trickled down like threadlight rain. People surrounded him, faces blurred but voices clear. They handed him folded notes, ribbon-bound boxes, shattered lockets. All tokens of sorrow.

He tried to collect them. Tried to fold their pain into gold thread and return it as peace—but the thread refused to shine. Every time he wove, the grief burned through his hands like fire.

Then a voice—Serafina’s, maybe—whispered behind him: You cannot transmute what you do not carry.

Lucian jolted awake.

His palms ached.

By late morning, Alice had already gone ahead, visiting the marketplace. Lucian stayed behind, sitting on the guesthouse balcony, watching Austmark begin its day.

Everything here was too rehearsed. Too polished. He saw the same child fall in the same puddle two mornings in a row, and the same three shopkeepers laugh with the same pitch at noon sharp.

But now that the cracks had begun to show, he noticed them everywhere.

One woman sweeping dust away from an already spotless step.

A man staring at a closed butcher stall for a full minute before turning away.

He watched a tailor put pins in the same dress hem three times—then throw the pins aside and press her palms to her eyes.

Lucian stood. His work was waiting.

The mayor’s assistant arrived at the guesthouse with a request. "There’s been a corpse—well, a preserved one. Some records were tampered with, but the mayor believes it may be one of the missing. He’d like you to examine it."

Lucian followed her through a winding path into Austmark’s archives, deep underground. The walls were mossy and close. Eventually they reached a sealed chamber.

Inside was a stone table. Upon it lay a preserved corpse—a young man, maybe twenty, with curled brown hair and silver cuffs still around his wrists.

Lucian pulled on his gloves and opened his kit.

The preservation was almost too perfect. There were no embalming sigils, no visible threadmarks. Just silence.

"What’s his name?" Lucian asked.

"We don’t know," the assistant replied. "No one remembers reporting a missing person. But he was found in an unused pantry beneath Town Hall. Locked in. Still sitting up."

Lucian felt a chill. "Then someone wanted him forgotten."

He gently touched the body’s chest with a cloth wrapped in recall balm, then whispered a rite.

A faint shimmer rose from the boy’s sternum.

Music. Faint, distant violin. And a woman’s voice: Don’t worry, we’ll bring you home soon. Just one more concert.

Lucian stood still for a long moment. Then quietly, he took a thread from his sleeve, wove a tiny stitch into the young man’s cuff, and whispered: "You are remembered."

Later that afternoon, Lucian and Alice regrouped near the fountain. They shared what they’d seen.

"Did you ever wonder," Alice asked, "if people in towns like these think they’re doing the right thing? Even when they give up everything they loved?"

Lucian leaned back, letting his head rest against the stone. "I think they do. But that doesn’t make it less cruel."

"Not everyone here wanted peace. Some just got tired of fighting for joy."

They sat in silence until a bell chimed twice in the distance. Not the mourning bell. Not a call to Harmony. Just a reminder: the hour had changed. Proceed accordingly.

Later, they stumbled upon a silent demonstration—just five people standing shoulder to shoulder, holding symbols of their old trades. A lute. A dance shoe. A torn painter’s apron. The guards didn’t intervene, but their presence on the edges was palpable.

Lucian whispered to Alice, "They’re bargaining. Just standing here, but they’re risking everything."

Alice nodded. "Because even stillness can be a protest when the world demands quiet."

One of the demonstrators made eye contact with Lucian. Just a flicker of recognition. A silent plea: Don’t forget us.

Near twilight, Lucian followed an invitation to a "Guided Reflection Session" at Austmark’s amphitheater.

Austmark’s therapist—a gentle undead man named Olin—stood at the base of the stone steps, lighting incense made of ash bark and elderflower. His expression was kind, but his eyes were dulled.

Lucian joined the small circle.

"Today," Olin said softly, "we acknowledge the roles we play. And we thank those who hold us in place."

The attendees murmured back: "So that the greater whole may thrive."

Lucian watched their faces. Eyes dimmed. Smiles automatic.

When it came his turn to speak, he stood.

"My name is Lucian. I’m a mortician."

Olin smiled. "And what do you bring to the whole?"

Lucian hesitated. "Truth. I bring what was hidden back into the light."

Olin blinked.

"And what will you release in exchange?"

Lucian looked out over the town. "The belief that we can be safe by forgetting."

There was a pause. Then a ripple moved through the circle—confusion, discomfort. Someone coughed. Another stood and excused themselves.

Lucian remained.

That night, Alice returned to the inn alone. Lucian wandered.

He found himself at the border wall again, staring at the hills beyond. In the distance, faint lights from the next town twinkled, golden and soft.

He took out his Grimoire and began to write:

What if grief isn’t something to cure? What if it’s how we remember to live?

The book warmed.

New Memory Unlocked: Embalm the Living

He turned the page. The rite began to form—symbols for preserving not the body, but the memory of those still alive. A rite to keep truth alive, even when peace demanded silence.

Lucian smiled, just a little.

This was why he’d been summoned.

The next morning, the town of Austmark was subtly different. A single flyer appeared on the inn’s noticeboard: "OPEN CALL: Dance Instructor Wanted – Must Be Willing to Teach Joyfully."

By midday, it was gone. But the rumor had spread.

And later, near the edge of the square, someone played a harp.

Not perfectly. Not loudly.

But clearly.

Lucian stood beside Alice, both of them silent.

Then she whispered, "It’s starting, isn’t it?"

He nodded.

The silence had been broken.

That night, Alice slipped away from the inn again and returned to the outskirts, where Austmark’s abandoned train station sat quietly under ivy and rust. A small group was gathered there—four or five villagers holding lanterns and listening to a boy recite poetry.

Alice took a seat in the back.

"I thought poetry was banned," she whispered to the woman next to her.

"It is," the woman whispered back, "but he writes it anyway. Every line is a risk."

The boy’s voice rose in cadence, his hands trembling. "We do not bloom when pressed in pages. We are not echoes. We are names."

The others nodded.

And Alice knew: change always began in quiet places.