From Corpse to Crown: Reborn as a Mortician in Another World-Chapter 52: The Flavor of War

For a moment, Elian didn’t move, like he was still thinking about the ice cream he tasted just moments ago. Then the silver spoon slipped from his fingers with a soft clink against the tiled floor.

The echo rippled like a dropped sword--quiet, but final.

His expression remained flat, carved from marble—but Lucian saw it: a flicker of tension beneath the stillness. He observed the slight tremor in Lucian’s jaw, and an exhale held for too long.

Elian’s Grimoire fluttered at his side, pages rustling like wings made of razors. It was shackled to him, trying to overwrite something it couldn’t name.

Lucian stepped forward with one hand on the spine of his own Grimoire. It pulsed with heat--not light--like a heart just starting to race.

"That was your memory, wasn’t it?" Lucian said softly. "You weren’t born into the Order. You were chosen to replace me."

Elian’s eyes flicked to him—sharp and unblinking. "I wasn’t chosen. I was trained."

His voice was quiet, but it struck like a gavel.

"When the Queen saw you were...turning away from her gaze, she asked the Shadow Court to train me. Over there, I got to relieve your journey. But I made different choices.

Do you remember what the Queen told us, Lucian?"

Lucian didn’t respond.

Elian smiled—tight and joyless.

"She said: ’Compassion is the first rot of discipline.’ You rotted first. I was the cure."

Alice, standing beside a frost-fractured display case, took a cautious step back. Her eyes flicked between the two morticians, as if expecting one of them to explode at any moment.

+

The irritation Lucian felt in his heart was very real. He tilted his head, the beginnings of something much colder entering his expression.

"You’re not a cure. You’re a cage that thinks it’s clean."

The pages of his Grimoire fluttered violently.

[Combat Protocol: Emotional Calibration Surged][Grief Glyph Tier III Authorized]

Merry moved to shield Alice instinctively, whispering a silence soil glyph under her breath. Her Grimoire pulsed like a lily under moonlight, casting a ward between them.

Cadrel drew a thin-bladed ritual knife from his belt. He didn’t speak--just took position near the carousel’s entrance. He had seen too many rites go wrong to wait for permission to survive.

Elian’s own Grimoire opened like a flower of command, rigid and cold.

[Target: Apostate. Disengagement Protocol: Denied][Override Glyphs Engaged: Directive Shadow-Seven]

Elian didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

"You brought a stitched girl, a failed priest, and a druid they tried to erase. This is your army?" he asked, almost amused. "You’ve always confused kindness for strength."

Lucian’s glare sharpened. "And you’ve always mistaken silence for stability."

But then—

A strange sense of déjà vu passed through Lucian like a draft under a closed door.

There was something uncanny in Elian’s cadence. His stance. His choices. The words he used to taunt.

It was like facing a version of himself that had made every opposite decision—and felt nothing while doing it.

+

"You think I don’t understand you," Elian said suddenly, voice like flint. "But I do. I’ve studied every lesson you learned. Every rite you passed. Every mistake you buried."

Lucian’s stomach twisted. "How could you—?"

"Because I was taught your path," Elian said coldly. "And instructed where not to falter."

Lucian took a step back.

"You memorized my—?"

"No," Elian said. "I inherited it. The Queen calls it optimization. I call it clarity."

He stepped closer now, voice soft but unsparing.

"We were made from the same bones, Lucian. You just let yours feel."

Elian’s Grimoire shimmered darkly, responding to his alignment with perfect obedience.

Lucian’s hand gripped his Echoheart system tighter. His Grimoire pulsed in warning:

[Cognitive Echo Detected: Emotional Pattern Match — 89%][Caution: Behavioral Mirror May Destabilize Ritual Field]

Lucian didn’t understand what that meant. Not yet.

But he understood this: Elian had lived his life. Or something close to it.

Above them, the ice in the chandelier cracked.

+

Tension pulled tight—between breath and blade, between the ghosts of old choices and the pressure of everything unspoken. They began drawing runes in the air—glowing, pulsing, countering. Glyph against glyph. Grimoire against Grimoire.

A breeze of cold memory whipped through the chamber.

Then Lucian lunged.

Elian met him halfway.

The impact of their magic slammed into the air like thunder trapped in a bell. Spirals of runes collided and burst, freezing the walls, fracturing the glass cabinets. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Emotions stored in the dishes began to bleed into the air—laughter, grief, desperation, all flickering like ghosts trapped in scent and taste.

Alice screamed as one dish near her cracked open—"The Day My Child Forgot Me." The emotion knocked her to her knees with a sob that didn’t belong to her.

Lucian spun, deflecting a precision grief glyph hurled by Elian. "This isn’t who we are!"

"No," Elian spat. "It’s who you refused to be."

They clashed again—this time with physicality. Lucian’s palm struck Elian’s shoulder, releasing a disorienting echo burst. Elian twisted, swept his cane low, nearly tripping Lucian into a cabinet labeled "Bitterness Reheated."

Then—

The palace shook.

Not a tremor. A warning.

The chandelier overhead shattered in full, raining crystal daggers. Cadrel dove, pulling Alice to cover. Merry’s glyph wards surged, then overloaded, her Grimoire flaring green and gold in wild protest.

The floor cracked.

A voice tore through the Château like a cathedral bell ripped from its tower.

"WHO DARES TO TASTE THE FINAL FLAVOR?"

Lucian’s blood ran cold.

The walls screamed.

The carousel in the next room began to rotate—slowly, creaking, groaning under the weight of its passengers. Ice cracked across the ceiling like veins forming in glass. One of the frozen statues in the parlor twitched violently, mouth stretched open in a soundless scream.

Elian froze, eyes darting upward.

"Is that—?"

"Yes," Lucian said grimly. "The King."

From beneath the Chateau came a second sound—not words, but the low rumble of a sorrow so ancient it had lost the language to describe itself.

The vault.

The final flavor.

It was no longer sealed.

Lucian whirled toward Merry. "Can you get us out?"

"I don’t know what’s binding this place anymore," she said, shaking.

"The Glyphweb’s unraveling."

"Elian," Alice said quietly, stepping forward. "You felt it, didn’t you?"

He didn’t answer.

But his hand clenched.

"The memory," she continued. "The one you tried to suppress. It broke through."

He turned toward her, sharp. "That wasn’t yours to see."

"And yet I did," Alice said softly. "You carry sorrow too. Not because it makes you weak—but because you were made to hold it all and never speak of it."

Elian’s Grimoire pulsed—just once—like a heart skipping a beat.

Lucian stepped between them.

"This fight can wait. If we don’t stop whatever’s waking up under us, this place might not let us finish it."

Elian stared at him for a long moment.

Then, wordlessly, he stepped back. His Grimoire quieted down, and stilled.

A temporary truce.