From Corpse to Crown: Reborn as a Mortician in Another World-Chapter 82: Where The Bells Stay Silent

This sky is too beautiful for a village that won’t grieve.

Lucian stared at the sign, letters carved into ivory bonewood. The paint that once colored the carvings had faded, but the name still stood out:

MIMEA.

All Things End. None Must Be Named.

The words were carved in Crown-standard script. Thankfully, below them, someone etched a rough translation using charcoal glyphs. It took him a while to understand the dialect.

That is the symbol for sorrow...were they trying to make grief sound polite? Lucian wondered as he traced a crown with thorns--the sorrow symbol. Silently, he tugged his cloak tighter and stepped forward.

The others were a few paces behind. Alice walked softly, like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to make noise. Her sketchbook remained sealed with ribbon thread—Lucian didn’t blame her.

That last memory had been a breaking point. Or maybe a bridge.

He was still deciding.

"Are you sure about this?" Merry asked from behind. "This place... it doesn’t want us."

"That’s exactly why we need to see it," Lucian said. "If Gethra’s right, this is one of the last places trying to pretend the Bell was never rung."

Merry frowned. "Does everyone have to acknowledge you ringing the bell? What if people just want to be left alone, Lucian?"

Lucian didn’t understand why she was asking him these questions. "Well...people can’t be in denial forever."

"That’s true, but...does it have to be you?"

Lucian looked at Merry, concern in his eyes. "If I don’t, who will?" he asked in return.

I wonder why she’s speaking up about this now. Does she know somebody in this town?

Cadrel adjusted his scarf and muttered, "Pretending death doesn’t exist is like pretending not to bleed."

Lucian gave him a tired smile. "People have gotten used to a world without death. Trying to convince them to look at it would be a different challenge."

Merry added quietly, "Don’t forget to change your name."

Lucian had almost forgotten. He was supposed to be on the run--and now that the Queen had declared him a traitor, towns and cities who allied with Atreaum would be on the lookout.

"Is it too late to cut my hair?" Lucian mumbled, and Merry pulled out a pair of shears.

+

Mimea’s silence was structured. There wasn’t an absence of silence--far from it. As Lucian was about to find out, these citizens had a completely different way of dealing with death.

The silence of Mimea was structured. Not absence—but choreography. Every person they passed nodded once, to acknowledge them. Never twice. Mimea’s residents wore neutral colored robes: muted grays, off-whites, dusty beiges. Nothing too bright, and nothing too loud.

Even the children played with dolls stuffed with gauze and cotton. He spotted a child stuffing her doll back into her toy chest with practiced, theatrical care.

Lucian’s Grimoire pulsed against his coat like a suppressed heartbeat.

Alice whispered, "Do they... not speak at all?"

"They speak," Merry murmured. "But only when rehearsed. Mimea performs grief. It doesn’t live it."

+

They passed a cemetery and saw a woman kneeling beside a gravestone with a bouquet of black carnations. Her shoulders were shaking and she was miming falling tears, but without any sound. The woman brought her hands near her eyes, cupping the tears, and dropping them onto the soil.

It was the most bizarre thing Lucian had ever seen.

When they passed by the woman, Lucian saw her eyes were dry.

Something ice-cold unfurled inside his chest.

"Do they believe this works?" he asked softly.

Merry hesitated before opening her own Grimoire. There was a section about Mimea. She flipped a few pages before reading out loud: "Mimea’s residents believe acknowledging grief out loud is dangerous. Miming it...contains the damage."

Lucian’s hand brushed against the Loom, safely tucked inside its case. It was vibrating. Not frantically, but rhythmically, like it was trying to match the town’s silent tempo.

Attempting to adapt to their choreography.

The thought terrified him more than anything else, if he were being honest.

I wonder what would it be like to understand the way Mimea’s citizens behaved?

Part of Lucian wished he could replace the cold and calculated way he thought about people and feelings. But to accomplish that was a whole lot more griefwork than he could afford to do right now.

+

Merry cut Lucian’s hair up to his shoulders. He was surprised at how much lighter his head felt. There was a slight breeze on the back of his neck. "Was it always so heavy?" Lucian murmured as he stared at his reflection in Alice’s pocket glass.

Alice smiled at him. "Maybe you got used to carrying it. I know I have--and Merry’s offered to cut my hair before."

The druid-mortician nodded. "Just about wept when I touched my shears to her braid. I get those days sometimes. I wake up and decide, ’my hair’s getting too heavy.’ and snip-snip!"

Lucian took on ’Edward’ as his temporary name, and that was how they quickly created a new identity for him to wear.

Edward, traveling with his companions to Mimea.

+

Still, they were welcomed by Mimea’s mayor, and led inside an inn. The people there had nothing to say, and Lucian just barely stopped himself from signing his real name on the guestbook.

Edward. It’s Edward right now. And...well. At least I don’t have to talk to anybody. Perfect for an introvert.

Later on, he found out that Mimea’s people only spoke when they absolutely had to. The mayor was a quiet woman named Tricia, whose blonde hair was styled into a stylish updo.

She gave them a low bow of thanks, and then mouthed, "have a nice day." before the town guards led them back to the front door.

+

"I never thought I’d miss hearing people talk," Merry said aloud in their rented room. "If I dropped a pin over here, I’d know exactly where it went." Alice was putting her clothes away in the beige wood dresser when she heard a knock at the door.

An invitation arrived via wax-sealed card, delivered by a girl with red thread sewn across her mouth.

The card read:

The Final Scene: For Dara, Who Slept Without Sound.

Lucian’s fingers tightened on the paper.

Alice looked up. "Will there be a real body?"

"Maybe? I have no idea." he said.

+

There was.

The ceremony was performed under the setting sun.

Dozens of people gathered in choreographed lines, dressed in black. Their hands lifted but were unmoving and tears were mimed in slow motion. A platform stood at the center of the town square—raised slightly above a shallow grave filled with white sand.

A young woman lay atop it, covered in thin silk and holding a paper flower.

Her eyes were closed.

Lucian’s Grimoire opened at once.

[LOOM THREAD DETECTED]

Name: Dara Imeni

Cause of Death: Natural Decline

Rite Status: Unacknowledged

Thread Distortion Level: HIGH

Lucian glanced at Alice and she bit the inside of her cheek. He knew she was trying her best not to talk. This was an entire town’s way of grieving, even if...

When he saw the word ’unacknowledged’ written in his Grimoire, he tried his best not to interrupt.

"Don’t," Lucian whispered, both to himself and Alice. "Not here. It’ll be seen as an attack."

Remember Merry’s words, Lucian. Does it really have to be you? Does it have to be right now? We just got here...it wouldn’t do us any favors to get into a fight. Especially since the Queen just called me a traitor.

The silence was too thick, too well-trained. The village mourned without a single sound.

Lucian’s body ached with memory—the girl in the wardrobe. The tea. The decision to leave her behind.

No sound.

No names.

Just practiced choreography for feelings no one dared to live.

And then—

The Loom trembled violently.

Lucian staggered, hand flying to the case.

[AURA IMBALANCE: CRITICAL]

[MEMORY DISSONANCE REACHED]

Dara’s thread spasmed in Lucian’s mind.

It wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t settled.

It was screaming.

After the "funeral," the villagers dispersed in synchronized turns. Not one person spoke to them.

Alice broke the silence first, voice hushed. "That girl... she wasn’t ready."

Lucian nodded.

"She was buried in silence. Her grief wasn’t witnessed. Just copied."

"And the Loom?"

"Couldn’t take it."

He opened the case under cover of night.

The Loom’s threads were tangled in a snarl—white, silver, pale yellow, and the faintest edge of red.

But none of them were Dara’s. The thread that should’ve released was missing.

Which meant—

"She’s trapped," Lucian whispered.

Cadrel flinched. "Then what do we do?"

Lucian stared at the shallow grave.

Then at the playbill still folded in his hand.

And at last, at the Loom, which pulsed again.

A new line formed on the fabric:

A death unwitnessed will never rest.

Lucian knew what they had to do next.

But Mimea was not a place that welcomed real funerals.

If he attempted a proper rite, the town might see it as heresy.

And yet—he could still feel Dara’s thread.

Beneath the dirt and the silence. It was just dying to scream.