From Corpse to Crown: Reborn as a Mortician in Another World-Chapter 108: Order Kept Us Safe

Since the town continued dismantling its silence, Austmark had a completely different atmosphere.

Lucian stood at the fountain where he and Alice had been last night. Cold breeze stirred the water and below, the coins slept, completely unbothered.

But beneath that surface, something had changed. The town still smiled, still functioned, but cracks were forming.

He could feel it in the Grimoire’s subtle hum. He could feel it in himself.

Lucian spent the morning visiting the archive again, under the pretense of researching local funerary customs. The clerk smiled as usual, polite and careful, but a note of wariness had entered their voice.

"Is there something you’re looking for, Mortician?"

"Just curious," Lucian replied, flipping through town records. "How long ago did Austmark adopt the Harmony Pact?"

The clerk hesitated. "Seventy-one years. After the Riverfall Collapse."

Lucian paused. "That was a mining disaster, wasn’t it?"

The clerk nodded slowly. "A cave-in. Hundreds lost. But the grief nearly tore the town apart. So we voted. We chose order."

Lucian closed the book. "And did you ever choose again?"

The clerk just smiled instead of answering.

"Did it hurt too much to choose?"

"We knew what we were giving up. It sounded like a good idea then. If nobody ever chased after their dreams, we didn’t have to grieve. The Divine Architect erased the concept of death. Save for a few people, we didn’t have to lose anyone anymore."

"That could’ve been a massive coincidence," Lucian said quietly.

The clerk shrugged his shoulders. "It could have. But to us, it was a sign that we should continue. And so it’s been like this ever since. We could do what we always wanted to do. But it could lead to the town grieving a massive disaster. And a town of this size can’t take risks like that."

+

Alice was walking along the market edge when she overheard a teacher scolding a child for drawing on the walls. "Creativity leads to chaos," the woman snapped. "Order keeps us safe."

The child stared down at their feet.

Alice stepped in. "They weren’t hurting anyone."

The teacher turned. "Our peace is delicate. We all make sacrifices."

Alice bent to the child and smiled. "Draw something for me tomorrow. Something brave."

She stood and met the teacher’s frown with a level stare. "Safety isn’t the same as silence."

That afternoon, Lucian received a whisper of a request—a young man, masked and clearly nervous, asked to meet by the grain storage just past dusk.

He came alone, watching the rooftops. "You’re the mortician, right? The one who performed a rite out near the fields?"

Lucian nodded. "What do you need?"

The man hesitated. "I have dreams about a brother who doesn’t exist. I know I did once. We used to build kites. He sang off-key. But... there’s no record of him. No grave."

Lucian’s heart ached. "Bring me something of his. A memory will do. I can try."

That night, Lucian sat at the edge of the town’s western rise. He opened his Grimoire and began the Rite of Dissonant Peace.

Threads of memory flickered across the page. Not all were his—some belonged to those who had come to him silently, a sketch or scrap of song, a name no longer written anywhere. One by one, Lucian whispered them aloud.

"Kellan of the Riverbridge. Hava the spinner. Janik, who once danced in the orchard."

He burned herbs in a small dish. The smoke rose and curled, and as it did, faint illusions appeared—not ghosts, but emotional echoes.

They stood in a ring around him. Smiling. Weeping.

"You were loved. You were real."

The Grimoire turned another page on its own, glowing faintly.

Meanwhile, Alice followed a trail of mural fragments—chalk sketches that someone had left overnight. She traced them to the side of the amphitheater.

There, on the stage, someone had drawn a face in colored dust: a woman singing, mouth wide open, joy on her features.

It was smudged already by the morning breeze, but the message was clear.

We remember.

In the mayor’s hall, Mayor Prescott frowned at a stack of reports. "More dissonant behavior. Someone played a harp again. Someone painted a wall."

He looked up at his steward. "Do you think this is them? The outsiders?"

"It started before they arrived," she admitted. "But they brought something with them. A crack."

He tapped a finger against the wood. "If they unravel this place, they will answer for it."

That evening, Lucian and Alice reunited beneath the stars. The town square was quiet again, but it felt less hollow now.

"I helped someone remember a brother who’d been erased," Lucian said.

Alice nodded, her voice soft. "I think someone’s trying to reclaim music. There’s art blooming again."

Lucian looked up at the sky. "They’re afraid. But part of them wants to live again."

Alice met his gaze. "Then we stay a little longer. And help them remember how."

Later that night, the amphitheater glowed with hidden life. Lucian and Alice returned to find dozens of drawings and symbols chalked along the stone seats. Each one was subtle, like a whisper in color.

There was a kite. A teacup. A lute. A garden. A pair of dancing shoes.

All symbols of lives no longer lived. Or lives that still ached to be remembered.

Lucian traced one with his gloved fingers. "They’re telling us everything they can’t say aloud."

Alice held up a ribbon left behind in the dust. "Then we have to listen."

The next morning, a small crowd had gathered around the central notice board.

Someone had posted a list of banned phrases, but at the bottom, someone else had scrawled in red chalk: Let us grieve. Let us sing. Let us choose.

No one tore it down. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Not yet.

Beneath Austmark, in a sealed cellar where no townsfolk had walked in decades, a sealed jar trembled on a shelf. Inside was a faded letter, and a dried flower, long thought forgotten.

The jar cracked.

And the first scent of true memory returned to the air.