From Corpse to Crown: Reborn as a Mortician in Another World-Chapter 62: The Vale and The Marionette
Now that the Spinnermaid left for her eternal sleep, the fog around the Vale of Unfinished Rites slowly disappeared. In its place was a valley that sincerely felt soft and gentle.
There was no blinding light and no memory collapse. The mist slowly thinned out until the trees around them were real again, and the wind no longer whispered words it did not own.
Lucian walked ahead, his Echoheart Grimoire completely silent. It hadn’t grown dormant--it was waiting. Something about their connection was different now, like the book could feel him back.
His thumb ran over the portable Grief Loom the Spinnermaid had given him. As if responding to his thoughts, the Loom was suddenly wrapped in an equally small wooden case with a thorn-silver clasp. It pulsed faintly in his hand with magic--warm, like using a power bank.
Lucian hadn’t tried it yet, and the others didn’t press him.
We all experienced something in the Vale...and I guess we’ll be ready to talk about it someday. Or that was what Lucian wanted to believe.
+
The road was narrow and winding, passing between mossy cliffs. They still saw some snow piles, but most had begun to melt and flowers of all kinds started to bloom.
They decided to stop by a half-cracked milestone to rest. Idly, Lucian saw a faded glyph carved into the stone and decided to take a closer look. There was a faded glyph carved into the stone.
I wonder...Lucian pointed his cane at it and a gentle wisp of magic appeared. Before, he might’ve seen it as a poorly drawn warding mark. Merry, curious, walked up to him. "Ah," she said. "Maybe drawn by a nervous adventurer."
"Mmhm, but see what happens when I do this?" Lucian recalled the knowledge passed onto him when he inherited the Spinnermaid’s thread spool.
He carefully passed a gloved hand over the warding mark and it slowly revealed its grief to him and Merry.
Lucian now knew what the glyph-writer’s intentions were, and what tbey meant.
"The person who drew this wanted to protect someone, but..." he let his words trail off, because he didn’t want to upset Merry. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
Someone wanted to remember their grief for a child they lost on the road.
He could feel the missing thread.
He could feel... that it wasn’t ready to be finished.
Some grief needed to rest. Not be rewritten.
Lucian stepped back and left it alone.
Merry watched him in silence.
+
Later, facing the campfire, she said softly, "The glyph earlier. You saw that, didn’t you?"
He nodded.
"It’s not just magic anymore," he said. "It’s memory with shape."
Alice clutched her scarf tighter, as if that meant something to her too.
The wind was extra cold that night.
+
Lucian sat near the fire, pages of his Grimoire open beside him, the miniature Loom cradled in his lap like a sleeping creature.
He didn’t weave.
He just watched the threads—light and shadow and ink—twist and curl across the surface like a language not yet spoken.
"I don’t know what you are yet," he murmured. "But I think... I was always meant to find you."
Far above, something in the sky pulsed once.
If he was on Earth, he would have thought it was a plane.
But here, there were only stars.
+
Inside the shadowed halls of Atreaum’s palace, Queen Marguerite stood still, like she’d been frozen. She was frowning deeply, and the flame in her left eye socket blazed with irritation.
Elian knelt below her, face neutral but pale.
He hadn’t spoken since the Spinnermaid’s aura had flickered into the royal glyphlines like a dropped jewel in a bowl of ink. It had disturbed the Crown’s scrying mirror—distorted the flow of emotional law.
The Queen’s voice was barely above a whisper.
"Do you know what your failure cost me?"
Elian didn’t look up.
"Apparently something I never understood in the first place."
The Queen turned. Her robes trailed frost.
"The Loom has reawakened. And you let it fall into the hands of the one I discarded."
Elian’s jaw clenched. "I didn’t give him anything. I left him behind."
"You left him breathing."
That silenced him.
The Spymaster said nothing.
He didn’t need to.
Because someone else would speak now.
Or act, rather. Elian, Queen Marguerite insisted, had to go through more rigorous training. She had released him too early.
From his position on the floor, Elian rolled his eyes when the Queen’s back was turned. Of course she’s making this all about her.
The Queen raised one pale hand and gazed at a black-framed mirror, this time. Inside it, she saw herself as a whole person--not half a human and half a skeleton. She whispered the old command.
"Send the Messenger."
+
Miles away, to the east, was the city of Caltherra. Inside a mirrorless bell tower, a bell rang three times. The caretakers ignored it and kept working.
It was a special summon that only one person could hear. All of the candles in the bell tower started to flicker with purple flame, and the caretakers knew that their ward would wake up soon.
"It’s been awhile since we saw him," a caretaker whispered as they stared at the candles.
"Mmhm. Rare for a royal to need a Messenger of Death."
+
Below the bell tower was an underground garden surrounded with walls made of silverstone and windows of bramble glass. On the ceiling was an artificial sky.
In the middle of the garden was a pavilion. And there, looking up at the painted sky, was a man dressed in a Victorian-cut coat. His face was obscured by a featureless mask--it wasn’t smooth or mirrored. Just a faint ridge where his eyes should have been.
There was no mouth carved onto the mask’s surface, and he did not say a word.
Just his presence took up all the space within the garden.
His boots crunched on some leaves as he knelt in front of a black pool. From within its depths a coffin emerged, and a corpse whispered a wish from Queen Marguerite of Atreaum.
The man nodded once, and left the garden.
As he emerged from one of many trap doors in Caltherra’s bell tower, the caretakers bowed to him.
"Welcome back, Gabriel, Honored Messenger."
He nodded in acknowledgement and continued walking. Gabriel only stopped at a statue of their god of Justice, removed his mask, and kissed its feet.
He served no royal or politician.
Gabriel, one of the Silent Messengers, served the Code. And according to the Queen, this code had been broken. He knew it was true--to the west, the Spinnermaid had been replaced and the Queen was deeply cut with betrayal.
His mission was clear: to enact justice and balance the scales once more.
Without another word, Gabriel walked into the night. Only a simple traveling cloak covered his blackplate armor.
+
Inside her tent, Alice stirred in her sleep.
Rosa’s presence—usually soft, like a memory braided with silence—was suddenly louder. A warning.
She opened her eyes.
Lucian still sat by the fire, unmoving, watching threads bloom softly from the Loom’s center.
Alice rose and walked over.
"Have you tried it yet?" she whispered.
Lucian shook his head. "Not yet."
"It’s watching you."
He looked up.
"What is?"
"The Loom."
Lucian blinked.
The Loom was closed.
She was right.
He could feel it.
As if the threads themselves had turned their attention to him.
As if something had been given shape inside it—
—and something else had noticed.
+
Far from them, beyond maps and memories, in a place between stitch and bone, the Marionette turned her head. Her youngest daughter had been led astray and it was up to her to bring the lost little lamb back.
The Marionette and her Daughters wore gowns of web and velvet, moving like fog as they journeyed to find Alice. Suddenly, the old ache started up again: like her arms were being pulled taut by thin metal string.
It could only mean one thing: the new Loomspinner was very close.
She allowed herself to be manipulated, until the metal string pointed her arm to the right direction. Then the pain resided, and the Marionette bowed in gratitude.
"Thank you, Father Puppet."
She could feel the Loom again.
And where the Loom was—
Her daughter could not be far.
The Marionette tilted her head in a sharp, mechanical motion.
There was no mouth behind the porcelain curve of her mask.
But still—
She smiled.
