From Corpse to Crown: Reborn as a Mortician in Another World-Chapter 90: A City Sewn Shut

They didn’t make camp that night.

No one said it, but none of them trusted the beds waiting in the immaculate, dustless houses. Not after the eyes. Not after the way the city had shifted around them.

So they gathered around a low fire in the plaza, close to the cracked harp. The wind sang through its strings like something remembering how to weep.

Lucian sat beside Merry, the Grimoire unopened for once.

"You saw the eyes too," he said.

Merry didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze tracked the horizon like she was still watching for blinks between shadows. Then, softly:

"Yes. But not all of them were Spymaster-made."

Lucian looked at her.

Merry’s voice was calm, but her fingers fidgeted with the hem of her sleeve. "Some of them were made from thread. Not wire. Not glyph. Weave."

"That shouldn’t be possible," Lucian said.

"It isn’t. Unless someone tried to weave the future so tightly... they threaded consciousness into the pattern itself."

Lucian froze.

"You think someone here... tried to see too far?"

She nodded. "And lost themself in the tangle."

Lucian pulled his knees closer.

He wanted to say something, anything. But Merry continued before he could.

"Before the city fell, there was a woman. They called her the Loom-Sister. A master of future-scrying. She wove predictions, fatepaths, even full lifelines—like blueprints for living. Royals came to her. Revolutionaries too." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"I’ve never read her name in the archives."

"Because she was erased," Merry said. "Deliberately. Even the Guild doesn’t keep her records anymore."

Lucian’s chest tightened. "What happened?"

"She tried to predict the perfect death."

That silenced him.

Merry’s gaze flicked to the fire.

"They say she tried to stitch a full map of all ends—good, bad, forgotten. She wanted to design a ritual that guaranteed rest. But to do that... she looked too far. Through too many futures. And came apart."

Lucian said nothing for a long time. Then:

"So she fragmented."

Merry nodded. "Pieces of her mind still live here. Not like a ghost. Not even an echo. Just... scattered consciousness. Caught in threads. That’s what’s watching us."

Lucian leaned back and stared at the sky.

"That’s why the Loom’s been off," he whispered. "It’s being overridden."

They sat in silence.

Until Merry added, "You’ve been relying on the Loom too much anyway."

Lucian turned to her, startled.

"You forgot how to listen to the dead."

That stung.

She didn’t say it cruelly. But it was true.

"You’re a mortician," she said. "A real one. Not a thread-binder. Not a system-favored Weaver. You read endings. You close what others can’t."

Lucian swallowed hard. "Then why do I feel like this city is waiting for someone else?"

Merry looked at him.

And, softly: "Because Vel Quen didn’t want to be buried. It wanted to be remembered."

As if summoned by the thought, Cadrel returned from patrol and pointed toward the eighth spiral.

"You need to see this."

+

Far from Vel Quen, within a chamber carved from jet-black marble, the Spymaster removed his gloves and stared at the map stretched across his obsidian desk.

His fingers traced the border where Lucian’s last known position had vanished.

The dot was gone.

Not flickering. Not scrambled. Just... removed.

He tapped the lens of his left eye—arcane gold etched across the iris.

Still no reading.

"It’s not there," he murmured.

One of his acolytes stepped forward, bowing low. "Do you wish to deploy a retrieval unit?"

"No." The Spymaster’s lips thinned. "I don’t send men into places that don’t exist."

The silence that followed was heavy.

He turned, cloak whispering behind him like breath. "Wherever they are... it’s outside the bounds of known thread."

He didn’t sound impressed.

He sounded unnerved.

And he, frankly, was older than the world itself.

+

When he finally brought the report to the Queen, she stood in the twilight of her throne garden, trimming glowing vines from an ashwood trellis.

She didn’t look at him as he spoke.

When he finished, she only said:

"It must be from the Queen of Thread’s lineage."

The Spymaster raised an eyebrow. "My Queen?"

"Thread and bark," she said softly, pruning a blossom that shimmered in mourning hues. "The first grimoires were carved from both. The first magic wasn’t written. It was woven into wood."

"Vel Quen doesn’t appear on any map," the Spymaster repeated.

"Then it was hidden intentionally." She finally turned to face him, eyes shining with layered time. "The Queen of Thread was many things. But careless was never one of them."

"And the traitor?"

She smiled faintly. "Let him walk the spiral. If he finishes what was started there, we’ll know where to point the blade."

+

They found it in a side street under a rusted awning.

A phone booth.

Glass cracked. The rotary phone inside was disconnected—no cord, no line, just the base and the receiver resting like it had never been picked up.

A faded sign was pasted to the glass:

Call and talk to someone, one last time.

Deposit your grief here, and the wind will carry it to the intended recipient.

Alice pressed her hand to the door without opening it.

"Do you think anyone ever got through?" she whispered.

Lucian didn’t answer.

He stepped inside the booth and picked up the phone.

It was warm.

The kind of warmth that didn’t come from heat.

The kind that came from holding someone else’s sorrow.

He almost said a name.

Almost.

But the Grimoire pulsed at his hip before he could.

[Thread Resonance: 65%]

WARNING: Fragment Threshold Nearing Critical Echo Saturation.

DO NOT SPEAK THE NAME AGAIN.

Lucian slowly returned the receiver to its cradle.

He stepped out of the booth, and the silence met him like an old friend.

He looked up—at the spiraling towers, the quiet alleys, the windows that watched without glass.

"They think I’m the traitor," he said suddenly.

Alice turned. "You’re not."

"I stepped outside a rite," he said. "I broke protocol. Took mercy. Used instinct."

"Vel Quen feels like it remembers that," she said gently.

Lucian didn’t answer.

He looked down at the Grimoire.

Then toward the center of the spiral—where something still waited, unseen.

"If the Queen wants me dead," he said, voice low, "she’ll have to come through the dead first."

The phone started ringing.