From Corpse to Crown: Reborn as a Mortician in Another World-Chapter 99: When We Need to Mourn

The spiral groaned.

As the third bell’s echo unfurled through Vel Quen, Lucian felt the Loom recoil again—not in fear, but resistance. Like it didn’t want to record what came next. His Grimoire remained firmly shut, its spine taut with unread intention.

He stepped forward, but Queen Abigail raised one hand. Her expression was solemn. "If you go forward with that thread still wrapped around your heart, you will condemn yourself to echo."

Lucian’s fingers twitched. Red thread still clung to him. He looked at Alice, whose golden threads had begun to fray at the edges. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Abigail said, "you’re not the only one who remembers wrongly."

Lucian stared at her. "What do you mean, remember wrongly?"

The Queen of Thread turned her head, slow and disdainful, like a spider deciding whether to waste silk on a passing insect. Her gaze fixed on him with the dispassionate interest of someone who had outlived kingdoms and knew that most things—especially people—faded.

"They say you were summoned as part of my sister’s mortician collection," she said, her voice soft and cold as pressed linen. "But you escaped. That, in itself, should have been impossible. What happened since then?"

Lucian hesitated.

Her presence pressed on him like heavy velvet, suffocating and ceremonial. Not cruel—not yet—but ancient in the way cliffs or grave markers were. And she spoke of Marguerite as my sister, not the Queen, as if that title had long since become irrelevant.

"I... don’t know if I’m supposed to say," he admitted, his voice quieter than before. "But strange things started happening. I was being hunted—by a Messenger of Death."

The Queen tilted her head, the barest flicker of curiosity breaking her porcelain stillness.

"And?" she prompted.

Lucian looked to Alice, then back. "And he stopped the moment Alice heard the name Serafina. As if that alone redirected him. He vanished like he’d never been there."

A flicker—no more than the twitch of threadlight—passed behind Abigail’s eyes.

"Ah. Serafina." She said the name like the closing of a book. "So the world has started remembering her."

"Do you know who she is?" Lucian asked, taking a step closer.

Abigail’s eyes narrowed. "The better question, mortician, is whether you do."

Lucian faltered. "I... no. Not yet."

Abigail exhaled softly, as though confirming something she hadn’t wanted to be true. "My sister collects morticians because she fears death without understanding it. I watched her build a cage of silk and oaths, trying to trap every possible version of loss, as if curation were the same as control."

She turned slightly, her gaze now on Alice. "But the moment Serafina’s name returned to the weave, the bindings changed. Some locks no longer hold. And some truths, I suspect, were never buried deep enough."

"So who was Serafina?" Alice asked, stepping forward despite the trembling golden thread still flickering at her wrists.

Abigail smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

"She was the Queen’s first mistake."

+

Directly beneath the spiral, Cadrel stood in the broken square as a memory flickered around him. Slowly, buildings restored themselves in pieces, forming an illusion.

It contained different emotional shards: joy and hope beneath a massive wave of fear and despair. He saw people running for cover, and others laughing without a care in the world.

And there was a child inside a bakery, shivering and shaking. His parents had evacuated ages ago and left him. Cadrel approached him with concern in his heart.

Just like that day in the tunnel.

Cadrel’s team protected him as the beasts overwhelmed the unit. Even now, the memory brought him unbelievable pain.

If only I had been stronger... I wish I could overcome this. I hate feeling so useless.

But no breath followed. He turned, blade drawn, unsure of why he was being pulled this way.

Then he saw it: a familiar sigil, etched into a broken lantern.

His own.

The same sigil the Spymaster once etched in secret, now glowing faintly with awakened purpose.

"Why would he mark me now?" Cadrel asked aloud, heart pounding. "Why wake this?"

And as he touched the lantern, memory flooded in—and with it, pain.

But also, clarity.

The name Serafina rippled through the lantern’s light, as if the truth tethered to her reached deeper than just Lucian’s fate.

Cadrel clenched his jaw. "This isn’t about one mortician anymore, is it?"

+

Merry knelt before a massive tree whose roots spread through the undercity. Its bark was blackened with old fire, but it pulsed.

"They wove peace into this place," she murmured. "But they did it wrong."

She placed her hand against the bark, and for the first time, it responded.

A whisper of grief spilled out—names, prayers, last words sealed too soon.

Images appeared between the knots: a young woman spinning threads at a loom with laughter on her lips. Her name stitched itself into the wood: Serafina.

Merry blinked, heart aching. The Queen’s first mistake had been a person.

"This city doesn’t need to forget," she said. "It needs to be mourned. And remembered."

+

Alice stood at the shrine with the child’s spirit. She saw it clearly now—the loom behind the illusion, spinning gold that frayed with every heartbeat.

"I wasn’t ready," she whispered. "But I want to be."

She placed her hand on the loom, and golden thread surged around her.

She wasn’t Rosa. She was Alice. And her oath was her own.

The child spirit stepped back, its form stabilizing, then smiled—and vanished with a soft ripple of gold.

In the golden light, a single name stitched itself onto the cloth: Serafina.

Alice’s breath caught. Somehow, she felt like this was just the beginning.

"I’ll find the rest of you," she murmured.

+

Lucian approached Auren again.

The Threadbound man looked up, eyes sunken but aware. "She came back, didn’t she? Abigail."

Lucian nodded. "So did the truth. And her sister’s mistake is waking the rest."

Auren let out a dry laugh. "Then show me. Show me the rite that doesn’t end in silence."

The Loom shimmered.

Lucian held it upright, and the Grimoire opened to a new page.

[New Rite Available: The Rite of Final Echo]

Auren stepped back. "No more stillness?"

Lucian looked past him—to the waking faces in the threadlight.

"No more forgetting."