From Corpse to Crown: Reborn as a Mortician in Another World-Chapter 110: Embers Beneath the Ashes

Lucian pulled the Grimoire from his bag and opened it with care. Its pages fluttered, guided by unseen hands, until a new one appeared—inked with threadlight that shimmered gently.

[New Rite Available: The Rite of Emberwake]

He felt warmth throughout his chest. It wasn’t painful, but deep, like a hearthfire in winter.

The Grimoire’s message felt almost personal; a recognition of the shift happening inside Austmark.

"What is it?" Alice leaned over his shoulder.

"Something old, maybe forgotten. A rite meant to stir embers, not flames. To remind instead of ignite."

"A rite for people like this town," Alice said softly. "Trying to remember who they were without burning everything down."

Lucian nodded. "Exactly."

They made their way through the southern quarter of Austmark. The houses were modest but well-kept. Flower boxes lined the windows, most filled with soil but no blooms. A lingering quiet in the gardens, like someone had tended them out of habit, not hope.

Alice paused beside a wooden fence. Inside, an old woman hummed while brushing a stone statue of a bird.

"She used to carve these herself," said a neighbor passing by. "Now she just cleans the ones that remain."

Alice bowed her head. "They remember in their own way."

Lucian made a mental note. The embers were here. They just needed a little stirring.

The blacksmith’s forge sat at the corner of two empty streets, its chimney cold against the pale sky. Derran emerged from the shadows of his workshop, wiping coal-black hands on a leather apron that had seen better decades. He was younger than Lucian had expected—maybe forty—but his shoulders carried the weight of much older grief.

When Derran saw them approaching, he froze. His mouth opened as if to call a greeting, then closed. His throat worked soundlessly. Finally, he just nodded and gestured them inside.

The forge smelled of old ash and rusted iron. Tools hung on pegs like sleeping birds. In the corner, a bellows gathered dust, its leather cracked and dry.

"When did you last light the forge?" Alice asked gently.

Derran held up five fingers. Then five more. Ten years. His eyes flickered to a charcoal sketch pinned to the wall—a young woman laughing, her hair tied back with an iron flower.

Lucian followed his gaze. "She was beautiful."

Derran’s jaw tightened. He touched his throat, then shook his head sharply. Gone. The gesture said everything.

"You haven’t spoken since," Alice said. It wasn’t a question.

Derran’s silence stretched like a held breath. He walked to a dusty shelf and pulled down a leather-bound book. Page after page of sketches: intricate weapons, ceremonial blades, and delicate iron flowers. All drawn in the same careful hand, all labeled with notes in a script that had grown shakier over time.

He pointed to one drawing—a torch sconce shaped like a blooming rose—and then to a long-forgotten mold gathering cobwebs on the wall.

Lucian touched the drawing, feeling the care in every line. "Do you want to make it again?"

Derran stared at the page for a long moment. His fingers traced the edges of the drawing, and Lucian caught something—a flicker of the man he used to be. Someone who had sung while he worked, who had crafted beauty from raw metal, who had loved a woman with laughing eyes.

Then Derran’s hand fell away. He shook his head and turned toward the door.

"Wait," Lucian said. "What if... what if it didn’t have to be perfect?"

Derran paused.

"What if we just tried? Just once. Not for anyone else. Just to see if your hands remember."

They worked in near silence. Derran’s movements were hesitant at first—like someone learning to walk after a long illness. The bellows wheezed when he pumped them, protesting years of neglect. When the coals finally caught, the light danced across his face, and for a moment, Lucian glimpsed the ghost of a smile.

"The iron feels different than I expected," Alice murmured, cooling her hands with minor runes as she helped shape the petals. "Warmer. Like it’s been waiting."

Derran nodded—the first time he’d agreed with anything all day. He reached for a hammer, tested its weight, then began the careful work of beating beauty into being.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

The rhythm was tentative, uncertain. But as the hours passed, something shifted. The hammer found its voice. Derran’s shoulders loosened. His breathing deepened.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

"You’re humming," Alice whispered.

Derran stopped mid-strike. His eyes went wide, one hand flying to his throat. The melody—barely more than breath—died on his lips.

"No, don’t stop," Lucian said quietly. "She would have wanted to hear it."

Derran’s face crumpled. For a moment, Lucian thought he would flee. Instead, he gripped the hammer tighter and began again. This time, the humming came stronger. A working song, wordless but full of memory.

By nightfall, they had forged a single sconce. The iron rose bloomed in perfect detail, each petal catching the forge-light. Derran carried it to his door with reverent hands and mounted it on the wall.

When he struck the match, his fingers trembled so badly he nearly dropped it. The flame caught. Light spilled across his threshold—the first his forge had cast in a decade.

"You remembered how," Lucian said.

Derran stared at the light for a long moment. Then he pressed a hand to his heart and opened his mouth. What came out was barely a whisper, cracked with disuse, but it was a voice:

"Thank... you."

That evening, they hosted a quiet gathering in the orchard stage. No announcements, no formal invitation. Just a few benches, candles, and tea brewed from mint and rosemary.

One by one, people arrived. Someone brought a fiddle. Another, honey cakes. Derran came last, carrying his sketch book and a small iron flower—freshly forged, still warm from the tempering.

Alice began the gathering with a simple story about a town that remembered its songs through dreams. A child played a soft note on the lyre. An old man recited half a poem before laughing and saying, "I forgot the ending."

"Then someone else can finish it," Alice replied.

Lucian watched the faces. He saw pain and hesitation, but also light. When his eyes found Derran, the blacksmith was staring at his iron flower, turning it over in his calloused hands.

"I made this for her," Derran said suddenly. His voice was rough, unused, but it carried across the gathering like a prayer. "Every morning, I’d leave one by her pillow. Iron flowers that would never wilt."

The crowd fell silent, but it wasn’t the heavy quiet of before. This was the hush of witnessing something sacred.

"When she died, I thought... I thought making beautiful things was a betrayal. Like I was forgetting her." Derran’s eyes glistened. "But tonight, working the forge again... I remembered her laugh when she saw my first clumsy attempt. How she said even the ugly ones were precious because they came from my hands."

He held up the iron flower. "She would have wanted me to keep making them. Not to forget her, but to remember the joy she took in them."

Not flames. But embers.

They were starting to glow again.

Later that night, Lucian performed the Rite of Emberwake for the first time. He used a circle of rosemary sprigs and chalked a sigil onto the stage.

The townspeople stood quietly as he read aloud:

"For those who sleep but never dreamed, For voices dimmed beneath the weight, I call not flame, nor flood, nor storm, But ember’s grace to stir your fate."

He lit a taper candle. Threadlight unfurled from it like mist. It brushed against the gathered crowd.

When the light touched Derran, he gasped—not in pain, but in recognition. The threadlight coiled around his hands, his throat, the places where his craft and voice lived. For a moment, he seemed to glow from within.

"I can hear her," he whispered, wonder breaking his voice. "She’s humming our working song."

Tears. Laughter. Stillness. The echoes responded differently in everyone, but Derran’s transformation anchored them all. Here was proof that the dead things could bloom again.

Alice found herself weeping, though she couldn’t say why. She looked at Lucian, and he met her gaze.

"Are we doing the right thing?" she whispered.

He nodded slowly. "We’re not forcing them to change. We’re giving them the chance to remember who they were."

The next morning, Lucian woke to find a wrapped parcel outside their inn door.

Inside: a small painting of a burning hearth, made with watercolors and lined with silver thread. No signature. But the back read: "For the ember you lit."

He smiled and tucked it into his Grimoire.

From the blacksmith’s forge came the sound of hammering—steady, sure, alive. And underneath it, barely audible but definitely there, the sound of humming.

In the mayor’s office, Prescott stared out his window at the orchard stage. It hadn’t been used in decades.

His steward returned with a new report. "No incidents. No uprisings. Just stories. And Derran’s forge is lit again."

Prescott closed his eyes. "Then let the stories spread."

Lucian and Alice stood by the fountain again, the same place they’d begun their time in Austmark. The water sparkled a little more clearly. The ivy looked less tired.

"Still no reply from the Queen," Alice said.

"I think her silence means she’s waiting. Watching. Maybe testing."

Lucian looked toward the northern road, then back at the thin column of smoke rising from Derran’s chimney. "But I don’t think we’re done here yet. One more rite. One more story."

Alice smiled. "For the ones who gave up their songs."

They walked together, toward the marketplace.

Toward the next ember.