From Corpse to Crown: Reborn as a Mortician in Another World-Chapter 33: Facing Consequences

Being exiled, Lucian discovered, was much better than staying at the King's Quarters. He slept in one of the annex's guest rooms and ate bread made by a melancholic baker. "What's it like to escape the loop?" he asked her one morning as she tried to knead dough.

"Like waking from a dream," she said slowly, like she had to think about every word. "But now I dream far too much. Like every dream I've missed showed up all at once." The baker girl carefully tucked some herbs and garlic in the dough.

"They make you drink a potion...you know? When the world starts getting too loud. Colors are too bright, and the thoughts are so...so much." She started shaping the dough into bread. "Then they...give you the potion. It makes the edges disappear, like a blurred painting."

When the world starts to get too loud — colors too loud, thoughts too loud — they give you the potion. It makes the edges disappear.

After she spoke, she returned to kneading her bread.

"Can I try?" he asked, and she gave him some dough mixture on the smooth stone table. "Here."

She watched as he mixed, a little messily, but he managed to knead until there was no dry flour left. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?" he asked, a little confused.

"Stop."

"...I just do," Lucian said gently. "When I thought the dough had been mixed enough, I just...stopped."

"Funny." She murmured. "I never thought about that. In Staesis, if your task is done, you just look for more of it. My first day awake, I almost emptied the flour sacks just making bread."

She held out her arms and Lucian saw burn marks all over them.

"If I stopped what I was doing, the head baker would do this to me, I think. During the loop he was happy because he never had to watch what I was doing."

Lucian's hands dug harder into the dough, like he could knead the thought out using his fingers. "And they called that peace?" he whispered.

"They did."

Lucian's blood chilled at that. "Then he never stopped you?"

The bread maker nodded. "In Staesis, you only stop when you're dead. And even then, they make you keep going. One of my friends broke her arm and the medical bay just set it with a splint and gave her the loop potion."

After hearing her story, he was convinced that he did the right thing.

+

When the candles burned low enough, Lucian walked into Gethra's research room and pulled a lever at her table. There was a gentle scraping sound as a large flat stone revealed a rope ladder that led to the librarian's hanging garden.

The annex was located away from town, so he could perfectly see the town he left behind. He watched as the fog above Staesis tried to knit itself back together.

Maybe this is what scientists saw when they said the ozone layer was full of holes. It wasn't working—the rips in its veil remained like unhealed wounds.

By ringing the bell, he reintroduced death to Staesis and cracked its' social skin. "And now..." Lucian whispered out loud. "Everything's going to choose sides."

He leaned against one of the willow trees and tried not to feel fear.

"Time to learn how to defend myself, then."

+

The Grimoire hovered in front of him, now full of suggestions instead of instructions.

[Grimoire Status: Observing]

Activity detected in the Staesis Municipal Wing. Mayor Gray convening emergency council. Civic unrest is increasing.

Suggested course of action: Do not interfere.

Emotional Surge Alert for Alice: Monitor status. 

Suggested course of action: Comfort. Place a hand on her shoulder and offer the safety phrase, 'You are still here.'"

Lucian stared at the page, unblinking. The Grimoire's present state reminded him of his days in mortuary school struggling through grief counseling.

Maybe if I had the Grimoire when I was a student, things would have been different... He thought before saying out loud: "You're giving me emotions like they're tools."

The Grimoire rippled once.

Correction: You created the tools. We reflect them back.

+

Lucian was helping Gethra catalog some of the more arcane books in her library when Alexander's brass radio paused its' regular music broadcast.

"Staesis must endure. We cannot allow myth to govern mourning." Mayor Gray's message came through, charming as ever.

"Anyone who wishes to contribute to our cause may join the Civic Continuance. Our civic duty efficiency rites are safe. Our Mortician visitor was merely a priest carving death without a license. He has been escorted away from town. Any attempts to aid in his return is strongly discouraged."

"Efficiency built on the blood and sweat of unpaid laborers." Lucian said bitterly. "I don't regret what I've done."

Alexander patted his shoulder. "It's not all dark, Mortician Bowcott. You've helped everyone here as well."

It made him feel much better, and his staff pulsed with a gentle tremor.

Mayor Gray's voice continued:

"Remember: no unauthorized rites. No public mourning unsanctioned by court procedure. No interaction with the Mortician."

Some obeyed. Most pretended to.

+

Lucian found a letter beside Alice's blanket that evening.

Unmarked. No signature.

Only the words:

"Emotion has weight. Thank you for helping my child feel it."

Alice held it when he handed it to her.

"I think she's watching me," she said, voice quiet.

Lucian nodded. "She always was."

Alice looked up. "Am I safe with you?"

He didn't answer.

The Grimoire opened behind him, a single line written across the page:

"Affection recorded. Priority status: variable."

Lucian closed it before it wrote more.

+

In the annex's sealed basement, Gethra pulled open a panel behind the crumbling wall of books.

"This leads out of Staesis," she said, brushing dust from her sleeves.

Lucian blinked.

She smiled.

"I built this when they demoted me. Used it to hide the real records before Gray's clerks could alter them."

He stepped forward and touched the old gate — a carved tunnel mouth, big enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder.

Gethra handed him a scroll.

"Maps. Places death still behaves like death."

Lucian hesitated.

She met his gaze.

"You can't fight a rotting house from the center. Sometimes you have to burn the barn down from the hill."

+

Lucian left the mausoleum at dusk and found the Spymaster waiting just outside, admiring a broken sundial.

"No fanfare today?" Lucian asked.

The Spymaster smiled. "None needed. You're doing beautifully."

Lucian frowned. "At what?"

"Becoming something new."

A pause.

"Even the Queen is uncertain. She doesn't know if you're a prophet or a problem."

Lucian looked away. "I didn't ask for either."

The Spymaster clapped him on the shoulder. "Exactly. Which makes you perfect."

Lucian tried to pretend he didn't feel absolutely disgusted by this.