Slowly, the chapel had emptied. The echo-souls had settled, and their names bloomed in them like the first buds of spring. He noticed the village's living residents had also grown warm and tenuous. Lucian sat with his back against a cold pew, eyes on the candle's low flame.
Then his stomach growled.
He blinked.
Not a magical tremor or a system alert. Just a hollow ache beneath his ribs.
It had only been a few days since he'd left Houndsberry Hollow, but it startled him more than it should have. Alice noticed him staring around the chapel, hopelessly lost.
"Here," she said, reaching into her satchel. She brought out a hunk of bread and cheese from Merry. The smell quickly filled his nostrils and made his mouth water.
"Thank you, Alice," he said, making a sandwich and eating it. He licked his fingertips afterward and felt like a feral animal. He'd been hungry before, but it had never felt that intense before.
He turned to the Grimoire, half-expecting it to offer an opinion.
Nothing.
Lucian held out the hunk of bread and cheese leftover from Alice's bag. "Is there anything different about this food? Why was I so…hungry?"
The Grimoire floated for a moment, like it was thinking. Then it opened its pages.
[SCANNING VITALS]
User: Lucian Bowcott
Tether to Life: 30%
Tether to Death: 70%
Note: If a mortician's life tether falls to 0%, they become part of the Unraveled, and must be put out of their misery.
Lucian stared at the page.
"Seventy percent... I didn't even notice."
Alice knelt beside him, folding the bread back into cloth. "Rosa told you," she murmured. "One day, even food and water would bore you."
+
The Grimoire's pages fluttered before settling on a response:
You walk the thread between life and death. Upsetting the balance in either direction means you need to fix it, or the world will fix you.
Lucian looked down at his hands. They didn't shake. That frightened him more than if they had.
"How much food did you bring, Alice?"
She peered down into her satchel. "It took us a day to get here, and with the amount you ate...I have enough left for one more meal. Then we'll have to look for other things for you to eat."
Lucian looked at her, like he was seeing her for the first time. Alice's long hair was neatly tied into a bun and her skin looked like it was made of porcelain. Her smile was stitched with thread and she still wore Rosa's maid outfit.
"Do you need to eat, Alice?"
She shook her head. "Not even for novelty. I think I would have enjoyed it though."
"Doesn't that make you sad?"
Alice looked confused. "No. I don't know what eating is like, Lucian. All I have are Rosa's memories, and how happy you look while you eat."
Another thing he'd never considered before—how someone with no concept of food wouldn't feel so forlorn about someone else missing the experience. He felt a little conflicted. If Alice needed food, he would have been more urgent about it all.
I don't know if that's supposed to be a good thing.
+
As the last villager left the chapel, Lucian wondered what he would do for food. Saltline was at least a day away from Sweetwater Farm, and the bread Alice brought wouldn't last much longer.
"Do you have food here?"
One of the villagers tilted their head. Another simply looked puzzled.
Lucian clarified. "Something to eat?"
They all looked at one another.
Finally, a boy about eight years old piped up from the corner:
"Maybe it's the edible sand?"
Lucian froze.
"I'm sorry—what?"
The boy pulled out a small cloth pouch and opened it. Inside were clumps of sand, pressed gently into the shapes of fruit slices. He offered one to Lucian — a faint green triangle, like a tiny watermelon.
"We eat it when our bellies feel strange. The Sandeater taught us how."
Lucian took the piece hesitantly. It felt dry and oddly warm in his fingers.
He bit.
The texture was terrible. Like chewing gravel through a memory.
But it tasted... like watermelon.
Gritty, ancient, but unmistakably watermelon.
He swallowed slowly, the taste lingering like it wasn't meant for his tongue. He missed the bread from Houndsberry Hollow.
"Who's the Sandeater?"
The boy shrugged.
"He came when the crops stopped growing. Told us the land had dreams, and we weren't supposed to wake them. Showed us how to shape the sand. Only certain kinds work."
Lucian looked at the rest of the bag. The slices inside glowed faintly in the dark.
He didn't know if he felt better... or worse.
"Huh…if Alice hadn't brought that bread, I would've had to survive off of this," he murmured.
It brought him further from wanting to eat, that was sure.
I always thought the undead just didn't care about food. I never imagined things could be like this.
"What do you have to drink?" He asked the boy. "Oh, that's easier. We take the salt out of the lake and drink that."
"Does it taste good?"
The boy looked at him strangely, like he had spoken another language. "Taste? We don't care about that, my lord. We're dead. As long as it makes the rumbling stop, we're all right."
Lucian wanted to know more. "How often do the dead eat around here?"
The young boy thought for a minute. "I just died, so I have to eat every day. My mom died years ago, and she only eats once a month."
Huh. Unless they're permanently put to rest, they're just…another kind of person, I guess?
The little boy had gone while he was lost in thought.
"Will I ever end up like this?"
Alice, from her seat near the doorway, looked up.
"Hopefully not," she said softly. "Unless you die."
Lucian laughed darkly. "That wouldn't be such a bad thing. We wouldn't have to worry about finding food for me, or water. Or much of anything."
She looked at him and frowned. "You'd give up bread and cheese for a life with…this?" Alice gestured to the remaining sandfruit in his hands. The gritty taste of watermelon stuck to his throat like powdered regret.
Her eyes were dark—not from her own thoughts, but from something borrowed.
"That's what they feel?"
"Some of the dead just want to sleep forever," Alice said. "But the land doesn't want us to."
+
Night settled in. The wind picked up, and with it came the faintest shimmer — not of spirit, but of tension.
Lucian stepped out onto the chapel's balcony, cane in one hand, hunger still dull behind his ribs.
That was when he saw her.
One lone figure, seated at the foot of the hill — near the old well, where even the weeds refused to grow.
She didn't move. Didn't flinch.
But when Lucian approached, she looked up.
"It's been a long time," she said.
He froze.
"Do I... know you?"
She tilted her head. "Yes."
Her face was unremarkable, but her eyes were wrong — too familiar, like seeing his own handwriting scrawled in a stranger's journal.
Lucian took one slow step forward. The Grimoire hovered behind him, silent but bright.
"You died?"
"I did."
"When?"
"When you were born into the rites."
Lucian's heart skipped.
"You're not mine."
"No," she said. "But I remember you from before. When you were just Lucian. Not Bowcott. Not Mortician. Not Threadline."
Lucian knelt slowly.
"Tell me what you remember."
"You ran in the snow once. You hated wool. You cried when you cut your thumb on glass. You said you'd never be brave. You didn't believe in death — not really. Not until she told you that one day you'd bury someone, and you'd stop remembering why you cried at all."
"Who was she?"
"I think I was," she said softly.
Lucian reached for her hand.
It passed through.
And then he saw it: her fingers were made of unfinished glyphs. Her hair — braided from spilled ink.
"You're not a soul."
"No," she said. "I'm a draft."
He shuddered.
The Grimoire flickered open.
Entity detected: Memory Shard
Function: Emotional Anchor lost to initiation
Status: Detached from timeline. Not meant to survive.
Query: Reintegration permitted?
Lucian closed the book.
"If I bring you back... will I forget something else?"
The memory-draft nodded.
"It's always a trade."
"What would I lose?"
She didn't answer.
Just looked at him the way only someone who loved him once could.
"Then stay," he whispered. "Just stay like this. I don't need the rest."
She nodded.
And faded.
Like a smile exhaled.
+
He walked back to the chapel.
Alice met him halfway down the hill.
"Who was she?"
"Someone I forgot. Maybe on purpose."
Alice tilted her head.
"Are you going to remember her now?"
Lucian was quiet for a long time.
Then said:
"No. But I'll grieve her."
+
That night, he rewrote an old rite — one buried deep in the Grimoire's seed-chapter. One meant for the memories that never made it to mourning. Whether sacrificed or taken, it didn't matter.
The Rite of the Forgotten Firsts.
It didn't carry names.
It didn't ask for candles.
Only silence.
Only breath.
Only acknowledgment.
He burned the draft on a plate of salt.
And at last, after a full two days in Saltline, he slept.