Stark's mouth opened and closed like a fish pulled from water.
"W-wait—how do you two—whaaa—"
His boot found a slick patch of mimic saliva still oozing from the broken chest. The sole slid. Legs windmilled. He hit the stone floor hard on his back with a resounding thud, axe clattering away, breath punched out of him in a wheeze.
Fern's jaw dropped slightly. Her violet eyes darted between the two elves—wide, stunned, utterly wordless. No words came to her lips. No question. Just frozen shock.
Frieren rose smoothly from the dusty floor as though she hadn't just spent who-knew-how-long half-swallowed by the mimic. She brushed a few stray dust motes from her robes with absent fingers, then crossed the chamber without hurry. Green eyes fixed on Percia the entire way—soft, unchanging, impossibly calm.
She stopped directly in front of the taller elf.
Then, without preamble, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Percia's waist.
The hug was small, deliberate, unhesitating. Frieren pressed her cheek against Percia's chest, white hair spilling over dark fabric like fresh snow on midnight. Monster spit—thick, viscous, faintly glowing—smeared across Percia's pristine cloak in sticky streaks. Frieren didn't seem to notice. Or care.
She snuggled closer, content, breathing in deep. Percia's scent—old forests after rain, faint ozone of restrained mana, something sharper and colder that had always belonged only to her—filled Frieren's lungs like coming home.
"I missed you," Frieren murmured, voice muffled against cloth. Simple. Honest. The same tone she might use to comment on the weather.
Percia stood rigid. Her arms remained at her sides. Midnight-blue eyes stared down at the crown of white hair, expression unreadable except for the faint tightening at the corners of her mouth.
"…I haven't," Percia said quietly.
The words hung there, cool and precise.
Frieren didn't flinch. Didn't pull away. She only hummed—a low, soft sound of acknowledgment, almost fond.
"I know."
She stayed like that a moment longer, small hands fisted gently in the fabric of Percia's cloak, as though anchoring herself against centuries of distance. The chamber was silent except for Stark's labored breathing as he pushed himself up on one elbow, staring slack-jawed, and Fern's soft, stunned exhale.
Percia finally lifted one hand. Hesitant. Fingers hovered above Frieren's shoulder—then settled, light as snowfall, on white hair. Not quite returning the embrace. Not quite pushing her away either.
"You're covered in mimic spit," Percia said, voice flat.
Frieren tilted her head just enough to meet Percia's gaze, chin still resting against her sternum.
"So are you now."
A beat.
Percia exhaled through her nose—half sigh, half surrender.
"…You're impossible."
Frieren's lips curved, the tiniest, rarest smile.
"I know that too."
Behind them, Stark finally managed to croak, "Uh… should we… give you two a minute?"
Fern elbowed him sharply in the ribs without looking away from the scene.
Frieren didn't answer. She simply closed her eyes again, content to stay exactly where she was.
The chamber felt smaller now, the air thicker with unspoken centuries.
Frieren finally loosened her hold, stepping back just enough to look up at Percia properly. Her green eyes were the same—unchanging, serene, carrying no trace of the weight of time. Percia's midnight-blue gaze met them without flinching, but something flickered there: a shadow of memory long buried.
Stark had managed to sit up, one hand braced on the floor, the other still loosely gripping his axe handle. Fern stood frozen beside him, violet eyes enormous, mouth slightly open as though words had simply evaporated.
Frieren tilted her head, the motion so familiar it hurt.
"You haven't asked how we know each other," she said to her companions, voice soft and matter-of-fact.
Stark blinked rapidly. "I… uh… kinda figured you'd get to that part?"
Fern swallowed. "Frieren-sama…?
Frieren turned slightly, gesturing toward Percia with one small hand.
"We met a millennium ago. Before Flamme found me. Before my village burned."
Percia looked down at herself, her cloak now sticky with mimic residue. It would take a couple washes to get it off.
Frieren continued, unhurried.
"I was… very young. Even for an elf. Percia passed through our forest one autumn. She was traveling alone, studying ruins older than either of us. I followed her for a while. Not long. Forty years, perhaps."
Stark made a strangled noise.
Frieren looked back up at Percia then, gaze steady.
"I used to trail behind her like a shadow. Asking questions about spells she didn't want to teach. Watching her trace glyphs on stone walls at dawn. She never told me to leave. She just… let me stay."
Percia exhaled, slow and controlled.
"You were persistent," she said. The words came out quieter than she intended. "And annoying."
Frieren's lips curved—just a fraction.
Then Frieren turned fully toward Fern and Stark, who were staring as though the floor had dropped out from under them.
"She was my first love," Frieren said, calm as if commenting on the weather.
Jaws dropped further—if that was possible.
Stark's mouth opened, closed, opened again. No sound emerged.
Fern's staff slipped an inch in her grip. She caught it automatically, knuckles white.
"First… love?" Fern echoed, barely a whisper.
Frieren nodded once.
Percia looked away—toward the shadowed shelves, the drifting motes of light—anywhere but at the three faces now fixed on her.
"I left," she said flatly. "Eventually. As one does."
Frieren hummed. "You did. One morning you were simply gone. No note. No goodbye. Just… gone."
She didn't sound bitter. Only factual. Like recounting the plot of a book she'd read long ago.
Stark finally found his voice, hoarse. "So you two… were…?"
"Nothing," Percia cut in.
Frieren's gaze flicked back to her, gentle but unrelenting.
"More than that."
The mimic chest gave a final, sullen creak behind them, as though embarrassed to still be in the room. Fern felt a strange sense of comradery towards it.
Many questions remained unanswered as Fern and Stark watched Percia idly wiped the monster spit off her cloak. Frieren tilted her head towards Percia, making Percia exhale and reach to clean it off Frieren as well.
"So… why'd you leave?" he blurted, voice cracking only slightly. "You say that forty years is nothing to elves, but it should still be something right? Why just… go?"
The question hung.
Percia's head turned slowly. Midnight-blue eyes settled on him.
They weren't angry. They weren't even cold—not exactly. But they pierced. Deep. As though she were looking straight through skin and bone to whatever fragile, mortal thing beat behind his ribs. Stark felt it like ice water down his spine. His breath caught. Every instinct screamed retreat.
He flinched hard, scrambled backward, and ducked behind the mimic chest like it was cover in a battlefield. The splintered wood creaked in protest as the gaze fell on it instead.
Percia blinked once. The weight of her gaze lifted. She exhaled—soft, almost amused—and turned back to Frieren.
"I left," she said evenly, "because I had other duties to attend to."
She let the words settle, simple and final.
Percia straightened. The air shifted; the quiet snapped like a thread pulled too tight.
"I've grown bored of this dungeon," she announced, tone brisk once more. "Its secrets are shallow, its traps predictable. I'm leaving." She glanced at the three of them—Fern still frozen in place, Stark half-hidden behind chewed-up wood, Frieren standing close enough that their robes almost brushed. "I assume the rest of you want to leave as well."
She stepped forward.
Past Frieren.
Deliberately avoiding her gaze, her touch, the small space she still occupied. Their shoulders nearly brushed—but didn't. Percia kept moving toward the doorway, stride measured, cloak whispering against stone.
Frieren watched her go. No protest. No plea. Just that same calm, patient look she'd worn for a thousand years.
Stark peeked out further, whispering to Fern, "Did she just… yeet herself out of the conversation?"
Fern elbowed him again—harder this time.
Percia paused at the threshold, one hand resting lightly on the frame. She didn't turn.
"The exit passage is two corridors north, then up the spiral stair. Avoid the third pressure plate on the landing—it still has teeth." A beat. "Don't dawdle."
Then she was gone—shadow melting into shadow, footsteps fading down the hall.
Behind her, the chamber held its breath.
Frieren finally moved. She brushed a speck of dust from her sleeve, calm as ever.
"Come," she said to her students. "We should follow before she decides to collapse the ceiling behind us just to make a point."
Stark scrambled to his feet, axe in hand, face still flushed.
Fern hesitated, glancing toward the empty doorway.
Then they followed.
The dungeon, perhaps sensing the shift in mood, stayed mercifully silent. But the space Percia left behind felt noticeably colder.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────
The spiral stair was narrow, forcing them single-file. Percia led, steps silent and sure, cloak brushing stone walls. Behind her: Frieren, then Fern, then Stark bringing up the rear with his axe slung over one shoulder. The dungeon's ambient glow had dimmed to a faint, bluish haze—almost peaceful, as though the place itself had decided to behave.
No one spoke for the first few turns.
Then Fern cleared her throat.
"Frieren-sama… about Percia…"
Frieren didn't miss a step. Her voice came soft, conversational, as though discussing the weather or a mildly interesting spell diagram.
"What about her?"
Stark leaned forward slightly, trying to keep his voice low. "Like… everything? She's kinda intense. And you two were—y'know—together? For forty years? Were you guys even together? I'm so confused."
Percia's shoulders remained straight. She didn't slow. Didn't turn. If she heard them—and she did—she gave no sign. Her midnight-blue eyes stayed fixed on the path ahead, tracing familiar cracks in the stone she'd memorized weeks ago.
Frieren hummed thoughtfully.
"Percia is gentle," she began. "She's patient with things that interest her—old runes, forgotten wards, spells no one's touched in centuries. She'll sit for days without moving, just watching how mana flows through a single glyph. And when she explains something… it's clear. Precise. Like she's handing you the exact shape of truth."
Fern's eyes widened a fraction. "That sounds… nice."
"It is," Frieren agreed. "She once spent three weeks teaching me how to fold a shielding spell so thin it could pass through rain without breaking. I still use that version sometimes."
Stark blinked. "Three weeks? On one spell?"
Frieren nodded. "She doesn't rush beautiful things."
A short pause. The stair curved; their footsteps echoed in soft triplicate.
Then Frieren's tone shifted—still calm, but with the faintest edge of complaint.
"She can be horrible… she's impossibly cold. Not cruel. Just… distant. Like winter that never quite thaws. She'll let you stay close for decades, then vanish without warning. No explanation. No goodbye. Just gone. And when you find her again a thousand years later, she acts like forty years was nothing more than a long afternoon."
Fern stared at Frieren's back. "She really just… left? And never came back?"
"Until today," Frieren said simply. "She has duties. Always duties. And she thinks attachments are chains."
Stark rubbed the back of his neck. "That's rough."
Frieren tilted her head. "It is. I used to follow her around begging her to teach me things just so she'd look at me longer. She never said no. But she never said stay, either."
Fern's voice came quieter now, contemplating.
"I always thought… you didn't understand love. Not really. The way humans do. The way it hurts, or makes people do stupid things."
Frieren stopped on the landing—just long enough for Fern and Stark to nearly bump into her.
She turned slightly, green eyes bright with sudden, stubborn pride. She puffed out her small chest.
"Of course I understand love," she declared. "I've been a great mage for over a millennium. I've read every grimoire worth reading. I've lived long enough to see every shape emotion can take. I know exactly what it is."
She paused.
Then, softer:
"I just… don't let it change me."
Fern looked like she was reevaluating her entire understanding of her master. "So when you first fell in love with her…?"
Frieren resumed climbing without missing a beat.
"I was very young. She walked into our forest like she owned the silence. Tall. Quiet. Hair like polished night. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Then she started tracing wards on an old standing stone and I thought, 'Oh. That's even more beautiful.'"
She smiled—small, private, fond.
"I followed her for weeks before I even spoke. When I finally did, she looked at me like I was a mildly interesting insect. But she didn't send me away. So I stayed."
Ahead of them, Percia's stride never faltered. If the words reached her—if every quiet confession cut like winter wind—she gave no outward sign. Her hand rested lightly on the wall for balance as the stair leveled out into a wider passage. The exit was close now; she could feel fresh air teasing the edges of her senses.
Frieren's voice drifted after her anyway.
"She still is, you know. Beautiful. In the way mountains are beautiful. Untouchable. Enduring. Cold."
No response from the figure ahead.
Only the soft click of boots on stone, steady and unhurried.
Fern glanced at Stark. Stark glanced back. Both of them looked faintly dazed.
Stark whispered, "This is… a lot."
Fern nodded once.
Frieren, unperturbed, continued forward.
"She'll pretend she didn't hear any of this," she said matter-of-factly. "She always does. But she heard."
The passage opened ahead—moonlight spilling through a cracked archway, the true exit at last.
Percia stepped into it first.
She didn't look back.
But her fingers, hidden in the folds of her cloak, curled just a fraction tighter.