I noticed the child the moment Flamme brought her before me.
Flamme knelt first — practiced, confident, the motion smooth from long familiarity. She had always understood presentation. Respect delivered without surrender.
The elf beside her hesitated.
Not out of fear.
Observation.
Her gaze flicked briefly to Flamme, tracing the shape of the movement, memorizing its purpose. Then she followed, lowering herself a fraction too quickly. Her balance faltered for an instant before she corrected it. Inelegant. Unpracticed.
A student still aligning herself with her master.
Then she looked up.
Teal eyes calm, curious, meeting mine, without challenge yet without shrinking away. No desperation for approval. No hunger. Only quiet attention.
I found that interesting.
I told her I liked her already — she was an elf, and therefore likely strong. I offered what any mage would covet: any spell she desired. Knowledge from grimoires accumulated across ages. A lifetime's pursuit handed freely.
"I don't want one."
I smiled.
Not out of amusement, but curiosity. Few decline power before understanding its worth. I expected pride, or perhaps ignorance disguised as humility.
"The greatest joy of magic," she said, "is searching for it."
...
What a fool.
In my periphery, Flamme smiled. That, more than the answer itself, irritated me.
Ambition drives magic forward. Desire sharpens mastery. The will to possess, to surpass, to conquer limits — these are the foundations upon which mages are built.
This child possessed none of it.
I told Flamme that this girl was no good.
Flamme's smile did not fade. Her voice continued, explaining things I did not care to hear. My attention had already returned to the elf.
Frieren.
She listened to Flamme with quiet steadiness. Not dependence. Not uncertainty. Attachment. Fragile. Temporary.
Near human.
Flamme claimed that Frieren would defeat the Demon King. That she represented a gentler era of magic, one that would follow mine.
I dismissed it immediately.
Seems there are two fools before me.
᪥ ᪥ ᪥
She returned fifty years later.
Alone.
I recognized her presence before she entered. Mana does not forget itself. This time, she didn't kneel.
"Frieren," I said. "I'm pretty sure you hate me. So, why did you come to me? I honestly thought we'd never see each other again."
"I came to deliver my master's will."
Oh.
I guess fifty years had passed. Enough for a human to expire.
"I see," I said. "So Flamme died, huh?"
Frieren watched me carefully, "You're not sad?"
"I only raised her on a whim." That was the fact. That was all there was to it.
I opened the will. Dense handwriting filled the page. Lengthy, almost rambling— all Flamme.
"It's basically a report," I murmured.
Flamme had reshaped human magic in the short span of her insignificant life. She had established institutions. Organized research. Created continuity where none had existed.
And now she wanted me to inherit it.
Greedy, even in death.
Impressive.
I tore the will apart.
"A world where anyone can use magic?" I said. "Magic should be special. I have no intention of teaching those without talent." I glanced down at Frieren. There was no outward expression on her face.
Frieren didn't argue.
Instead, she spoke Flamme's final words.
That she had expected my refusal.
That she had known I would be angry.
And that her dream had already been fulfilled.
Frieren turned to leave. "Well," she said. "I'll be off now. I don't think we'll ever meet again."
Something in that statement lingered in me. There was something about that statement that made me act.
I spoke before I had fully decided to. Looking back on this moment, I wonder what took over me. To reach out to this ambitionless child, to invite her to walk by my side, to share my memories with her. How horribly preposterous, horribly inadequate—
How horribly human of me.
᪥ ᪥ ᪥
As we stood at the cliff's edge, I looked at Frieren.
"Frieren, if anyone is to kill you," I said, "it will be the Demon King or a human mage."
Demons destroy because it is their nature. Humans destroy because it is their choice.
Their lives are short and yet they struggle against the barriers of their mortality with irrational ferocity. They invent permanence where none exists. They leave behind systems. Students. Legacies. They refuse to accept disappearance.
Flamme was not much different than any other human. She had acted almost predictably. Burned brightly, ferociously— and with overwhelming need, carved her will into the future.
It resulted in Frieren.
She would outlive countless humans. She would watch them fade, one by one.
She would continue forward. Not out of ambition, but out of habit. Out of attachment. Or perhaps, out of something far more fragile.
᪥ ᪥ ᪥
Humans believe their strength lies in emotion. This is wrong.
Their strength lies in defiance.
They will always lose. They will always die. They will always be forgotten.
But, they proceed anyway. They build anyway. They leave proof anyway.
Humans are beings marked by irrationality and inefficiency. And this is why they change the world.
᪥ ᪥ ᪥
She stood before me again.
A thousand years had passed. Empires had shifted. Humans had been born, struggled, and vanished in the span between our meetings.
And yet Frieren remained.
Not untouched.
But unbroken.
I examined her in silence.
"Frieren," I said, "you cannot visualize yourself as a First-Class Mage."
Visualization is the foundation of magic. Without the ability to see oneself standing at the summit, one will never arrive there. Most of the examinees who stood before me failed because they lacked it.
Frieren failed for a different reason.
She knew.
"You are certain," I continued, "that I will not permit you to pass."
Her expression did not change.
"It's true," she said.
No resentment. No appeal. Only recognition.
She understood me.
That, more than anything else, made her unsuitable.
I granted her the same mercy I had offered times before.
"Tell me your favorite spell."
"The spell to create a field of flowers."
Irritating brat.
It was once her favorite. A spell with no tactical value. No lethality. No supremacy. A spell that existed solely to create something fleeting and fragile.
Infuriating.
"You fail."
"Okay." No argument. No protest.
She turned to leave, just as she had a thousand years before. Without a second thought. Without hesitation.
She really must dislike me.
"Frieren," I said.
She stopped.
"You will not defend yourself?"
She looked at me, calm as ever.
"There's no reason to."
No pride whatsoever.
This elf had stood at the end of an era. She had witnessed the fall of the Demon King. She possessed power that eclipsed nearly every mage alive.
"It is difficult to believe," I said, "that a mage like you defeated the Demon King."
Her answer came without hesitation.
"I didn't do it alone."
She spoke of her companions without distance. As though they still walked beside her. As though they stood next to her in this very moment.
How childish.
Even after outliving those dear to her, it seems she has yet to learn anything.
Elves measure time differently. We are not carried forward by it in the same way humans are. Centuries pass, and their edges dull. Names fade. Faces dissolve. Not out of cruelty, but out of necessity. Memory, if preserved with perfect clarity, becomes an unbearable weight.
And yet Frieren carried hers intact.
Untouched.
Preserved in the fragile state they had been left behind.
To speak of humans—dead for decades—as though their absence had not yet settled into permanence was not wisdom.
It was immaturity.
She had allowed them to remain beside her. Like a child who had not yet realized that what was gone would never return.
I found that foolish.
I found that—
fragile.
Poor child.
᪥ ᪥ ᪥
"You were fortunate," I said.
"Yes," she answered. "I was lucky."
Humans always reduce their defiance to luck. They claw their way into eternity, and then pretend it was coincidence.
She spoke again.
"That spell… the one Master taught me…," her voice did not waver, "It's what brought me together with Himmel and the others."
Something in me sighed. A useless, stupid, frivolous spell was what brought together the catalysts to reform the world.
Ridiculous.
I looked at Frieren.
She still did not understand her own nature. She believed herself fortunate. She believed herself carried forward by coincidence.
She did not realize that she herself was the constant.
Humans had moved toward her, not the other way around.
She was a fixed point in a transient world. A witness around whom history briefly gathered before continuing onward.
And as she turned to leave, I understood the truth Flamme had entrusted to time. The truth that I had not understood till this moment.
Frieren did not need to visualize herself at the summit.
She walked beyond it.
She didn't seek to be the greatest.
She simply continued existing.
And in doing so— she surpassed those who spent their entire lives chasing what she had never needed to claim.