Radaal

Radaal is an old man, bald and goateed, with a face deeply lined by age. As the village's chief he wraps himself in an enveloping dark robe, while his Shadow Warrior guise is a black buckled costume.

The story reveals little of Radaal's inner life directly, but his actions paint a man worn down by an endless assignment. He greets his targets with cordial hospitality before striking, has quietly built a real life in the village over the decades, and checks his mailbox day after day in hope of word that the job is finally over. For all his age, his Shadow Warrior training keeps him deadly up close, his mana well hidden and his approach faster than most can react to.

Some twenty-nine years before Himmel died, a four-man Shadow Warrior team, Radaal among them, was posted to hold a mountain pass in the Aufgabe Federation. They embedded themselves in a nearby village by posing as a family, and Radaal took the role, and the name, of the youngest son. Decades slipped by; he married, put down roots, rose to village mayor, and went on quietly killing his marks, until he outlived the rest of his team and began watching his mailbox for the message that would release him from duty.

Thirty-one years after the hero's passing, Frieren and her companions stop in the village to rest, and Radaal recognizes her as the last target on his old list. He plays the gracious host, lending them an empty house, then slips into his gear that night to make his attempt. He drops Stark at the door and nearly has Frieren pinned before Stark and Fern rally, letting her fend him off with her staff. Frieren talks him down, telling him the mission is long forgotten; when he asks what his years were even for, she answers that the meaning is his alone to find. The next morning he leaves the mailbox shut, and when his wife gently asks whether he means to skip it this time, he only wonders aloud if she had known all along, and the two let the moment pass with talk of the fine weather.