Episode 5: Phantoms of the Dead

Traveling through the Wille Region, Frieren and Fern hear warnings about a mountain pass where people keep vanishing after seeing apparitions of their lost loved ones. Frieren rules out the undead, since reanimated corpses would not mirror the living so perfectly, and pins the disappearances on a creature called the Einsam, which baits humans with illusions of the departed and then devours them. Such tricks pose no danger to capable mages, who can scatter them with concentrated mana.

Inside the thickening mist, the lure tests them both. Fern freezes when Heiter's image praises her for being good, while Frieren, bracing for a vision of her old master, instead faces a phantom of Himmel that calmly tells her to fire. She does, blasting it with Zoltraak and exposing the real Einsam, which Fern then cuts down. The encounter only sharpens their resolve to reach Aureole and the genuine Heiter.

At Riegel Canyon, the pair locates a grimoire nested by a slumbering Solar Dragon. Fern's spell glances harmlessly off its scales, and the waking beast forces a hasty retreat. Realizing they cannot simply trade blows with a dragon, Frieren concludes the party needs a frontline fighter, recalling Eisen's tip about a warrior stationed in a nearby village.

The warrior turns out to be Stark, Eisen's apprentice, hailed locally as a hero ever since the dragon withdrew from the village three years prior. The truth is less heroic. Stark had frozen in terror during that standoff and believes the creature merely chose to spare him. He resists returning to his master and doubts he can help, yet Frieren insists she can finish the dragon if he can hold it still for half a minute.

Frieren's faith rests on what Eisen told her in private, that the young man once fled when monsters overran his birthplace, much as Eisen himself had, and was trained afterward to fight on others' behalf. Granted a night to decide, Stark is found hammering at a cliff base with his Lightning Strike, the source of a massive crack Frieren had noticed earlier, as Fern comes to find him.

The hour is bracketed by quieter exchanges. Leaving Eisen, Fern remarks that her years with Frieren already account for half her life, and Frieren promises the share will only grow. A dream returns Fern to Heiter, who teased that he would haunt her if she misbehaved, lending weight to her insistence on helping the troubled village even when Frieren would rather move on.

A few running gags surface as well. The grimoire Frieren covets holds a spell for seeing through clothing, which she defends as a hobby, and Fern bristles when Frieren brings up her own fearful first brush with a monster. Frieren also admits she long ago grew used to dispelling a phantom of Flamme, a detail that colors her steadiness in the fog.