Chapter 62

Twenty-nine years after Himmel's death, the party passes through the Great Sanft Forest, where Stark blunders upon Fern and Frieren bathing and sours the mood for the rest of the day. At a crossroads where one route climbs to the Northern Plateau and another bends toward Neutral Harbor, they stop at an inn and run into Wirbel, Scharf, and Ehre. Wirbel, hurrying north because the frontier's demons have grown violent again, asks Frieren's leave to talk Stark into joining his undermanned vanguard for two or three years.

Frieren agrees at once, wondering aloud whether her own party has been too hard on Stark. That night Fern finds Stark on the veranda, where he tells her he refused the offer outright. He explains that he had thrown his life away in despair before Frieren and Fern took him in, and that it was Fern's encouragement, as much as Frieren, that gave him the will to travel. The next day the two groups part ways, with Wirbel sure their paths will cross again somewhere on the Northern Frontier.

The party reaches a junction dividing the roads to the Northern Plateau and to Neutral Harbor, and meets Wirbel, Scharf, and Ehre at an inn. Wirbel tries to recruit Stark for the war in the north, but Stark turns him down to stay with Frieren's party. The two groups go their separate ways.

Beside the river Fern lovingly cleans the mirrored lotus bracelet Stark gave her and the hair ornament from Frieren, explaining that she treasures every gift because war once cost her everything, including her hometown. Sensing the tension afterward, Frieren blames herself for having forced Stark into the group and invites him to say so if he feels out of place. Wirbel, who thanks Stark again for his help against the Fresser lion boar, bristles at being called middle-aged and insists he was in his twenties not long ago, which Stark says sounds just like Sein. Stark later asks Fern to treat him more gently, and she teasingly invites him over to be coddled.