Vili and Ve found him later, sitting alone on an outcropping overlooking the frozen plains.

"Still trying to teach them?" Vili's voice carried amusement. He was slightly shorter than Odin, and his hair was more silver than white. "Brother, it's impossible. They are what they are."

Ve nodded, his bronze features catching the pale light. "Chaos is their nature. You might as well try to teach fire to be cold."

"Admula learned." Odin said softly. "Mother and Father learned… So why can't they learn as well? I am not saying destruction is always wrong, but that's all they do."

"They're different." Vili sat beside him, his tone gentler now. "The giants are... Simpler. Their joy is in creation and destruction, the cycle itself, not what comes from it. It's all they know and what has entertained them since the beginning, long before we existed."

Odin said nothing, but Reinhard felt the surge of determination through his chest.

…

Odin emerged from descending down the passageway towards the beautiful Light Realm. But as he stepped inside, his eyes widened at the destruction around.

Odin saw that the light snow surface was now fractured into a thousand spiderweb cracks with water leaking through them. The golden grasses that shine along the lake had been flattened and utterly destroyed.

Even the floating trees, which once gently drifted above the ground, trailing roots like snow, now lay toppled and uprooted.

It took Odin a moment to absorb the view of everything, and that moment was all the time required for the next disaster to unfold.

Four bare-chested Frost Giants rushed out of the trees and into a clearing at the lake's edge.

Their footsteps created holes in the ground deep enough to fill with water. They moved with the wild movement who not only expected to win, but delighted in the destruction their bodies created.

One grabbed another by the throat and slammed him into the face of a boulder, shattering it into a cloud of blue-white shards.

The others howled, not in pain but in joy as this was played to them, a contest of strength with no rules and no boundaries.

Odin felt rage so intense it blurred his vision as it rushed through his body. His hands formed into fists as his knuckles trembled before Odin acted, not thinking or even strategizing.

Odin rushed forward with the ground beneath his feet cracked and powdered. He bypassed the first three giants entirely, leaping onto the back of the fourth and seizing its matted hair in both hands.

Odin's fingers glowed with a luminous light as he pulled the Frost Giant, making it rise up into the air. And then he yanked hard, slamming the giant's face into the dirt.

The other Frost Giants whirled to face him, lips peeling back from tusk-like teeth. Their voices rose in a song of challenge as they shouted. "Brother!"

One of them was already winding up to swing a tree trunk like a club. "Come to lose your teeth?"

Odin spun with a snarl as he met the attack head-on. The tree trunk smashed him into the side, but the force barely slowed his momentum.

He caught the weapon with one hand, fingers piercing the wood, and with the other hand sent a spear of pure light through the giant's chest.

The Frost Giant howled, but instead of falling back, he seized Odin around the waist and lifted him into the air, intent on crushing him.

Odin responded by snapping the club in two, then driving the jagged end into his opponent's ribs.

The two giants crashed together in a blur of limbs and magical energy, their battle sending up piles of blue snow and crystal fragments that sliced the air.

The remaining two giants joined the fray, and now it was a four-way close combat. The entire shoreline of the lake reduced to dust from the clash arena of force.

Odin ducked and weaved, his fists glowing as he smashed his fist into the face of a Frost Giant, leading him to stumble back.

Then Odin twisted his body before lashing out with a kick that smashed into the leg of the Frost Giant.

Leading him to fall to the ground, before Odin raised his leg and hacked down with it, smashing the Frost Giant deeper into the ground.

But the Frost Giants only laughed before rushing towards Odin, who roared back. Each of them sent fist after fist at each other, for every blow Odin landed, he took one in return. T

he Frost Giants seemed to thrive on the pain, their laughter growing louder as the battle intensified.

The ground shook so violently that the cracks in the lake's surface began to widen. Until whole sheets of ice broke free and floated out into deeper water, drifting like shattered memories.

Finally, Odin broke free from the melee long enough to gather himself.

He planted both feet and released a pulse of crimson-blue light that expanded outward in a perfect sphere, flattening the giants and sending them tumbling end over end.

They struggled to their feet, dazed but not defeated, leading Odin to clenched his fist even harder before he blinked when he saw the damage around.

That was when Odin remembered who he was and what he represented. He would not let this place become a mockery of itself or continue indulging in these giants.

He lifted his hands to the sky, and in a language older than the world, summoned bands of energy that lashed out and encircled the four giants.

The light twisted around their limbs, binding them even as they strained and cursed, their breath coming in clouds of fog.

Odin felt their fury battering at his mind, but he gritted his teeth and held them fast. With a gesture, he lifted all four Frost Giants clear off the ground.

They flailed, howling in protest, but could do nothing as Odin's will carried them over the shattered lake.

But it was then that Odin saw a swirl of light appear, and a multi-color portal appeared. Odin blinks before he heads toward the portal, which displays the frozen realm with its towering mountains and jagged landscape.

"If you want to fight." Odin shouted, his voice amplified by the resonance of the Light Realm itself. "Do it in your icy realm! Not here. Not in a world that was made for beauty!"

The Frost Giants spat growls and roared, but the force of Odin's glare and their exhaustion made them fall silent. Without any more words, he hurled them through the portal, which snapped shut behind them with a thunderclap that rattled every bone.

Silence descended in the ravaged Light Realm.

Odin sank to his knees as he pressed his palms into the torn earth.

The adrenaline drained away, and the odd power from the realm fully left him, leaving nothing but sorrow and a sense of having failed something sacred.

He surveyed the wreckage and saw the trampled grass, the lake split into useless plates, the fallen trees with their lights going out one by one.

A flock of luminous birds, once so common here they'd darken the sky at sunset, now cowered beneath the root ball of an overturned tree.

Odin reached out a hand, but they only shuddered and fled, trailing feathers like embers.

For a time, Odin began trying to fix the ruined lakeshore. He tried restoring what he could, coaxing the floating trees back into the air, and replanting the grass with his hands. But every step reminded him of what had been lost, and how impossible it would be to restore it all by himself.

The Light Realm would recover, as all realms did, but the wound would remain a scar, and how terrifying the giants were.

Odin sat at the water's edge, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe. The anger had nowhere to go now, so it turned inward and ate at his resolve.

He realized how tired he was, how the centuries had worn him down more than he cared to admit.

The beauty of this place had been his comfort, but now it was gone, or at least fundamentally changed.

He felt the loss, and it was a terrible feeling.

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