Later, Odin lay atop Admula as she moved through the snowy landscape. The towering cow's steps were slow, patient, giving him time to think.

Reinhard felt the thoughts moving through Odin's mind were dark, mixed with terrible thoughts that grew darker with each passing moment.

"Do these Frost Giants." Odin whispered to himself. "Even deserve to exist?"

The question seemed to send a ripple outward, disrupting even the sullen hush of the frozen realm. The air itself seemed to pause, uncertain whether to draw the next breath.

As the words echoed, Reinhard felt a slow change in Odin. The anger that had previously surged in him began to withdraw from the surface and concentrate at the core.

The light in Odin's gaze dimmed, not extinguished but compressed, like a star collapsing inward before its final detonation. His eyes no longer blazed but absorbed, drawing in everything without reflection.

Odin stared at the Frost Giants sprawled across the wreckage they'd created in the frozen realm. Their laughter rang through the silence as they admired their handiwork after destroying their creation.

For a moment, Odin seemed to see the entire history of their kind. Their lack of care for the realms, the endless repetition of destruction, and the disregard for anything that was not themselves.

Reinhard felt every inch of it, as if the memories were his very own. The eons of the Frost Giants' havoc throughout the various areas, the beauty of the realms flattened in a single day, the mocking laughter as they watched things crumble.

"They don't change," Odin said to himself. "They never have. Not once, in all these ages, have they become anything but what they always were. Maybe my brothers were right, they are what they are… They are chaotic beings who can't change."

Odin raised his hand, and Reinhard felt the power gathering.

But it wasn't the desperate force that had broken the lake or lashed the giants into submission, but an entirely different kind of energy. It felt like the frozen realm was responding to Odin with disappointment and trying to help him manifest it. He didn't seem to know where the power was coming from, only that it could help him do something.

Odin's fingers curled, and the air crackled with a suffocation.

He could have destroyed them then, Reinhard knew. With one gesture, Odin could have wiped the Frost Giants from existence. The other frost giants wouldn't care and simply call them pitiful and continue on with their day.

There would be no one to mourn them, perhaps not even a memory, and the world would go on, unburdened by their endless hunger for destruction.

For one long moment, Odin hovered on the edge of that decision, and Reinhard saw the image appearing in Odin's mind. The possibility of a world without things constantly getting destroyed, with realms being destroyed, and life being devoured without care.

But Odin hesitated.

There was a bit of mercy deep within him, the mercy that brought memories. The Frost Giants were the ones to take care of him and his siblings when their parents weren't around.

The Frost Giants are the ones to teach them how to fight, taking them to explore places, and praising their accomplishment. It was Frost Giants who sneaked them out to explore the Light Realm, and the ones who had them ride Admula.

The Frost Giants have constantly been there and done a lot for him, they were no different than his closest ones. Odin began to think that it wasn't as simple as he thought, that killing those Frost Giants was wrong.

Maybe removing the Frost Giants would also remove some part of himself. He didn't know why, but Odin had a feeling that once he committed the act, he would no longer be the existence he was.

Instead, Odin turned his eyes away and then recalled when Admula had picked him up. The Jungle Realm was feebly trying to recover, with patches of green forcing their way through the snow.

He recalls clusters of birds that broke free from the ice. Then they began huddling together for warmth while the floating trees attempted to rise once more despite their shattered roots.

The Jungle Realm was stubbornly trying to recover even after being ruined.

Odin lowered his hand. "Perhaps they do deserve to exist. If only so the rest of us have something to measure ourselves against."

The words tasted of defeat, and also of a grim, unwilling hope. Even though he lowered his hand to not change, it didn't stop the bitterness flowing through him.

Then the scene froze.

The Frost Giants laughing in the distance, Admula halted its step, and her massive hoof suspended above the ground. The flurry of snowflakes hung motionless, and Odin's expression of cold fury was captured in perfect detail.

Then it shattered.

Darkness swallowed everything, and Reinhard fell once more into the void.

…

Reinhard jolted awake, gasping for air as if he'd been drowning rather than dreaming. Above him stretched the familiar ceiling of his bedroom, now half-illuminated by dawn light that crept through his window and painted long fingers of shadow across the room.

His hand rose to his face, trembling slightly. The sheets beneath him were damp with sweat despite the room's chill. He could still feel it—that rage, that cold calculation that had burned through Odin's consciousness.

He sat up slowly, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. His feet touched the cool wooden floor, grounding him in reality.

The Frost Giants. Reinhard's visible eye stared at nothing, seeing instead their massive forms laughing as they crushed beauty beneath their feet. Creating only to destroy, while building only for the momentary satisfaction of watching it shatter.

They weren't evil, he realized with a strange feeling.

Evil would have made more sense. They were simply chaotic things, just as they were described in the history books. But it was different seeing it in reality than reading about it.

Even in the Trial Odin had him go through in the beginning, it didn't show how terrifying and terrible the Frost Giants were.

He recalled the Light Realm's radiance now fractured while the Jungle Realm was reduced to a silent, frozen cemetery.

What happens when they discover more realms? The question formed in his mind, bringing with it a creeping dread. How many more places of beauty would be reduced to frozen wastelands? How many more creatures would shatter beneath indifferent hands?

Odin had tried to teach them. Reinhard could still feel the frustration, the way hope had gradually eroded under the weight of repeated failure.

And Odin's eyes at the end...

Reinhard sighed as the question that had formed in the young god's mind, which Reinhard had muttered. "Do they deserve to exist?"

What path would Odin take? Reinhard stood, moving to his window.

Would Odin try to impose that order by force? Would he find a way to contain the Frost Giants, to limit their destruction? Or would he…

Reinhard's breath caught.

Or would he do something more permanent?

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