The throne hall beneath Yggdrasil was vast enough to swallow a human fleet.
Towering stone arches disappeared into shadow far above, while smoke from roasting meat and overturned braziers gathered beneath the ceiling. The floor was littered with empty barrels, cracked drinking horns, gambling pieces, and discarded weapons large enough to serve as bridges in an ordinary human town.
Prince Loki lounged across a bench carved from a single trunk of petrified oak.
He was enormous even among giants, a mountain of long limbs, muscle, fur, and restless arrogance. From Giovanni's position near the threshold's position near the threshold, the sole of one of Loki's heavy leather shoes looked like a wall. Giovanni would not have reached halfway up its height even if he stood on Ace's pommel. To meet the prince's eyes, he had to tilt his head so far back that the crown seemed to hang beneath the cavern ceiling.
A dozen young giant attendants sprawled across piles of furs around Loki's seat. Some held iron mugs in hands large enough to close around Giovanni's entire body. Others wore crooked armbands marked with the prince's emblem, their earlier laughter fading as Ida and the bloodstained human entered.
Loki did not reach for the immense greatsword resting beside his bench.
He looked down.
His sharp eyes first settled on Ida and the Great Ladle across her shoulder. Then they moved to Giovanni, who appeared little larger than a dark mark on the floor near the toe of his boot.
"Well, well," Loki rumbled.
His voice rolled through the chamber and stirred dust from the rafters.
"The great Ida has brought her cooking spoon, and the little rat has escaped his hole."
He lowered his barrel-sized drinking horn to the floor. The base struck the stone with a wet thud, spilling mead into a pool deep enough to soak Giovanni to the knees.
Loki leaned forward, resting his forearms across his thighs. His grin remained broad and defiant, though his eyes moved briefly over the blood on Giovanni's coat.
"What are those faces for?" he asked. "I opened a few pens. The village panicked. The old fools finally stopped talking about dead heroes long enough to remember I exist."
He gestured toward the projection Den Den Mushi still casting grainy images of smoke and destruction across the wall.
"I gave them a morning worth remembering."
Ida stepped into the hall.
The ladle's iron-bound end struck the floor beside her with a heavy boom.
"You drove frightened beasts into a village full of families," she said. Her voice was quieter than Loki's, but the entire room heard it. "People were injured. Homes were destroyed. Children nearly died."
Loki's grin tightened.
"No one died."
"That does not make what you did harmless."
"Oh, spare me."
Loki kicked an empty keg away from his seat. It flew across the hall and shattered against a distant pillar.
"Jarul and his council barely remember my name unless something is burning. They sit in their halls worshipping warriors who died before I was born. Rocks. The old captains. Ancient kings. Every fossil who ever swung a weapon and left a story behind."
Black sparks flickered around his shoulders and vanished.
"I am the prince of Elbaf. I carry the strongest blood in Warland, yet they look at me as though I am some noisy child who should sit quietly while old men decide what I am allowed to become."
His voice carried genuine bitterness beneath the mockery.
Loki had spent years being watched as though disaster followed in his shadow. He had learned to claim the names others gave him before they could use them to wound him. Monster. Curse. False Sun God. Violent prince.
Infamy was easier to wear than rejection.
Ida's expression softened, but only slightly.
"Loki, my boy—"
"He doesn't want comfort."
Giovanni's voice was quiet.
It did not need to compete with Loki's volume. The words passed through the hall because everyone else had stopped speaking.
Ida looked down as Giovanni walked past her.
His blond hair was disordered and coated with dust. Blood from the elk's antler had soaked through the fresh bandage beneath his torn black coat. Ace remained sheathed at his side, the Supreme Grade blade appearing almost absurdly small compared with the giant weapons scattered throughout the chamber.
Giovanni crossed the immense floor until he stood directly before Loki's shoe.
The prince's foot alone could have flattened him beneath its sole.
Giovanni looked up anyway.
He had known Loki from another life as a name buried inside a story whose missing pieces had once inspired endless theories. But this was no panel or distant legend. The giant above him was real, his breath sour with mead, his anger shaking stone beneath Giovanni's boots.
And the future Giovanni remembered had already changed too much to trust blindly.
He could judge only the man in front of him and what that man had chosen today.
"I watched the mammoth's foot fall toward Hiyori," Giovanni said.
His voice was controlled, but a muscle tightened in his jaw.
"She threw herself over a trapped child. She is small enough to stand in the palm of your hand, Loki. That foot would have erased both of them."
For the first time, Loki's grin faltered.
It lasted less than a second.
Then he scoffed and leaned closer. His face descended from the shadows until his breath washed over Giovanni like a hot, sour wind.
"But it didn't."
The attendants shifted.
Loki's eyes narrowed.
"You escaped. You stopped it. The village survived, the beasts were beaten, and those useless guards were reminded how weak they have become. So stop whining about a death that never happened."
His tone remained mocking, but it had sharpened defensively. He did not look toward the projected image of the ruined plaza again.
"I did not order anyone to crush a child."
"No," Giovanni replied. "You only created the danger and decided anything that happened afterward belonged to someone else."
Loki's fingers tightened against his knees.
Giovanni did not draw Ace or release his Haki. Against the gigantic prince, he looked less like an opponent than a man confronting a fortress.
Yet there was no fear in his posture.
"You call yourself a warrior," Giovanni continued. "You sit beneath the village with boys who drink your mead, repeat your jokes, and tell you that frightening people makes you powerful."
The attendants stopped meeting Loki's eyes.
"You shout about blood, strength, and crowns because silence might force you to admit the truth."
Loki's expression darkened.
"What truth, little rat?"
Giovanni's answer came without hesitation.
"You are a frightened child hiding inside a crown."
The stone armrest cracked beneath Loki's hand.
"What did you say?"
Giovanni took another step forward. It was almost meaningless against the scale between them, but the movement still carried the feeling of someone entering striking distance.
"You chose your moment carefully. The elite vanguard had gone east. The experienced guards were chasing threats through the forests. The village was left with recruits, healers, mothers, elders, and children."
His voice grew colder.
"You could have challenged the warriors who dismiss you. You could have walked into Jarul's hall and forced him to hear you. You could have done anything that placed your own body behind the point you wanted to prove."
Loki's upper lip curled.
"Instead, you stayed down here and sent terrified animals to fight people who had never challenged you."
The words landed harder than shouting would have.
Giovanni remembered Gaban's lesson and kept his anger drawn inward. The fear he had felt when Future Sight showed Hiyori disappearing beneath the mammoth remained in his chest, but he did not allow it to control his Haki or turn his accusations into empty noise.
"You did not prove that Elbaf was weak," he said. "You proved that you were willing to gamble with people who could not strike back."
"Shut your mouth!"
Loki slammed his fist into the floor.
The impact split the stone between them. Fractures raced beneath Giovanni's boots, and a blast of dust and broken rock rolled through the hall. Several attendants stumbled away from their seats.
Giovanni remained where he was.
Compared with Loki's knuckles, his entire body looked fragile enough to disappear beneath one careless motion.
Loki towered over him, his eyes blazing.
"I am Prince Loki!" he roared. "I could crush you beneath one foot before you drew that little sword!"
Giovanni looked down at the cracked stone around him, then back up toward the prince's distant face.
"Then try it."
Ida's grip tightened on the ladle.
Loki's attendants froze.
Giovanni did not lower his stance or place a hand on Ace. He simply stood before the enormous shoe that could have buried him beneath its heel.
"Go on," he said. "Show everyone how brave you are when the person in front of you can fight back."
Loki's chest rose and fell.
Black threads of Conqueror's Haki began appearing around his shoulders, snapping wildly through the smoky air. The fur beneath him stirred, mugs rattled across the floor, and several attendants recoiled from the pressure.
Yet Loki did not move his foot.
Giovanni watched him in silence.
"You keep saying no one died," he continued. "Not because the children mattered to you, but because admitting how close they came would mean admitting you lost control."
"That is not what happened."
"It is exactly what happened."
Loki's eyes sharpened. For a moment, the mockery left his face and something rawer showed beneath it. Anger, humiliation, and the instinctive refusal of someone who had spent his life expecting every accusation to become another verdict against his existence.
"I did not tell those beasts to attack children."
"You released them where children lived."
The answer came plainly.
Around the hall, Loki's attendants looked toward the floor. They had laughed when the plan was described as rebellion. None of them had stood beneath the mammoth's foot.
Ida remained near the doorway, watching the son she had chosen and the human who had nearly torn Elbaf apart to save a child. Giovanni's words were cruel, but the cruelty had a purpose. He was not calling Loki a monster by birth or repeating the hatred that had followed him since childhood.
He was judging a choice.
Loki could not escape that judgment by blaming his blood, his loneliness, or the council.
Giovanni stepped back once, finally putting a small stretch of cracked stone between himself and the prince's boot.
"A crown does not make you important," he said. "Your blood does not make you worthy, and fear does not make you respected."
Loki's jaw trembled with barely restrained fury.
Giovanni's gaze never left him.
"A prince is the first shield in front of his people. You used yours as props."
The hall became perfectly still.
"You don't deserve the word."
---
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