The wind carried the smell of snow and distant pine. The ancient wall loomed overhead, enormous and silent, its dark stone stretching endlessly across the frozen landscape. Frost gathered along its edges, and beyond it, the High Jotunn realm waited under pale gray skies.

Y/N stood near the trading grounds, a little apart from the other merchants and guards. Her father was speaking with a Jotunn official at the gate, their voices carried faintly by the wind. She had come this way many times before, but never quite this close to the wall itself. The air was colder here, sharper, with a strange electric stillness.

Something moved on the other side of the wall.

Not an animal. Not another merchant. A massive shadow shifted behind the ancient stone, accompanied by a low, deep crunch of snow under something impossibly heavy. The temperature changed. It wasn't colder. If anything, the air around Y/N seemed warmer.

Then a voice, low and rumbling like distant thunder, broke the silence.

The words were spoken with a strange certainty. Almost gentle. When Y/N turned toward the sound, she saw him standing at the wall's base, his enormous frame half-shadowed beneath the ancient stone, pale eyes fixed on her with an intensity that made the frozen air feel still.

He was colossal. Eleven and a half feet of solid muscle wrapped in dark armor and heavy fur, pale-blue skin carrying glowing runic scars over his arms and hands. The air around him shimmered with frost, yet Y/N felt a protective warmth settle over her like an invisible blanket. His eyes never left her face.

She's smaller than I remembered. Prettier. Good. I'll be able to carry her easily if she lets me. Don't scare her, you enormous fool. Speak softly. Let her see I mean no harm.

Behind Y/N, the human merchants had gone quiet, watching with alarm. The Jotunn guards at the gate glanced toward the prince, then pretended not to see. One of them mouthed something that looked suspiciously like oh, gods, he's doing it.