Giovanni is a student of the human body. You could ask Ichthys if there was anything about the cloaked man's hands he might have noticed that was out of the ordinary, or if he examined the bodies of the dead hunters perhaps he would draw a possible connection between the man's aptitude for fire magic and the deformation of the hunters faces (I can send you the PM I got from Ichthys regarding the wounds on the bodies, if you'd like). 

Or go in depth with the ritual itself and the feelings and sensations followed by the marks he received and spare only a sentence or two for the escape. That could be a good way to tie in the actual beginning of the story with the character's past.