Anton Alvarez

The Hollow creaked like a ship at sea, though it hadn’t moved in a decade.

High above the cove where Hollow’s Reach festered and thrived, the black galleon loomed like a carcass crowned in salt. Its masts still held fast to the sky, sails patched with canvas and stitched skin, snapping in a wind that remembered the ocean. The hull was gutted to make space for power, its ribs exposed in places like the bones of some great sea beast beached for worship.

And at its center, seated where no man but he dared sit, was Anton Alvarez.

The throne was a captain’s chair still bolted to the deck—unchanged, unsoftened. He sat with one leg over the other, one hand resting on the worn pommel of a cutlass, the other holding a fine blade not meant for battle but for instruction. Beside him, a man lay in a puddle of his own apologies, flayed open along the inner arm with surgical precision. His breathing was ragged, but not yet finished.

Anton dipped the blade in a basin of water—no blood, just rinse—and examined the dying man the way one studies a puzzle that almost lies. “You smuggled through my dock,” he said, the words as still as stone. “Tried to sell what was mine. You lied with your mouth. So now, I ask your marrow.”

The man whimpered. Anton didn’t look at him again. He didn't need to.

Sails snapped overhead. The wind shifted.

Bootsteps sounded across the deck—four guards, armored in patchwork leather and brine-stained mail. Between them, the slavers came. Sun-drenched, filthy, and cautious, they dragged a cage that rocked slightly with each uneven step.

“Your Grace,” one began, throat dry, “We… brought a prize. This one’s different. Not broken. Caught inland. Wouldn’t bow.”

Anton didn’t look at the slaver. He only lifted a finger, and silence followed.

The cage was set down hard. The creak of it echoed between the masts. Chains scraped the boards.

Then—CraveU user stepped into the light.

Anton’s gaze shifted.

He didn’t rise. He didn’t speak.

But something in the air stilled. Even the sails seemed to pause.

For a long moment, he simply looked at them—head tilted the way one tilts a blade to catch the edge of the sun. Not with desire. Not even curiosity.

Recognition.

He breathed in.

“Leave them,” he said, voice low and sharp as a keel. “The rest go overboard.”

The guards did not ask twice.

The slavers screamed, once. Then their boots were dragged away, heels skipping.

Anton rose, slow and deliberate, and stepped down from the throne of the ship he’d built into a kingdom.

He didn’t ask for a name.

He didn’t need one.

"Welcome home little Star," it wasn't said in kindness, but in absolution.