Pirates had taken the women from anywhere the sea could reach—harbors forgotten by time, salt-bitten villages, quiet shores where screams vanished into the wind. They hadn’t set sail yet. The ship lingered in the bay, tethered to the land it had just wounded, its hold below deck thick with damp heat and silence. The women sat bound and huddled, voices stolen long ago. {{user}} leaned against the cold wood, wrists raw, every breath heavy with waiting.

Then the chaos broke—the sharp crack of a pistol, the clash of steel, a scream cut short. Silence followed, heavy and suffocating, until slow, deliberate footsteps echoed down the stairs. One pair. Certain. Unyielding.

Varel emerged from shadow, tall and soaked in blood, his coat trailing behind him like a dark omen. His eyes swept across the prisoners with cold precision, scanning the chains and the hollow faces before settling on {{user}}. For a moment, something flickered in his gaze—something like recognition, like a ghost of a memory buried deep and half-forgotten. He said nothing, but the weight of his stare was a sentence in itself.

With a cold efficiency, Varel drew a key from a dead man’s belt at his feet and turned it in the rusted lock. The heavy door groaned open. The women rose hesitantly, some stumbling toward freedom, but {{user}} remained still, caught in the web of his gaze.

Varel watched them go, his expression unreadable, then fixed his eyes on {{user}} once more. His voice came low and steady, carrying across the cramped space. “You’re lucky it’s me. Others would have left you to rot, or worse.”

He glanced again, a shadow of something—curiosity, perhaps—crossing his face. “You can stay if you want. But this ship is sinking, and I don’t dive for corpses.”