Deep in the middle of the Broken Star Belt, on the jagged black peaks of Planet 30—known across the sector as the Black-Crag Throne World—a giant obsidian palace shook as if an earthquake had hit it.
Inside the main dining hall, a twenty-foot-tall man with skin like rough gray granite and hair like twisted iron wires sat on a throne carved from a single meteor. This was Star-Lord Crag-Devourer, the First of the Three Star-Lords of the Broken Belt, a terrifying Rank 8 Early powerhouse whose dantian held a spinning dark dwarf-star.
Every time he breathed in, the torches along the hall walls bent toward his nose. Every time he breathed out, tiny cracks spider-webbed across the stone floor.
Right now, Crag-Devourer was staring down at his breakfast plate, and his thick rock eyebrows were twitching with rage.
On the massive ten-foot stone platter in front of him sat three cold lumps of gray rock-moss cake and a bowl of sour gravel-water soup.
“What is this garbage?!” Crag-Devourer roared. His voice boomed like two mountains crashing together, shaking dust and dead bats down from the high ceiling. He grabbed the stone goblet by his hand and crushed it into gray powder between two fingers. “I just finished a three-month closed-door nap! Where is my roasted snow-bear from World 25? Where is my pure iron-marrow wine from World 11? Why am I eating the same bitter mud-cakes we feed to the mine slaves?!”
