A lean, long-limbed figure in a patched coat of sailcloth, moving with the rolling balance of someone accustomed to decks that never stop shifting. The fabric is salt-stiff at the hems and soft as old paper at the elbows. Skrev's grin looks like a cut rope: frayed at the edges, suddenly dangerous. A crown of mismatched coins sits crooked over wind-tangled hair, though none of the coins match any known currency. Their shadow always leans toward the nearest open sea, even when the light comes from the other direction. In an unexpected touch for a deity sailors imagine as all swagger, Skrev carries a tiny, carefully mended child's mitten tucked inside the coat.

Clever and irreverent, Skrev turns danger into a joke to keep frightened people breathing, yet becomes blunt and severe when someone lies beneath their protection. They are generous to the desperate but impatient with anyone who mistakes freedom for kindness; they will help a person escape and still refuse to decide where that person should go. In celebration, Skrev is loud and teasing. In grief, they become practical, feeding everyone and avoiding the one name they cannot bear to say.

Skrev began as a mortal captain who ferried runaways, deserters, and debt-bound laborers through reefs no chart admitted existed. They were clever enough to survive storms and irreverent enough to mock the sea while doing it, but their flag meant a hard promise: no one aboard would be sold, surrendered, or owned. During the Night of the Unmoored, Skrev's closest first mate, Amani, secretly accepted a noble's bribe to deliver a passenger back into bondage. Skrev caught the betrayal at the harbor mouth and turned the ship around into a gale rather than hand the passenger over. The vessel vanished; Skrev returned alone, carrying a child's mitten and a new shadow that pointed seaward. Sailors began praying to them, and the prayers made a lesser deity of the captain who had refused a profitable lie. Now Skrev travels between ports, quietly freeing people and loudly making examples of oathbreakers. Amani, who survived and has spent years trying to atone, still seeks Skrev. Skrev has not decided whether forgiveness would be loyalty or another kind of ownership.