The first three days, Reven kept his head down and worked.
Garrick brought him a list—seventeen items that needed repair or maintenance. Basic work. A farming hoe with a split handle. Two hunting knives with dulled edges. Leather armor that had been patched so many times the patches needed patches. A hammer that had lost its head three times and been reattached with increasingly desperate measures.
The kind of work that said: We're barely holding together, and even our tools know it.
Reven worked methodically. The hoe first—he couldn't fix the split handle properly without replacement wood, so he reinforced it with metal bands salvaged from a broken bucket. Ugly, but functional.
The knives next—he didn't have a proper whetstone, so he used a flat river stone and patience. The armor took longest, careful stitching with thread he'd unraveled from his own spare shirt because Haven's Reach's supplies were that limited.
The hammer he fixed properly. It deserved that much.
When he returned the items, Garrick inspected each one in silence.
"Adequate," the old smith said finally. "You know your basics. That's more than I expected."
"I had a good teacher."
"Then he'd be disappointed to see you working with tools this poor." Garrick gestured at Reven's workspace—the broken anvil, the rusted tools, the makeshift everything. "Tomorrow I'll show you the storage. We've got salvage from... before. Maybe you can find something useful."
"Before?"
"Before people gave up on this place." Garrick's expression hardened. "Haven's Reach used to have two hundred residents. Three functioning forges. Proper workshops. Then the heartstone started failing, and the Guild Coalition declared us 'non-viable for investment.' Merchants stopped coming. Hunters left for better opportunities. The people who stayed are the ones too stubborn or too poor to leave."
Reven looked around the settlement—the empty buildings, the flickering heartstone, the exhausted residents. "Why did you stay?"
"Because someone has to." Garrick turned to leave, then paused. "Reven? The fact that you're here means you couldn't get in anywhere else. I know that. Everyone knows that. But if you work hard, if you prove you're not just using us as a temporary stop before moving on... maybe we can fix this place together. Both the settlement and ourselves."
The old smith left.
Reven stood in his cramped workshop and felt the weight of those words settle over him like a promise he wasn't sure he could keep.
The hunger returned.
Reven had been managing it. The rations Borin provided were minimal—hard bread, thin soup, occasionally preserved meat that tasted like leather—but they were something. Enough to keep his body functional.
But not enough to silence the deeper hunger.
The one that had nothing to do with his stomach and everything to do with the crimson veins pulsing under his skin. The one that whispered he needed more than food. More than water. More than anything normal humans required.
He needed essence.
It started as an ache behind his eyes. Progressed to trembling hands. By evening, Reven couldn't hold a hammer steady. His vision kept blurring. And when he looked at his Status—something he'd been avoiding—the warning was clear:
[ESSENCE LOAD: 0.3%]
[WARNING: CRITICAL STARVATION THRESHOLD]
[RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE CONSUMPTION OF MONSTER MATERIALS]
He'd gone too long. His master's hammer had carried him through the journey here, but it was gone now. Consumed by the daily effort of just existing as something part-human, part-Calamity.
Reven waited until everyone had gone to sleep. Then he lit a single candle and examined what little Haven's Reach had in its material storage.
Not much. A few monster parts hunters had brought back but couldn't sell—low-grade materials that merchants wouldn't buy because the transport cost exceeded their value. The kind of thing that accumulated in frontier settlements because throwing it away felt wasteful even when keeping it was pointless.
Velociprey fangs. Jaggi hide scraps. A few scales from something called a Mist Serpent. One cracked claw from a Ridgeback Wyvern.
All of it labeled "LOW-GRADE" or "INFERIOR QUALITY" in the settlement's inventory logs.
All of it practically humming with essence to Reven's senses.
He picked up a Velociprey claw. Small thing, maybe three inches long, curved like a sickle. The tip was chipped. The base showed signs of poor extraction—whoever had harvested this had damaged the root structure.
But underneath the damage, underneath the low-grade classification...
Reven activated his Calamity Sight fully for the first time since arriving.
The claw bloomed with information.
[MATERIAL: VELOCIPREY CLAW]
- QUALITY: LOW-GRADE (DAMAGED EXTRACTION)
- ESSENCE: MINOR WIND AFFINITY
- HIDDEN PROPERTIES:
Base structure is 23% more durable than standard assessment. Wind affinity concentration is abnormally high (specimen was alpha or near-alpha) If properly treated, could be restored to MID-GRADE classification
POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS:Lightweight blade components Wind-enhancement enchantment focus Armor piercing ammunition
Reven stared at the information overlaying his vision.
This wasn't low-grade. This was incorrectly graded material that had been harvested poorly and then dismissed because nobody could see what it actually was.
His hands trembled. Not from hunger anymore. From excitement.
If this one claw had been mis-graded... what else had Haven's Reach thrown into storage because they couldn't see its value?
He examined the rest. One by one.
The Jaggi hide scraps—marked inferior because of scarring—actually contained unusually dense collagen fibers that would make excellent flexible armor.
The Mist Serpent scales—marked low-grade because of discoloration—were discolored because they'd absorbed mineral essence from deep water. That made them better, not worse. Perfect for enchantment retention.
The Ridgeback Wyvern claw—marked damaged because of the crack—had cracked because it had been under extreme stress during the creature's life. The crystalline structure had reinforced itself in response. It was harder than normal Ridgeback claws, not weaker.
Every single item in the storage was mis-graded.
Every single item was more valuable than its label suggested.
And Reven could see it. Beneath the surface damage and poor harvesting to the truth underneath.
His Calamity Sight wasn't just identification. It was revelation.
He chose the Velociprey claw.
Holding it in both his hands, he felt his hunger responded immediately—not with desperation, but with recognition.
Reven closed his eyes and pulled the essence free.
It flowed into him differently than the forge mastery had. Not a rush, but a weaving. The wind affinity threading through his blood, touching the Calamity essence already there, finding spaces between his cells where it could nest.
Not permanent. Not transformative. Just... present. A temporary boost. A borrowed strength.
When he opened his eyes, his Status had updated:
[ESSENCE LOAD: 3.2%]
- ACTIVE INTEGRATION: MINOR WIND AFFINITY (DURATION: 6 HOURS)
- EFFECT: +2 AGILITY, ENHANCED PERCEPTION OF AIR CURRENTS
The hunger went silent.
His hands were steady.
And when he looked at the now-inert claw—drained of essence, just dead keratin—he felt something that might have been regret.
He'd consumed something that could have been useful. That could have been crafted into something better.
But he'd survived.
And survival meant he could craft tomorrow.