Reven woke to silence.
Not the comfortable silence of a peaceful morning.
Not the expectant silence before a storm.
This was absence. The kind that suggested the world had moved on without him and wasn't particularly concerned about whether he caught up.
He opened his eyes.
The chamber was dark. His torch had long since burned out, and without it, the obsidian walls reflected nothing. But he could see anyway. Not clearly. Not like daylight. But his vision had adjusted to perceive things that had nothing to do with visible light—heat signatures lingering in the stone, the faint magical resonance of the now-inert ritual circle, the subtle variations in air pressure that painted a rough map of the space around him.
He sat up slowly, every muscle protesting. Not from pain. From stiffness. How long had he been unconscious? Hours? Days?
His System interface flickered to life unbidden:
[TIME ELAPSED SINCE INTEGRATION: 73 HOURS, 42 MINUTES]
Three days.
He'd been lying on this obsidian floor for three days while his body rewrote itself at the cellular level. While Vyraxes's blood integrated with his own. While he stopped being entirely human and became... something else.
[ESSENCE INTEGRATION PROGRESS: STABLE]
[CURRENT ESSENCE LOAD: 1%]
[REJECT REACTION: NONE DETECTED]
[RECOMMENDATION: SEEK SUSTENANCE WITHIN 12 HOURS]
Reven dismissed the notification and tried to stand.
His legs obeyed. Better than he'd expected, actually. The stiffness faded with movement, muscles remembering their function. He took a step. Then another. His balance was off—something about his center of gravity had shifted, or perhaps his inner ear was processing spatial information differently now—but he adapted quickly.
He looked down at himself.
His armor was ruined. The leather had been torn by shrapnel, scorched by lightning, and stained with blood—both his own and the residue from where Vyraxes's drop had landed. The metal fittings had corroded in strange patterns, as if the Calamity essence had rejected their proximity.
But beneath the armor, visible through the tears, his skin still glowed faintly with crimson veins. They pulsed in rhythm with his seven-beat heart. In the darkness, they provided enough light to see by.
He was carrying his own illumination now. A walking reminder of what had been done to him.
What he'd chosen.
Revenge.
The word tasted like copper and ash.
Reven found the remnants of the Stormbreaker Pike scattered across the chamber floor. Fragments of legendary metal, each piece worthless now. Three centuries of Ironpeak Vanguard history, reduced to scrap by his desperate gambit.
He picked up the largest piece—maybe six inches of the shaft, still warm to the touch. Turning it over in his hands, Reven felt... something. A resonance. His new Calamity Sight activating without conscious effort.
[MATERIAL: STORMBREAKER PIKE (FRAGMENT)]
- QUALITY: DEGRADED
- ESSENCE: THUNDER WYRM (TRACE AMOUNTS)
- HIDDEN PROPERTIES: NONE REMAINING
- ASSESSMENT: MATERIAL CONSUMED BY CALAMITY DISCHARGE. NO SALVAGEABLE VALUE.
So that was his new ability. He could see what materials were—their true nature, their hidden properties, their potential. Except this fragment had no potential left. The lightning discharge had burned it out completely.
He dropped the piece and kept searching.
Everything had been taken from him. His guild. His weapons. His humanity. Even his System had been corrupted, his class reduced to unreadable data, his level reset to one as if six years of experience meant nothing.
NAME: Reven
CLASS: ████████ ████████ (Corrupted Data)
TITLE: ███ ██████████ ██████████ (Hidden)
LEVEL: 1
STATUS: [̴C̶O̵R̷R̸U̵P̷T̸E̷D̴]
ESSENCE TYPE: Calamity-Touched
INTEGRATION STABILITY: Unstable
CURRENT ESSENCE LOAD: 1%
SKILLS:
[LOCKED UNTIL LEVEL 5]
[LOCKED UNTIL LEVEL 10]
[LOCKED UNTIL LEVEL 15]
ATTRIBUTES:
STRENGTH: 8 → 12 (+4 CALAMITY BONUS)
ENDURANCE: 7 → 15 (+8 CALAMITY BONUS)
AGILITY: 6 → 7 (+1)
PERCEPTION: 9 → 23 (+14 CALAMITY BONUS)
INTELLIGENCE: 11 → 11 (NO CHANGE)
RESONANCE: 5 → ??? (UNABLE TO CALCULATE)
The numbers were... strange. His physical attributes had jumped dramatically—endurance had more than doubled, perception had nearly tripled. But his agility had barely changed, and intelligence hadn't moved at all, as if the Calamity blood had priorities that didn't align with balanced development.
And that last attribute—Resonance. He'd never seen that before. Most hunters had Strength, Endurance, Agility, Perception, and Will. "Resonance" wasn't a standard attribute.
He focused on it, trying to pull up more information.
[RESONANCE: ???]
- DESCRIPTION: MEASURES ENTITY'S ABILITY TO PERCEIVE AND MANIPULATE ESSENCE. STANDARD HUMANS: 1-10. ELDER-CLASS MONSTERS: 50-100. CALAMITY-CLASS: UNDEFINED.
- HOST VALUE: UNABLE TO CALCULATE - FLUCTUATES BASED ON ESSENCE LOAD AND INTEGRATION STABILITY.
CURRENT ESTIMATE: 15-40 (UNSTABLE)
So he'd gained an entirely new attribute that put him somewhere between a powerful monster and... something worse. And it could fluctuate based on how much Calamity essence he carried.
That couldn't be good.
Reven spent the next hour searching the chamber methodically, looking for anything that might be useful.
He found the communication crystal, cracked and non-functional. An emergency beacon, completely dead. Several pieces of something that might be his armor and were salvage. He found the rope, still anchored to the ledge above.
And in the corner, half-buried under rubble from the ceiling collapse:
His pack.
Reven pulled it free and opened it with hands that trembled slightly. He found unused rations, a benefit of being unconscious for three days. But above all, the smithing tools he used to sharpen weapons mid hunt.
They were still intact. Hammer, tongs, whetstone, and a file. Nothing fancy, but practical for field work. His real tools were still back at his home Aegis. Reven brought them because he always brought them. An old habit. A good craftsman maintains his equipment in the field, his master had taught him.
His master.
Who'd been part of Ironpeak Vanguard.
Who'd probably known what Dravin was planning.
Reven's jaw clenched. The veins pulsed brighter, and for a moment his vision tinted red. He forced himself to breathe. Getting angry wouldn't help. Anger was fuel, but undirected fuel just burned uselessly.
He needed a plan.
Three days without food or water. His body should be in crisis. But the Calamity blood had changed things. He was hungry—starving, actually. A deep cellular hunger that went beyond normal appetite—but he wasn't dying. The blood was sustaining him somehow, feeding on... something. He didn't want to think about what.
The passage he'd descended through had collapsed. But the rope was still there, and while his strength had increased significantly, climbing seventy feet of rope with ruined armor and no food was still going to be a challenge.
He needed to find any civilization. Even if it wasn't friendly. He needed information. Needed to understand what he'd become. Needed to verify that Dravin had actually abandoned him and this wasn't some catastrophic miscommunication.
Because "revenge" was a direction, not a destination. And before he could even think about confronting Ironpeak Vanguard, he needed to learn how to control whatever he'd become.
Starting with the fact that his hands were currently glowing.
Reven ate one ration bar. It tasted like ash and cardboard, but his body accepted it. Barely. The hunger didn't decrease. If anything, it got worse, as if conventional food was no longer sufficient.
[ESSENCE LOAD: 1%]
[RECOMMENDATION: SEEK ALTERNATIVE SUSTENANCE]
[SUGGESTION: MONSTER ESSENCE OR HIGH-GRADE MATERIALS MAY SATISFY CALAMITY-INDUCED HUNGER]
Of course. Because normal food was for normal humans, and he wasn't that anymore.
He drank half the water skin, packed the remaining supplies, and approached the rope.
The passage was dark, but he could see the faint outline of the opening seventy feet above. He could see the rope swaying slightly in air currents that shouldn't exist this deep underground. With his enhanced perception, he was able to see strands of the rope that had frayed from debris.
The climb was going to be dangerous even with his increased strength.
He grabbed the rope anyway.
His arms burned from the effort of forcing his body to work in a specific way. The Calamity blood wanted him to climb differently, to use the enhanced strength in ways that didn't follow human biomechanics. His muscles kept trying to engage in sequences that would generate more power but would also dislocate his shoulders.
He fought it back, climbing the way he had his whole life. Hand over hand. Find footholds where possible and breathe steadily.
Reven looked up. Thirty more feet to the opening. It was both too far to rush without exhausting himself halfway, but also too far to fall without serious injury.
His heart beat in seven rhythms. The crimson veins pulsed.
And some part of him—the part that was no longer entirely Reven, the part that had integrated with Vyraxes's essence—whispered a suggestion:
Use the stone.
Before he could think better of it, his hand left the rope.
It slapped hard against the obsidian wall.
And stuck.
Not mechanically. Not with friction or grip strength. His hand adhered to the stone, as if the boundary between his flesh and the rock had become negotiable. He could feel the stone's surface on a molecular level. He could will his hand to flow into those gaps and lock in place.
His other hand found the wall afterwards.
He released the rope entirely and began climbing directly up the vertical obsidian surface, his hands and feet adhering wherever he placed them, his body moving in a way that would have been impossible three days ago.
The rope snapped behind him. Falling into the darkness below with a whisper of severed fibers.
Reven kept climbing.
He pulled himself over the ledge and collapsed onto solid ground. Not from exhaustion—from shock. From the realization that he'd just climbed a sheer vertical surface using abilities that shouldn't exist.
His hands were smoking slightly where they'd touched the stone. The obsidian had been hot where his skin made contact, as if the molecular adhesion generated heat as a byproduct.
He looked at his palms. The skin was unmarked. Whatever had happened hadn't damaged him.
[NEW ABILITY DISCOVERED: ESSENCE ADHESION]
- DESCRIPTION: HOST CAN TEMPORARILY ALTER MOLECULAR BONDS BETWEEN SELF AND CONTACTED MATERIALS
- COST: 0.1% (ESSENCE PER MINUTE OF SUSTAINED CONTACT)
- WARNING: PROLONGED USE MAY CAUSE MATERIAL DEGRADATION
SKILL LEVEL: 1/10
So that was new. And terrifying. And useful.
And proof that he was definitely no longer human, because humans didn't alter molecular bonds with their bare hands.
But he had done something Dravin hadn't counted on.
He'd survived.
And that meant Dravin's plan, whatever it was, had failed Reven thought.
The journey through the Obsidian Trench took eighteen hours.
Reven climbed. Squeezed through narrow passages. Navigated collapsed sections using his new abilities when necessary. Every time he used [Essence Adhesion], his Essence Load ticked up slightly—1.1%, 1.2%, 1.3%—and the hunger got worse.
By the time he reached the upper levels, where natural light finally penetrated the darkness, his Essence Load had climbed to 1.8% and his stomach felt like it was trying to consume itself.
[RECOMMENDATION: SEEK SUSTENANCE WITHIN 2 HOURS]
[WARNING: ESSENCE STARVATION MAY CAUSE INVOLUNTARY INTEGRATION ATTEMPTS]
"Involuntary integration attempts." Reven said out loud.
That sounded bad.
He emerged from the Obsidian Trench at sunset on the fourth day since the betrayal.
The sky was orange and purple, clouds catching the last light. The air smelled like pine and distant rain. After three days in the deep dark, breathing recycled stale air thick with ancient dust, the surface world felt almost surreal in its normalcy.
Reven stood at the trench's edge and looked around.
No equipment.
No siege weapons or ballistas or restraint chains.
Just gouges in the earth where heavy loads had been dragged. Boot prints leading away to the north. Evidence that a large group had packed up hastily and left.
Reven found a message carved into stone near where a minor camp had been set up:
SORRY. -D
He stared at it for a long time.
Then, very deliberately, he placed his hand on the stone and activated [Essence Adhesion].
The rock beneath the carving heated. Cracked. Shattered into dust.
The message disappeared.
"Sorry isn't enough, Dravin," Reven said to the empty camp, to the distant sky, to the mountain that had swallowed his old life. "Not even close."
He turned north and started walking.
The hunger became unbearable.
Reven collapsed against a tree, arms wrapped around his stomach, trying not to vomit up the single ration bar he'd eaten. His vision swam. His hands shook. The crimson veins pulsed erratically, and he could feel something in his chest trying to expand, trying to reach out toward nearby sources of essence.
[WARNING: ESSENCE STARVATION CRITICAL]
[INVOLUNTARY INTEGRATION WILL COMMENCE IN 3 MINUTES]
[RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE CONSUMPTION OF MONSTER ESSENCE OR HIGH-GRADE MATERIALS]
Reven looked around desperately. He was in forest now, the pine trees thick enough to block most moonlight. No monsters visible. No high-grade materials. Nothing except—
His pack.
The smithing tools.
No. He needed those. They were the only connection to his old life, the only—
[WARNING: 2 MINUTES]
His hands moved without conscious thought. Pulled out the hammer. The file. The tongs.
Basic tools. Nothing special. But they were made of good steel. Had been well-maintained. Had enough essence in them to register on his Calamity Sight.
[MATERIAL: STEEL HAMMER (WELL-USED)]
- QUALITY: AVERAGE
- ESSENCE: FORGE FIRE (TRACE AMOUNTS)
- HIDDEN PROPERTIES: MINOR DURABILITY ENHANCEMENT
- ASSESSMENT: SERVICEABLE MATERIAL. CONTAINS RESIDUAL ESSENCE FROM YEARS OF USE.
The essence. He could eat the essence.
[WARNING: 1 MINUTE]
Reven held the hammer in both hands. Feeling the familiar weight he remembered forging it himself, seven years ago, his first proper tool made without supervision. He remembered using it to craft Granite Fang. Remembered—
[WARNING: 30 SECONDS]
He closed his eyes and pulled.
The essence flowed out of the hammer into him. Not physically—the hammer didn't dissolve or decay. But something left it. The accumulated essence of seven years of forge work. The residual heat from countless hours shaping metal. The intent and will he'd poured into it every time he used it.
All of it flowed into his chest and the hunger screamed in satisfaction.
[ESSENCE CONSUMED: FORGE FIRE (MINOR)]
- ESSENCE LOAD: 1.8% → 2.3%
- ESSENCE STARVATION: AVERTED
- RECOMMENDATION: REGULAR FEEDING REQUIRED TO MAINTAIN STABILITY
Reven opened his eyes.
The hammer was still in his hands. But when he looked at it with his Calamity Sight:
[MATERIAL: STEEL HAMMER (INERT)]
- QUALITY: BELOW AVERAGE
- ESSENCE: NONE
- HIDDEN PROPERTIES: NONE
- ASSESSMENT: DEAD MATERIAL. NO SALVAGEABLE VALUE.
He'd killed it.
He removed everything that made it a tool and left just... an object. A lump of shaped metal that would never hold an edge properly, never ring true when struck, never serve its purpose again.
He'd consumed its soul and left a corpse.
Reven set the hammer down very carefully and backed away from it.
This was what he'd become.
Something that fed on the essence of things. That drained the life from tools and weapons and materials. That would eventually need to consume monster essence to survive because normal food couldn't sustain him.
He was a parasite wearing human skin.
He forced the thought down.
Reven survived. That was what mattered. Dravin had betrayed him. The universe itself had tried to kill him when Vyraxes woke. And he'd survived both.
If the cost was feeding on essence, then that was the cost. He'd pay it.
Because he had a promise to keep.
SORRY. -D
"I'm coming for you, Dravin," Reven whispered to the night. "And when I find you, 'sorry' is going to be the last word you ever speak."
He stood, shouldered his pack, and continued north.
Reven stood at the edge of a cliff, looking down at the distant lights of an Aegis.
Not Ironpeak Vanguard's home base—Highcrest Summit was easily weeks away, in the opposite direction. This was something smaller. A frontier settlement, maybe, or a minor guild outpost. Population couldn't be more than a thousand.
But it was civilization. Safety. Other humans.
And he needed to test something.
Needed to see if his corrupted System, his Calamity-touched essence, his complete lack of verifiable guild credentials would bar him from entry.
Needed to see if he could still pass for human.
His veins only glowed in darkness. His Status could be hidden from casual scans. As long as no one looked too closely, as long as he didn't use his abilities, he might—might—be able to blend in.
Long enough to get information.
Long enough to figure out his next move.
Behind him, the forest was silent.
But somewhere in the deep dark of the Obsidian Trench, something stirred. Something vast. Something that had tasted his blood just as he'd tasted its.
And through the connection—faint, distant, but undeniable—Vyraxes watched its new creation take its first steps into a world that would never accept what it had become.
The Calamity didn't smile. It didn't have the anatomy for it.
But if it had, it would have.