Two weeks after leaving Highcrest Summit, Reven sat at the edge of a ravine and took inventory.
Four copper marks. Enough for maybe one meal at a tavern, if he could find one that would serve him. He'd eaten his last ration bar three days ago. He had half a skin of water, the rivers he's passed were to polluted to consider drinking safely. He still had his master's hammer wrapped carefully, unconsumed, but he worried when he'd consume that last thing that connected him to who he'd been. Above all...
Prospects: None.
He should consume the hammer. Drain its essence and silence the hunger that was making his hands shake, his vision blur, his thoughts fragment. He'd gone too long without eating like he needs to now. His Essence Load was below one percent—dangerously low. His body was starting to consume itself, breaking down muscle tissue to fuel the Calamity blood's needs.
He unwrapped the hammer, holding it in both his hands. Reven felt the forge mastery essence radiating from decades of use.
His master had given this to him. He'd even clasped his shoulder and said: You're ready. Make something worthy of this.
Reven had tried his best. Granite Fang, his previous weapon was made with this hammer. Three months were spent perfecting every fold, every quench, every detail because he wanted to prove he'd learned well.
Granite Fang was gone. Consumed by Vyraxes's blood in a millisecond.
And now the hammer would follow.
Because sentiment didn't keep you alive.
Pride didn't feed you.
And the dead couldn't judge the living for doing what was necessary.
Reven activated his Calamity Sight one last time. Memorizing every detail of the tool's essence. Then closed his eyes and pulled.
The forge mastery flowed into him. Decades of skill. Years of accumulated knowledge. The residual memory of a master craftsman who'd shaped metal with precision and care.
It tasted like ash and regret.
When he opened his eyes, the hammer was just a lump of metal. Dead. Hollow. A corpse wearing the shape of a tool.
But the hunger was silent.
And Reven was still breathing.
He wrapped the corpse-hammer carefully, putting it back in his pack. He would give it a proper funeral when he finally found an Aegis to call home.
Some things you kept even after they were dead. As reminders. As warnings about what happened when you ran out of better options.
A merchant caravan found him six hours later.
Reven had collapsed at some point. He only remembered the road tilting sideways and his body deciding it was done walking.
Voices pulled him back to consciousness.
"—think he's dead?"
"Check for breathing. Don't touch him directly."
"His signature's all wrong. See those veins?"
"Is that corruption?"
Reven tried to speak.
The voices stopped.
A face appeared above him—middle-aged, weathered, shrewd eyes that had seen their share of roads and troubles. "You alive, friend?"
"Debatable," Reven managed.
The merchant barked a laugh. "At least you've got humor. That's more than most corpses. You need water?"
"Yes."
"You going to kill me if I give it to you?"
"No."
"You sure? Because your essence signature says otherwise."
"I'm sure."
The merchant considered him for a long moment. Then uncorked a water skin and held it to Reven's lips.
The water was lukewarm and tasted like leather. All the same, it was the best thing Reven had drunk in days.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. I'm not in the business of charity." The merchant sat back. "Corvin. I run trade routes between the frontier settlements. You got a name, or should I just call you 'walking contamination hazard'?"
"Reven."
"Reven, you look like shit. When's the last time you ate?"
"Three days."
"That explains the collapsing." Corvin pulled out a ration bar. "Here. And before you get grateful—I'm going to ask something in return."
"What?"
"Information. You're corrupted but walking. That's... unusual. Most people with signatures like yours are either dead or locked up for evaluation. So what's your story?"
Reven ate the ration bar slowly, buying time to decide how much to reveal.
In the end, he settled for partial truth. "I encountered something in the deepest of places. It changed me. Now I can't get into any Aegis because the scanners mark me as dangerous."
"Are you dangerous?"
"Only if provoked."
Corvin laughed again. "Aren't we all. Listen—I can't take you to any major settlements. Coalition's got every gate on high alert after what happened at Shadowpeak. But there's a frontier Aegis about four days south. Haven's Reach. Tiny place. fifty people at most included the hunters. They're desperate enough they might not care about your signature."
"Fifty people?"
"Dying settlement. Heartstone's failing. Most folks have already left. But the stubborn ones are still there, and stubborn people sometimes make exceptions." Corvin stood. "I can get you close. After that, you're on your own. Deal?"
Reven looked up at the merchant. At the caravan waiting behind him. At the choice between walking alone until he collapsed again or accepting help from someone who clearly had his own agenda.
"Deal."
"Good. Now get up. We're burning daylight, and I don't camp in this region after dark."
Haven's Reach sat in a valley between two ridges, built around the fossilized remains of something that might have been a Leviathan or might have been something worse. The bones formed a natural barrier that had been reinforced with stone and timber, creating walls that were impressive in conception if not execution.
Half the watchtowers were empty.
Several buildings showed fire damage that hadn't been properly repaired.
The heartstone—visible even from the ridge where Corvin's caravan had stopped—flickered. Not the steady glow of a healthy barrier. A stuttering, dying light.
"There she is," Corvin said. "Beautiful, isn't she?"
"It's a ruin."
"It's a opportunity. Desperate places need desperate people. And you, friend, look plenty desperate." The merchant clasped Reven's shoulder. "Good luck. Try not to crack any foundations with your nightmares."
The caravan moved on.
Reven stood alone on the ridge and looked down at Haven's Reach.
Fifty people. Dying heartstone. No proper defenses.
It wasn't home.
But it was a chance.
He started down the slope.
The gates were open.
Not invitingly. Just... open. Like nobody had bothered to close them, or like there weren't enough people to maintain proper watch schedules.
Reven walked through unchallenged.
The interior was worse than the exterior suggested. Buildings that had once been maintained were now patched with whatever materials were available. The market square—if it could be called that—consisted of maybe three stalls, all run by the same tired-looking woman. The forge building's chimney wasn't smoking.
And the people. Reven counted maybe thirty visible residents. Thin. Worn. Moving with the exhaustion of people who'd been surviving on the edge for too long.
A woman approached him. Mid-thirties, scarred face, wearing armor that had seen better decades. She carried herself like a fighter despite the exhaustion in her eyes.
"You lost?" Her voice was rough. Direct.
"I'm looking for work."
"We don't have work. We barely have food." She looked him up and down. "And your signature is corrupted. I can feel it from here."
"I know."
"So why are you here?"
"Because everywhere else turned me away. And a merchant told me you might be desperate enough not to care."
The woman barked a laugh. It sounded like it hurt. "Desperate. That's one word for it." She studied him more carefully. "What can you do?"
"I'm a smith. I can craft. I can hunt. I can maintain equipment and repair structures and work forges."
"We don't have materials for smithing. We don't have game to hunt that we can reach safely. And our forge master died three weeks ago."
"Then you need me."
"What I need is for this conversation to be worth my time." She crossed her arms. "Prove it. Prove you're not just another mouth to feed."
Reven looked around the square. He saw a hunter checking his weapons at one of the stalls—a knife with a cracked handle, the blade dull from poor maintenance.
"That knife," Reven said, pointing. "Let me see it."
The woman gestured. The hunter—uncertain—brought it over.
Reven took the knife. Examined it. The handle had split where moisture had seeped into wood. The blade had stress fractures from being heated and cooled improperly. It was, by any reasonable measure, junk.
He activated Calamity Sight.
[MATERIAL: HUNTING KNIFE (SEVERELY DEGRADED)]
- QUALITY: POOR
- ESSENCE: MINOR SHARPNESS ENHANCEMENT (FAILING)
- HIDDEN PROPERTIES: CORE STEEL IS ACTUALLY HIGH-GRADE, MISHANDLED DURING FORGING
High-grade steel. Someone had made this knife from good materials and then ruined it through poor technique. But the core was still there. Still salvageable.
If he could reach it.
Reven held the knife in both hands. Closed his eyes. Feeling the flow of his essence—his own Calamity blood, the residual forge mastery he'd consumed from his master's hammer, the desperate hunger that never really went away.
He pushed.
Heat bloomed from his palms. The kind that came from molecular friction, from forcing matter to remember what it had been before it was ruined.
The blade began to glow. Red, then orange, then white.
The scarred woman took a step back. "What are you—"
The handle burned away. The stress fractures sealed. The edge straightened, sharpened, and became what it should have been if someone had known what they were doing.
When Reven opened his eyes, the knife in his hands was different. Not new. But right. Balanced. Whole. The kind of tool that would serve faithfully if maintained properly.
He handed it back to the hunter.
The man stared at it, his eyes widening in amazement "This is... this is better than when I first bought it."
"The core was always good," Reven said. "It just needed someone to see it."
He turned back to the scarred woman. "I can work with what you have. I can find value in what others throw away. And I don't need fancy materials to do it—just time and a workspace."
The woman looked at him for a long moment.
"Mira Thorne," she said finally. "Hunt Marshal. What's left of one, anyway."
"Reven."
"No guild?"
"Not anymore."
"Good. We don't trust guilds here." She gestured toward the center of the settlement. "Council meets in an hour. You'll present your case to all five of us. If you get a majority vote, you work for your keep. Food, shelter, basic supplies. No coin until we're stable enough to pay wages. Understood?"
"Understood."
"And Reven?" Mira's eyes were hard. "If you cause problems—if you're more trouble than you're worth—we won't exile you. We'll kill you. We're too desperate to take chances. Clear?"
"Clear."
"Good. Follow me."
The council chambers were a converted storage building—stone walls, wooden beams, a table that looked like it had been assembled from three different pieces of furniture. Five chairs, four occupied.
Mira took the fifth.
"This is Reven," she said without preamble. "Corrupted signature. No guild. Claims to be a smith and wants work in exchange for shelter. I've seen a demonstration. It's... unusual. But effective."
An old man with one arm and forge-scarred hands leaned forward. "Unusual how?"
"He fixed a broken knife without tools. Just held it and used essence manipulation."
"That's not smithing," a young woman with ink-stained fingers said sharply. "That's magic."
"I'm a craftsman," Reven said. "The method doesn't matter. The result does."
The old man grunted. "Show me your hands."
Reven held them out. The crimson veins were visible beneath the skin, pulsing faintly.
"Calamity-touched," the old man said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"You know what you are?"
"I'm someone who survived something that should have killed me. And I'm trying to figure out what comes after that."
"Honest answer." The old man sat back. "I'm Garrick. Craft Master. Used to run the forges here before we lost most of our craftsmen to better opportunities. If you're lying about your skills, I'll know. And I'll vote to throw you out personally."
"Fair."
A broad man with farmer's hands spoke next. "Borin Hatch. Provisions. We're on strict rationing. You'll get the minimum. No exceptions."
"Understood."
"If you can hunt, bring back meat. We'll credit you extra rations."
"I'll do what I can."
A thin man with a cartographer's tools on his belt nodded. "Kael Drift. I map our territory and track monster movements. Your signature is going to attract attention. Some of it won't be friendly."
"I know."
"If you lead a swarm to our gates, we'll feed you to it ourselves."
"Noted."
The young woman spoke last. "Lysa Venn. I maintain the heartstone and coordinate our defensive wards. Your essence is... wrong. It interferes with standard enchantments. If you destabilize our barrier, even accidentally, I'll personally make sure you regret it."
Reven met her eyes. "I'll stay away from the heartstone chamber."
"See that you do."
Silence.
Mira looked around the table. "Vote. Yes or no. Majority rules."
"Yes," Garrick said immediately. "We need a smith. Corrupted or not."
"Yes," Borin said. "Extra hands for hunting."
"No," Lysa said flatly. "He's too dangerous."
"Yes," Kael said. "But probationary. One month. Then we revote."
They all looked at Mira.
She studied Reven for a long moment.
"Yes," she said finally. "But you're on watch. One incident—one—and you're gone. Prove you're worth the risk, or prove we were right to be cautious. Your choice."
Three yes. One no. One conditional.
Reven let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank us yet," Mira said. "You haven't seen your quarters."
The workshop was a disaster.
Attached to the forge building but separate, accessible through a side door that stuck and required Reven to put his shoulder into it. Inside: one room, maybe twelve by twelve feet. A cracked anvil in the corner. A workbench with three legs and improvised support for the fourth. Tools scattered on the floor, most of them rusted or broken. Poor ventilation—the chimney had a bird's nest blocking half the flue.
No bed. No windows. Stone floor covered in old ash and metal shavings.
"It's not much," Garrick said from the doorway. "Last smith who worked here left six months ago. Didn't bother cleaning up."
Reven looked around the space. It was terrible. Cramped. Poorly maintained. The kind of workshop that suggested nobody cared about the work being done here.
But it was his.
First space he'd been given in weeks that wasn't conditional on him leaving by morning. First place where he could close a door and have walls between himself and the world that wanted him gone.
"It's perfect," Reven said.
Garrick raised an eyebrow. "You're either desperate or insane."
"Both, actually."
The old smith snorted. "You'll fit in here. We're all a bit of both." He turned to leave, then paused. "Reven? If you really can see potential in broken things... we've got a lot of those here. Including ourselves. Do right by us, and we'll do right by you."
"I will."
Garrick left.
Reven stood in his new workshop and let himself feel it. The weight of the day. The weeks of rejection. The constant fear and hunger and exhaustion.
And underneath all of that—a tiny, fragile thing he barely recognized.
Hope.
He sat on the floor, back against the cracked anvil, and for the first time since Highcrest's gates had closed behind him, he let himself break.
Not for long. Not loudly for anyone to hear.
Just long enough to acknowledge what he'd lost. What he'd become. What he was trying to build from the ruins.
Then he stood. Rolled up his sleeves. Examined the scattered tools with Calamity Sight to see what could be salvaged.
Haven's Reach needed a smith.
And Reven needed a purpose.
Time to see if broken things could fix each other.