The first day, they barely noticed it.
The morning's surplus delivery to Hearthline was smaller than usual, but that was normal. The academy's allotments were always inconsistent. Izen, Kael, and Elara simply made do, creating a hearty lentil soup and some savory bread pudding from stale loaves provided by the Agronomy Guild's baking division. The Titan Tools Club members ate their fill, none the wiser.
The second day, the unease began to set in.
The surplus cart that arrived was pitiful. It held a small box of overripe persimmons and a bag of coffee grounds. That was it.
"There must be a mistake," Kael said, his voice trembling as he stared at the meager offering. "Maybe a logistics error?"
Izen said nothing. He simply took the persimmons and coffee grounds and got to work. That night, the allied guilds ate a surprisingly delicious, bittersweet persimmon jam on toast, washed down with a dark, earthy broth Izen had somehow brewed from the used coffee grounds and chicory roots dug from their own backyard. It was a culinary magic trick, but it was a trick born of desperation.
By the third day, the truth became undeniable.
The delivery cart arrived completely empty.
Kael met the nervous-looking kitchen worker at the door. "What is this?" Kael demanded, his voice thin with panic. "Where is the surplus?"
The worker wrung his hands. "There is no surplus, sir," he mumbled, refusing to meet Kael's eyes. "The elite guilds… they started a 'Total Utilization' program. They're not throwing anything away. The prep kitchens, the butcheries, the high-end dining halls… the disposal bays are spotless. There's nothing left. Not a bone, not a peel."
The news hit the Hearthline Guild like a physical blow. Elara gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. Grit Hark, who was there with his team for their daily meal, slammed a massive fist on the table.
"Voltagrave," Grit snarled. "That conniving, silver-haired snake. He can't beat Izen in a fair fight, so he's trying to starve us out."
Panic began to ripple through the small guild hall. The other lower-tier guild captains, who had started seeing Hearthline as their new gathering place, looked worried. Their alliance was built on the foundation of Izen's miraculous cooking, and his cooking was fueled by scraps. Without scraps, the miracle was over.
"What do we do?" Elara asked, her eyes welling with tears. "We have the money from our rank-up, but it's not enough to buy fresh ingredients to feed fifty people every day! We'll go bankrupt in a week!"
"We're supposed to be providing for the city's night workers tonight," Kael added, his voice cracking. "What are we going to serve them? Empty bowls?"
The hopeful energy that had filled the guild hall for the past two days evaporated, replaced by the cold, familiar specter of despair. Their revolution was over before it had even truly begun. They had been outmaneuvered by a foe whose resources and cruelty they couldn't possibly match.
Everyone looked to Izen. He was the center of their movement, their miracle worker. He was sitting at the table, examining a single, leftover onion he'd found in the back of the pantry. He turned it over and over in his hands, his expression thoughtful and unreadable.
"Izen-san, say something," Kael pleaded. "Is there anything you can do?"
Izen looked up from the onion. He scanned the worried faces of his friends and allies. He saw their fear, their disappointment, their dwindling hope. He had led them to this point, and now, it seemed, he had led them to a dead end.
He stood up and walked to the guild's main pantry. He opened the doors. The shelves were almost completely bare. There was a bag of flour, a canister of salt, a little sugar, some yeast, and a few jars of oil.
It was nothing. Not enough to create a meal for five people, let alone fifty.
"It's over," someone muttered from the back.
Izen closed the pantry doors. He turned to face the room. He didn't look worried. He didn't look panicked. He had the same calm, placid expression he'd had when facing down Reign Voltagrave's fury and a jet engine's fire.
"He's cut off the academy's scraps," Izen said, his voice quiet but clear, cutting through the despair. "So, we'll have to find our ingredients somewhere else."
Grit snorted. "Where? The forest? Are we gonna cook with leaves and twigs?"
Izen shook his head. "No," he said, and a strange, brilliant light began to shine in his eyes. It was the look of a genius seeing a solution so simple and elegant that no one else could possibly have conceived of it. "He's stopped the flow of what the academy throws away."
He pointed a finger toward the main campus, in the direction of the elite guilds, in the direction of Voltagrave Manor itself.
"So we'll use what the students throw away."
There was a stunned silence as everyone tried to process what he meant.
"Tomorrow morning," Izen announced, his voice filled with a newfound, audacious energy, "bring me all the trash cans from outside the regular student dorms."
"The… the trash cans?" Elara stammered.
"Yes," Izen confirmed, a mischievous smile spreading across his face. "Reign Voltagrave wants a war over garbage?"
"Let's show him just how much power there is in what people truly value the least."