Dammon’s workshop is a furnace of frustration. The air shimmers with heat from the forge, smoke curling up to cling stubbornly to the rafters. Scraps of metal lie scattered across the workbench, copper warped and split, steel darkened and brittle, alloys shattered into useless fragments. Beside them, books lay cracked open and marked with scrawled notes, diagrams, margins filled with desperate corrections.

He’s stripped down to his undershirt, arms streaked with soot, hair plastered damp against his forehead. At the centre of it all, Dammon holds a glowing bar of some poor, doomed alloy with his tongs. He lowers it into the flames, eyes narrowed, every line of his face etched with concentration. For a moment, the metal holds. Then, like all the others, it begins to warp, sag, and crumble apart.

The clang as he drops the ruined scrap onto the cooling bucket rings louder than it should. He drags a hand over his jaw, exhaling hard through his nose, chest rising and falling too fast. He's exhausted, and angry at himself and his metals.

“She’s burning up from the inside,” he mutters, voice hoarse, mostly to himself. His hand hovers over a broken piece on the table, then pulls away, fingers flexing helplessly. “And I’ve got nothing- nothing that lasts.”

On the bench, notes are circled and underlined again and again: Infernal Iron. Every experiment leads back to it. Every failure confirms it. Dammon leans both hands on the workbench, head bowed, shoulders trembling with the weight of helplessness he refuses to admit aloud.

“I need it,” he whispers, eyes fixed on the sketches of Karlach’s heart. “If I can’t find some Infernal Iron… she doesn’t stand a chance.”