Departing from the Snail Cafe's back garden, Dave headed towards Remicra's smithy.

As he approached the old lighthouse, the meadow painted in orange tones of the sun vanishing behind the black hole, Dave could hear the rhythmic clanging of metal on metal. Smoke billowed from the chimney, carrying the acrid scent of hot metal. He paused at the entrance, taking a deep breath to steel himself before pushing the door open.

The heat hit him like a wall as he stepped inside. Through the haze, he could make out Remicra's silhouette, her scales glinting in the firelight as she worked at her forge.

"Hello?" Dave called out, his voice barely audible over the din of her hammering.

Remicra's head snapped up, her violet-gold eyes narrowing as she recognized him. "You again," she growled, setting down her hammer with more force than necessary. "What do you want now, human?"

Dave swallowed, suddenly very aware of how dangerous she looked with her dark, razor-sharp claws and the smoldering fire at her back.

"I need your help," he managed to say.

Remicra huffed. "Of course you do. That's all you humans ever want. Help, help, help. Not interested."

Dave held up his hands in a placating gesture. "Just hear me out. It's about a Felislice—"

Remicra's scales shifted from deep violet to a blue-green. "A feli-what?"

Dave opened his bag and carefully placed the Felislice corpse onto the table. The metallic creature's body gleamed in the forge's light, its razor-sharp feathers sticking out into all directions.

"It's called a Felislice," Dave explained. "It attacked me in the wilds while I was hunting metal bugs."

Remicra examined the monster's corpse, her clawed fingers tracing the contours of its metallic body. Her eyes narrowed as she studied the creature's razor-sharp feathers and wickedly curved talons.

"Hmm," she grunted. "It's metal, alright. I could melt it down, I suppose. I'll give you ten coppers for it."

Dave's heart sank at her dismissive tone. He had hoped the unusual creature might make her curious about it, but Remicra seemed determined to remain aloof and unhelpful.

"It's not just about selling it," Dave explained. "You see, when it attacked me, it, uh, left something behind. Living metal flakes in my blood."

"And?"

"These metal flakes, they're growing inside me. They'll eventually form into new Felislices and—"

"Don't care," Remicra stated coldly.

"I was told you're not just a blacksmith, but a Metallomancer. You could help me remove these flakes before they—"

"Told by whom?"

"A maid from the Cambria Snail Cafe," Dave clarified.

"Uh-huh," the dragoness said. "Her name?"

"Cedez Atra," Dave replied.

"Don't know anyone by that name," Remicra said. "Also, do I look like a healer to you?"

"No, but-"

"You smell like another smithy," the dragoness interrupted him, her snout twitching.

"Yes, I went to the Dvaliss smithy," Dave explained. "I know you're not a healer. Unfortunately, the flakes are too small for normal healers to detect or grab with their Vitalix, and Garret Dvallis just wants to..."

"Enough!" Remicra snapped, her scales flashing a deep, angry red. "I'm not here to solve every little issue that comes crawling into my forge. I'm pretty sure that I already told you that I'm not a charity."

"Enslave me," Dave finished.

"Why should I care exactly?" The dragoness snapped, glancing at his ID tag. "You're about three silver from being collared anyway. If you're not here to sell metal, get out."

"Listen, I..."

Before Dave could react, Remicra grabbed him by the collar of his tattered outfit. With surprising strength, she lifted him off his feet and carried him to the door. Dave struggled, his feet dangling uselessly in the air.

"Wait! We can work something out!" Dave offered as Remicra opened the door with her free hand.

"I've had enough of your nonsense," Remicra snarled. "Find someone else to bother with your problems, human!"

With a final, forceful shove, Remicra tossed Dave out of her smithy. As he flew through the air he redistributed everything into Strength and tumbled onto the grass outside, landing in an somewhat undignified heap.

The Felislice landed beside him and the door to the smithy slammed shut.

"Right," Dave sighed. "That went well."

The violin in his soul began to play the Imagine Dragons song "Enemy".

Dave shoved the felislice back into his backpack and limped to sit on a mossy rock close to the door.

He watched as the sun slowly sank behind the black hole, the landscape growing redder and darker, his mind mesmerized by the way the light bent and distorted around the massive gravitational anomaly.

The door behind him swung open with a creak. Remicra's voice, tinged with irritation and a hint of something else—concern, perhaps?—broke the eerie silence.

"Why are you still here? Is your plan to get chopped up and eaten?" she asked, her violet and red tinted scales reflecting the last rays of the dying light.

Dave didn't turn to look at her. He kept his gaze fixed on the event horizon. "I'm out of options. Maybe that's the way to go."

Remicra snorted.

Dave finally turned to face her. "What would you suggest? Dvaliss smithy can heal me but that'll make me into a slave. I can't go back to the Healers' Hall as I'm pretty sure I'm on some kind of a watch list now. The shadows might be a merciful end compared to the two metal monsters growing inside me, one of which will burst from my stomach and the other will turn me into a walking metal-zombie thing."

Remicra stepped out of the doorway, her claws clicking against the stone as she approached Dave. She loomed over him, her presence somewhat intimidating and oddly comforting in the growing darkness.

"Run," she ordered, squinting at the black hole. "Maybe you can still make it."

"No," Dave said firmly, staring at her eyes. "I'm done running."

He pushed the absorbed souls into Wisdom to examine her, Sherlock's violin dancing across the figure of the dragon smith. Remicra's entire body was tense. She was coming off as incredibly unfriendly but there was something in her eyes, sparks of concern behind the hostile exterior.

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Remicra's scales shimmered with pink and red tinted agitation as she glared down at Dave. "Run, you fool!" she hissed, her tail lashing behind her. "The night is coming, and you don't want to be caught out here when it does!"

Dave shook his head, a wry smile on his face. He knew that the only way forward from here was not to back down. "If you won't help me, then this is as good a place as any to meet my end."

Remicra opened her mouth to retort, but her words were cut short by a sudden sound of a distant ringing bell. The bell ring multiplied and danced across all of Shandria, like a wailing siren song.

"You... you have to run," Remicra hissed. "You can't just..."

The world darkened further, as if the universe itself had been blacklisted and Dave suddenly felt an odd sense of unease rising in his chest, like a tide of cold, dark water threatening to drown him.

One by one, the somber bells slowly fell silent until there was silence.

A massive flare ignited above the white tower at the center of town, bathing the landscape in red tones like a malevolent sunrise. Red dots, like spots of rust, ignited all over town over the doorways of distant buildings and doors, marking them with ominous symbols.

Dave noticed a triangular, red rune above the doorway of the smithy, and before he could ask anything, Remicra grabbed him and dragged him towards the lighthouse, her tail thrashing behind her like an angry serpent.

"In," Remicra growled as she slammed the door shut.

Dave found himself standing inside the dim smithy lit from within by red triangular runes and the smouldering forge. A dark Kitlix dotted in orange stars stirred within its innards, looking similar to the one that the Healers used to light their dining hall fireplace.

Remicra paced back and forth, her claws clicking against the stone floor. Her scales shimmered with agitation, reflecting the crimson light and sparkly Kitlix in a mesmerizing dance.

"Bloody, useless idiot," she snarled. "Of all the addlepated, mutton-headed fools to grace my smithy, why...?"

Dave simply looked around quietly. The plan to stay inside the smithy seemed to have worked.

"What?" Remicra whirled on him, her eyes blazing. "You thrice-damned simpleton! Did you not hear the bells? Did you not see the sky darken? By the Abyss, are you deaf and blind as well as stupid?"

Dave slid all of his points into Strength just in case she was going to turn hostile. The eyes of the Kitlix within the forge snapped to him, staring at him with wide, curious, glowing orange eyes.

"Pox-ridden excuse for an adventurer!" The dragoness snapped, sending him a glare that promised terrible things.

"So... what exactly is happening outside?" Dave asked.

"This is the domain of the night. The children of the Shadow Empress come out to play," she replied briskly.

"Children of the Shadow Empress?" He echoed.

Remicra rolled her eyes, a gesture that conveyed that Dave was being particularly obtuse. Dave's empty stomach growled loudly.

"Cease your yapping and don't touch anything," Remicra advised tersely, her tail flicking.

Dave nodded, a sudden flashback to his elementary school days washing over him, when a stern teacher would chide him for his excessive chatter.

With her characteristic brusqueness, Remicra vanished into the stairwell, abandoning Dave to the crimson-tinged gloom. Anxiety gnawed at him as he waited, pondering the peculiar situation he found himself in and glancing at the Kitlix. After several tense minutes, the draconic smith reemerged, gnawing at a bone laden with meat.

"Here," she remarked as she handed Dave another leg.

"Thanks." He bit into the offered meat. "What is this, by the way? It has a distinct cow-like quality."

Remicra sighed, snatching a glass bottle from a nearby shelf. "It's wyvern meat."

For a few minutes both of them ate in silence.

As Dave finished his bone and then chugged the somewhat stale water offered by the dragoness, he saw that she was staring intently at him. He followed her gaze and noticed that some of the big cuts from the Felislice were still visible, not fully healed despite nearly forty minutes of Healy's efforts.

"Human," Remicra said abruptly. "Your hand. Let me see it."

Dave blinked, caught off guard by her sudden interest.

"Give me your hand, idiot human," Remicra said. "If what you say is true about the metal flakes, I should be able to sense them."

Dave set down the wyvern bone and rolled up his grimy sleeve, extending his arm towards Remicra.

"Just so you know, if you deceived me, then I'm breaking both of your arms," she promised.

His heart raced as the dragoness approached, her intense gaze fixed on his exposed skin. What if Garret lied about the Felislice?

Remicra leaned forward, her snout nearly touching Dave's arm. He could feel the heat of her breath, a warm contrast to the cool night air that was seeping into the decrepit smithy.

Her eyes closed in concentration, and Dave felt an odd tingling sensation spreading through his arm as she gripped his hand with hers, dark claws gradually tapping all over his skin. It wasn't painful, but it was unlike anything he had experienced before – a gentle vibration that seemed to resonate deep within his bones.

The seconds ticked by, feeling like an eternity to Dave as he waited for Remicra's verdict. He watched her face intently, trying to decipher any clues from her expression, but her features remained impassive.

Finally, Remicra's eyes snapped open. She sat back, her expression grim, scales shifting to a deep, troubled blue.

"So?" Dave asked.

Remicra's violet-gold gaze met his. "It's there," she said.

Dave felt his stomach drop, despite having suspected as much. "So, how bad is it?" he managed to ask.

"Bad enough," she said. "The flakes are small, but they're numerous. And they're... active. I can sense them moving through your bloodstream, feeding on your magic, trying to rewrite your body's alignment from flesh to metal. Your bones and organs will turn into the same metal in three weeks, killing you slowly and painfully."

"Can you do anything about it?"

"No," she replied. "I can sense them, yes, but I cannot take them out. I don't have..."

"A Ferrix Kitlix?" Dave finished for her. "Like the one Dvallis blacksmith has?"

"Yes," Remicra nodded. "One that can attract microscopic magic metal flakes without me touching them directly."

"Maybe I can rent one?" Dave suggested.

"What?" Remicra blinked. "You can't just rent a Ferrix Kitlix!"

"Why not?"

Remicra let out a frustrated growl, her scales shifting to a deep, irritated red. "Ferrix Kitlix are rare, powerful, and require a deep bond with their master. I can't just use any random ass Ferrix! It has to match my level for it to work properly and my owner will never permit me to own a Kitlix!"

"What is your level?" Dave asked.

"Why would I tell you that?" The dragoness growled, her mood dropping like a sinking anchor.

"I can bond with any Kitlix, I think," Dave said after a minute of deep silence. "Maybe I can bond a Metal-controlling one?"

"You are clueless or delusional," Remicra said. "No one can just 'bond' with any Kitlix they want, especially not a high level Ferrix that I'd need. It takes years of training, alignment correlating to Strength and a natural affinity for metal magic."

"Look, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm telling you the truth. I've done it before. I bonded with a high-level Vitalix earlier today."

Remicra snorted. "Right, and I'm the freaking Princess of the Shadow Realm! Next, you'll be telling me you can fly and breathe fire and that you have green skin!"

"I'm serious!" Dave insisted.

The dragoness regarded him for a long moment, her tail swishing thoughtfully behind her. Finally, she let out a long, exasperated sigh. "Fine. Let's say, for argument's sake, that you're not completely off your rocker. Even if you could bond with a Ferrix, where exactly do you propose to get one? They're not exactly lying around like common pebbles."

"Maybe the Guild market has one... or maybe I could make or... find one here?"

Remicra rolled her eyes. "Oh yes, because every end-town smithy has a rare, powerful magical creature just sitting in the corner."

"You have one in your forge, no?" Dave asked.

"That's a very basic, low level, generic Ignix that is bound to the smithy! It barely responds to me!" Remicra snarled. "Use your empty head, human!"

She swung a fist at his head as if to give him a bonk, but Dave's hand intercepted her wrist, closing on it like a vice, stopping her motion. She tried to pull back but Dave's hand simply didn't let her go. The dragoness blinked, her eyes widening in surprise as she stared at where their limbs met.

Realizing what he'd done, Dave slowly released his grip from her hand.

Remicra rubbed her wrist, her gaze dancing between Dave's face and his ID token with "LV 4 Iron" in glowing script.

"You're... strong," she said slowly.

"I've had a lot of practice lately. Running from metal bugs, fighting Felislices, you know how it is," Dave shrugged.

Remicra's eyes narrowed to slits as she studied him more intently.

"There's something... off about you," she said slowly, circling around Dave like a predator sizing up its prey. "Your grip strength... doesn't match your level," she trailed off.

Dave felt a bead of sweat trickle down his back under her intense scrutiny.

"It's amazing how quickly you can get strong when your life is on the line every other minute," he added.

Remicra snorted. "Nice try, human. But I've seen plenty of banged up adventurers come through here, fresh from near-death experiences. None of them developed superhuman strength overnight. Your grip strength is that of a level thirty-something adventurer, which is... impossible."

She stopped in front of him, her face directly facing him, standing so close that Dave could smell the metallic scent that clung to her.

"What are you hiding?" she demanded, her voice low and dangerous. "Why did the Healer's Hall put you on a 'watch' list?"