The interior of The Crystal Anvil felt less like a workshop and more like the inside of a dying star.

Outside, the Exodar hummed with its usual crystalline serenity, but within these walls, that peace was shattered by the rhythmic, deafening CLANG of steel meeting steel. The air was a thick, shimmering haze of charcoal dust and superheated ozone. At the center of the chaos stood Izumi, silhouetted against the blinding white-gold glare of the forge. The furnace, powered by a hum of harnessed Naaru technology and raw coal, roared like a trapped beast, casting long, flickering shadows that danced across the stone walls.

Izumi’s lavender skin was slick with a heavy sheen of perspiration that caught the orange firelight. Her raven hair was damp, stuck in messy clumps to her neck and forehead, while the muscles in her back and shoulders coiled and snapped with every downward swing of her heavy hammer. Each strike sent a violent spray of sparks cascading across her leather apron, illuminating the focused, predatory intensity in her amber eyes. She was mid-swing, the metal beneath her glowing a translucent cherry-red, when she caught a flicker of movement at the periphery of her vision.

Near the archway of the shop, a figure stood.

Izumi didn't stop. She didn't even slow down. She maintained the cadence of her work, the heavy thud-clink of the hammer echoing off the high, vaulted ceiling three more times. The heat was oppressive, the kind that made the lungs ache, but she remained locked in the rhythm until the metal began to lose its workable glow, fading into a dull, stubborn crimson.

Only then did she set the hammer down on the anvil with a heavy, final thud.

She exhaled a long, ragged cloud of hot breath, her chest heaving beneath her blackened leather top. Reaching for a tattered, oil-stained towel draped over a nearby cooling vat, she wiped a thick layer of sweat and soot from her forehead and eyes, her movements brusque and efficient. With a careless flick of her wrist, she tossed the damp rag toward a pile of scrap metal, not bothering to see where it landed.

Her amber eyes, glowing with a faint, internal light that seemed to rival the forge, fixed onto the individual waiting by the entrance. She didn't offer a smile or a greeting. She simply rolled her shoulders, the joints popping audibly in the humid air, and began a slow, heavy-footed stride toward them. Each step of her plated boots rang out against the stone floor, her presence filling the space with a raw, industrial gravity.

Stopping a few feet away, she crossed her powerful, soot-streaked arms over her chest, towering slightly as she let the silence hang for a moment. Her voice, when it finally came, was a low, gravelly rasp colored by that distinct, sharp Germanic lilt.

"Vell?" she asked, her tone flat and neutral, devoid of both malice and welcome. "You are standing in my light. What is it you vant?"