Any way to get it fixed without replacement?

Minor accidental damage is not eligible for replacement anyway, unless you have AppleCare+ extended warranty that does cover accidental damage.

Consider just living with this instead of going down the rabbit hole of repairs, replacements, and the possibility of problems rearing their ugly heads during the process. It looks to me like there was a piece of small, hard debris that worked its way into the case and caused the nick.

AppleCare does not cover physical damage.

I doubt that the case company will offer any assistance to you, but might be worth a try.

The kind of deep, sharply defined dent or dimple visible on the iPhone’s metal body in the photograph is difficult to attribute simply to a phone case. A normal case, even if it is tight or rigid, would generally exert pressure more evenly over a larger area rather than producing such a localized and pronounced indentation.

A dent of this depth and shape would more typically suggest that the iPhone’s frame has come into contact with a hard, rigid object—particularly another metal object—with sufficient force or pressure concentrated on a small area. For example, contact with a metal edge, corner, tool, or another hard object could create a localized impact mark of this nature.

A case could potentially contribute to rubbing, pressure marks, or minor surface impressions, especially if dirt or a hard particle becomes trapped between the case and the phone. However, a deep, well-defined notch/dimple in the metal frame would require considerably more force than ordinary case pressure.

So, based solely on the appearance in the photograph, I would describe it as more consistent with a localized impact or hard-object contact than with the case itself simply pressing against the iPhone.