A/N: The next morning arrives. Time to finish the armor and bde!

  Now then, what was that st step they needed to do…

  -x-X-x-

  "… Uncle? Uncle! NO!"

  They wake up in each other's arms, him and Sophia. It's a lovely moment that they extend into a lovely morning as they eat breakfast together as well. But at a certain point, Oren needs to go find Ferro so he can help the Ancient God put whatever finishing touches he needs to put onto the armaments they've crafted together.

  Given that this is supposed to be the final step where they find out if they've succeeded or failed at making artifacts capable of putting Oren on even footing with Tyranos, Sophia decides to join him. As such, the two of them walk into the forge together, hand in hand.

  … Oren should have known something was wrong before they even stepped foot into the room, but he was distracted by Sophia. Perhaps that's why he doesn't realize there's no third set of lungs inhaling and exhaling until it's much, much too te.

  As Sophia rushes from his side over to her uncle's corpse, Oren wishes he could rush with her… but he can't. Instead he goes on high alert, pushing his enhanced senses to their absolute max and looking for any sign of another person in this area of the Void with him.

  Of course, there's only one being who should be able to enter the Void at this point. But to be fair, there was also a possibility of Tyranos simply opening the portal back up and sending some mooks here as well.

  He doesn't sense anyone though. He doesn't see anybody but Sophia and Ferro's body. He doesn't smell anyone else. He doesn't hear anyone else. And truth be told… he doesn't think anyone else has been here either as his eyes take in the scene and begin to put together the details of Ferro's death.

  "Who… w-who could have done this? Tyranos? Why would he come here just to kill Ferro but leave us alive? Why would he leave your work behind?!"

  Sophia doesn't pick up on the same details, but Oren doesn't bme her for that. The goddess is beside herself, tears streaming down her cheeks as she clutches at Ferro's body, having turned him over off of the armor and sword that he and Oren had spent the st two weeks preparing for and then crafting.

  The fact that Ferro was face down on top of the divine armaments when they first entered the forge only confirms what Oren already suspected. The slit throat that killed the Ancient God is strangely bloodless as well, leaving Oren with certain other suspicions on why this happened. The only real question left answering is… how.

  Wordlessly crouching down beside Sophia, Oren reaches out and grasps Ferro by his wrists, pulling up the stumps and inspecting them for a moment. There… he finds it. The murder weapon.

  "Oren?"

  "… I'm sorry Sophia. Nobody else did this. He… made his own choice."

  There, on one of the metal capped stumps… well, the cap has come partially undone. Or more accurately, it's been melted into a new shape… a sharper shape. Ferro must have done it at some point over the st two weeks, perhaps over the course of multiple days and multiple sessions so that Oren didn't notice.

  He'd been so focused on following Ferro's instructions and doing every single thing that the God of Forges told him to do as soon as possible that… he hadn't even noticed as Ferro had used the forge to melt half of one of his metal caps down at some point.

  It must have been excruciatingly painful, but Ferro had never let on that he was hurting himself in such a way. And he'd hidden the reforged cap's sharpened edge masterfully as well. If you weren't looking for it, you would never see it.

  Both of them are seeing it now though as Oren holds it up and shows Sophia. Even staring at it with her own two eyes however, the goddess can't quite bring herself to comprehend what she's staring at.

  "What… what are you saying, Oren?"

  Rather than state the obvious, Oren wordlessly looks to the divine armaments he and Ferro had created. The st masterworks of the God of Forges and Smithing. They positively pulse with power… energy beyond what Oren has ever seen except for once before. The God Killer's armaments also pulsed with this sort of power.

  "… I asked him at one point what set the armor and bde Tyranos tricked us into retrieving apart from the other celestial armaments we've come across in our travels. All of those artifacts in the Celestial Armory couldn't hold a candle to what Ferro created for my rampage through the Heavens, after all."

  Sophia is looking at the armor and sword now as well, her lips parted slightly but no words coming out. Taking a deep breath, Oren continues on.

  "He told me that he had ways of giving parts of himself to his creations to make them all the stronger… and that Tyranos was one of the only ones left alive who knew about those ways and could force him to use them."

  Oren grimaces, feeling like an idiot for just accepting that at face value. If he'd questioned it further… but no. Ferro would have just shut him down. The Ancient God had acted like a cantankerous old man a lot of the time and was more than happy to verbally smack Oren down if he thought the Otherworlder was getting too 'uppity'.

  Still… he can't help but feel like there was a way for this to be avoided. If he'd just been a bit more perceptive, if only they'd realized what Ferro pnned to do… maybe they could have talked him out of it.

  "… Divine blood… has a lot of tent power in it."

  Sophia's softly spoken words make Oren slowly nod. The goddess finally seems to be coming to terms with what Oren is telling her, her trembling fingers reaching out to touch the bloodless ssh in Ferro's neck. There's no pool either. In fact, despite the corpse of an Ancient God, there's no drop of blood in the entire room.

  The heat of the forge might have made it all dry up in record time, but there still would have been a stain… under normal circumstances.

  Instead, in a set of what Oren could only bel 'abnormal circumstances', it was obvious that the divine blood had all gone somewhere… specifically, it had gone into the armor and sword. Ferro's st creations were now imbued with every st drop of his blood.

  "I imagine a God of Forges' blood would be… particurly effective at empowering divine armaments."

  Sophia flinches at Oren's words. His tone makes it seem like specution, but they both know he's right. Tyranos must have forced Ferro to do the same thing with the original armor and bde. Just not every st drop, so the God of Forges was able to survive and continue living.

  Sentimentality on the God of Tyranny's part? Or perhaps the opposite. Perhaps Tyranos wanted Ferro to suffer longer for the part he pyed in the Void Gods' imprisonment. In the end, Oren couldn't begin to pretend he understood the Ancient God's thought processes. And ultimately… it didn't really matter.

  Reaching up with trembling fingers, Sophia closes Ferro's unseeing eyes, the st of her tears falling as she lets out a shuddering breath.

  "He gave everything he had to us. In the hopes that we would finish the fight and end this once and for all. We can't… we won't let him down."

  Pcing a hand on Sophia's shoulder, Oren squeezes as he nods resolutely.

  "We won't. Tyranos and all of his ckeys… their days are numbered."

  Sophia huffs at that.

  "As far as I'm concerned, their hours are numbered. The only question is… where do we find them? Will Tyranos be on the Mortal Pnes… or in the Heavens?"

  It's a good question, one that Oren takes a moment to really think about before answering.

  "I don't think it matters, in the end. They've abandoned the Void entirely… and someone like Tyranos isn't going to be content ruling over all of Creation from the Mortal Pnes. Even if he's there right now, the Heavens will be where he's set up his base of operations and where he'll eventually return to. So that's where we need to go, either to confront him… or prepare an ambush."

  Nodding in agreement, Sophia tilts her head to the side and purses her lips.

  "… Do you remember where they brought you, when they sent you from the Void to the Heavens all that time ago?"

  Realizing why she's asking, Oren thinks hard for a second before eventually nodding.

  "Yes. This pce doesn't look that different. I'm sure I can find the pce again."

  "Good. Then… let's take care of the body and get ready to leave."

  In the end, there really only seems to be one proper way to handle Ferro's body. They cremate the Ancient God in his forge. Oren might not be much of a bcksmith after two weeks of lightning fast 'training', but he at least knows how to light the forge and get it nice and hot. Then, gently and slowly, he lowers Ferro's body into it, the extreme heat licking against his flesh but barely doing anything but turning it red.

  The Ancient God on the other hand… well, in death it's obvious he doesn't have the protections he might have had in life. Slowly but surely, Ferro burns, the flesh going first and then the bones as Oren and Sophia stand and watch in silence until nothing but ash remains.

  From there, Sophia helps Oren get into the armor that he and Ferro had crafted. Every ounce of Celestial Metal they'd pilfered from the Celestial Armory back in Skycastle had gone into the creation of the armor and bde he would wield now. Not all of it had made it into the actual divine artifacts themselves, but every piece of metal had been used up in the process as Oren had learned to be Ferro's hands and Ferro had learned how to use the Otherworlder to craft a pair of masterpieces.

  Both artifacts are rgely unadorned and unassuming save for the shimmering unearthly quality that all Celestial Metal had to it. Unlike the God Killer's armor and sword, which were crafted with pomp and circumstance in mind and designed to look fit for a King, these armaments were… simple and functional.

  To be fair though, that was all Oren needed. Once he and Sophia have finished getting him into the armor, he puts his sword belt around his waist and accepts the sword that Sophia hands over. Sheathing it at his side, he gives her a single nod before putting the helmet over his head.

  "I'm ready, goddess."

  Sophia lets out a low, shuddering breath as she runs a hand across his chestpte. Her eyes drift to the forge for a moment, to the ash that had once been her uncle, who might just have been the family member who loved her the most all things considered.

  Finally, a look of determination and resolve firms up on her face as her jaw clenches and she turns back to him.

  "Right. Then let's go. Lead the way."

  It takes a little while to traverse the Void, because the pce where they'd kept and trained Oren actually wasn't the same as the pce where they kept Ferro chained up to do their bidding. Finally though, he's able to guide her into more familiar territory and while the illusion he'd been under had twisted things, it hadn't done so nearly as much here as it had in the Heavens.

  After all, the Void Gods had wanted him to believe they lived in difficult conditions and were suffering greatly under the 'Demon King's' tyrannic rule. Once they're in Oren's old stomping grounds, it takes only a few minutes for him to orient himself and bring Sophia to the room where the portal to the Heavens had once been located.

  Just like in the catacombs underneath Skycastle, Oren sees the telltale pinprick of a blood-locked portal hovering in the middle of the room. Meanwhile, Sophia can clearly detect it as well because she wastes no time in stepping forward and offering some of her blood to unlock and open it back up.

  A tear in reality forms right then and there as the connection between the Void and the Heavens is reestablished. For a long moment, the two of them stand there staring at it, the weight of what they're about to do hitting them both at the same time. Even if Tyranos isn't there right now… they're still returning to the pce where they both lost everything.

  The st time they were in the Heavens, Sophia had just lost everyone she knew and loved. Meanwhile Oren had the illusion of being the Hero viciously ripped away from him as it was revealed that he'd sughtered innocent gods and goddesses, not evil demons and their ilk.

  Neither of them really wanted to go back… but in the end, they both come to the conclusion that they have to around the same time. Reaching out, Oren offers Sophia his gauntleted hand.

  "Together."

  After a moment, the goddess takes it, gracing him with a smile and echoing him.

  "Together."

  They step through a moment ter to return to where, in a very real sense, this had all begun. Together.

  -x-X-x-

  A/N: Tomorrow marks the start of this story's final arc. Which will be shorter than the other arcs lol. We're in the endgame now.

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