By all rights, it should have been a complete void... and yet sound traveled through the darkness. It was the deafening sound of a hammer hitting metal. Grunts accompanied each strike of the hammer with occasional sounds that sounded almost like he was cursing.
"Fuck!", "Damn it!"
Those words mixed with pained wails that seemed to come from everywhere all at once.
Lucien used the low gravity to jump from one piece of debris to another piece of debris, carefully traversing the labyrinth of metal and stone.
As he kept making his way to where the sound seemed to come from, ruins entered view.
The pieces that had broken off the palace were enough to realize that it was something humans built. There was exotic metal everywhere, likely Ferros Aen's own additions.
The windows were painted, almost like church windows, allowing for no light to pass through the thick layer of dust that had accumulated over what might as well have been millennia.
Lucien carefully made his way to the entrance of the palace. A large amount of Divinity had been passing through the main door, so much so that on the other side could have been a piece of Divine Gear.
He slowly pushed the tall doors open. Space seemed to be folded onto itself, distorted in an indelible way. The only thing he could see was the fragments of a mirror floating in space, not even two meters away.
He put his hand on the biggest fragment he could spot.
A Communion was triggered just then as the last memories of Ferros Aen flooded Lucien's mind. It was so much information, such a long span of life, that even his last memories were too much for the brain of a mortal. Those memories came in snapshots.
A large man with dark complexion and bright red hair happily hammering away, the warmth and happiness that Ferros Aen had felt at that moment filled Lucien's heart.
Incredible devastation at the level of a catastrophe had occurred, as the world had already been fractured in the next snapshot. He was still hammering away, but the look on his face gave off an air of silent obsession.
The next snapshot came right before Lucien was about to lose consciousness.
He was still hammering away. The once luxurious smithy had turned into a shabby shed. The smile on his face disappeared, his face twisting in rage and anguish. Blood flowed freely from his lip as his teeth were clenched shut on his tongue. His eyes were bloodshot, but still he hammered away, imbuing the object he had been working on with a colossal amount of divinity, so much so that it wouldn't have seemed strange if he had run out of Remembrance at any point in time.
Ferros Aen looked up, his jaw unclenching after an unspeakable amount of time, hope filling his eyes.
"We'll... her."
With just those simple but impossibly cryptic words, the Communion ended.
As Lucien regained his bearings, he looked up only to see that the mirror fragments were all gone and behind, where he couldn't see, the same anvil that Ferros Aen had been striking with his hammer just sat there... a blade unlike any other just waiting to be grabbed.
His mind was afflicted with the worst headache of his life as the information that had just been transferred to his brain settled in. He couldn't hear anything but a very loud buzzing, as if he had been hit by a truck.
Something inside him... it reacted to the blade wasting away on that anvil perhaps eons after Ferros Aen died. Whether it was Naerathul himself reacting to the sight of the death of what could have might as well been its companion... There was no way to know.
Divine Gear contains so much divinity that sometimes, they can grow a mind of their own.
It was beckoning to him. It was calling his name, whispering sweet promises inside his ear... but he knew, he knew that there was nothing that could bring back memories devoured by divinity.
It was a trap. A painfully obvious one.
Lucien walked right over, picking it up with his right hand.
It looked no different than a shabby sword. The materials it was made of did not look like they were of the best available quality, nor did it look like the artisan who created it was incredibly skilled.
It was a completely average sword by all accounts. In an instant, the blade grew black, absorbing every single iota of light hitting it. Before Lucien could admire it more, an incredibly strong shockwave blew the palace wide open, exposing it to the outside.
That emaciated body, that brilliant shade of red flowing down its back. Those muscles, built over eons of hard work and perseverance. Those bloodshot eyes.
It was Ferros Aen.
"You... You thieving scum!" Ferros Aen shouted, even the sound waves of his voice carrying a colossal amount of divinity.
That divinity which was so strong it could shake Lucien's entire existence...
"Is he alive...?" Lucien muttered.
"I can hear you, thieving bastard! That's my one and only masterwork, Ea." Ferroes Aen exclaimed as he pointed a thin finger at the blade in Lucien's hand. "What did you do to my one and only?!" Ferros Aen shouted in anguish.
It was only after taking a much closer look to realize the truth of the situation.
"That... Is it... is it you, Thul?"
The look on Ferros Aen's face turned into one of vulnerability and weakness for the slightest moment.
"No... No, you're not him. You have his Epitaph!" Ferros Aen said in an accusatory tone, the volume of his voice steadily climbing as he kept speaking. "He doesn't take in humans. He... he's not like us. He never was... He was something else entirely..."
Lucien stayed quick on his feet as the possibility of the situation escalating, the look on his face tense and unbelievably reactive to the things happening around him.
"He... He was the kindest man I had ever met..." Ferros Aen said, his brows pointed downwards in a pained look.
All of the divinity in the Firmament gathered all into Ferros Aen, transfiguring him, melting his mouth shot and his eyes closed. A blast of hostile energy exploded out of the olden god as it fell on his knees.
When Ferros Aen looked up, a truly deplorable sight welcomed Lucien.
The old god's face had become completely flat, like a mannequin's, its body revitalizing, becoming as young and strong as Lucien saw through the god's memories.
It extended its right hand forward. A blinding red light morphed and took the form of a hammer, as if the molten material was being shaped into a weapon on the fly with just the old god's divinity.
It was a weapon truly worthy of a god, covered in a material not too dissimilar to volcanic rock, the god's energy poking through cracks all over the body of the hammer, as if the divinity that made it up was leaking through.
"I'm sorry, old man." Lucien said as emotions that were not his overwhelmed his heart, tears slowly making their way out of his tear ducts. "I'll end your suffering now."