[mtdewcmu]

Fission goes the opposite way. Heavier elements than iron release energy.

I think the inside of a star is not perfectly clear-cut. Various elements get created and cycle, with only the energetically-favorable ones accumulating. It's not altogether unlike chemistry.

What little I know of this comes from wikipedia, but I think there are other ways to synthesize elements apart from fission and fusion. Sometimes they simply catch a neutron, and the decay of a particle produces a different element.