Atlas

Atlas moves through the story beneath borrowed identities rather than a single fixed look. He first passes as the convict Melvin Voyager, then masquerades as Julia's lost brother Ashleigh, going so far as to graft the real Ashleigh's stolen face onto his own to win her trust. In a fight he wields ice alchemy, and he pairs it with a sharp mind for military strategy.

Cold, patient, and utterly self-serving, Atlas is willing to wait years and spill any amount of blood to reach his goal. He treats murder as simple accounting, waving off a killing as a necessary sacrifice, and feels entitled to the Star above the Milosian rebels he dismisses as unworthy of its power. In the end his ambition even overrides loyalty to his own secret partner, whom he cuts down the instant the man has served his purpose.

When the Cretan military placed the Crichton family under protective custody in 1904, Atlas, already a First Lieutenant, was assigned as their security chief. Disillusioned with Creta, he began plotting to claim the Sanguine Star as his life's masterwork, using the family in his charge as the means. He stole the identity of a laborer named Melvin Voyager, deliberately committed a robbery to earn a five-year sentence, and vanished into Amestris's prison network to bide his time. Two months shy of parole, he broke out with alchemy after reading that Julia Crichton had been caught trying to cross into Amestris.

Slipping past the Elric brothers, he made his way toward Table City, tore the prison apart so Julia could escape, and dove after her into the valley when she fell. Emerging from a snowbank of his own making, he claimed to be Ashleigh, playing on Julia's love for her brother to steer her toward creating a Star. He led her group to the Observation Tower, stabbed Miranda so that her spilled blood would trigger the transmutation, then killed his hidden ally Raul as well to fuel it further. He cut away Julia's clothing and the tattoo he had taken from the true Ashleigh, aligning it with hers to complete the map to the Star's chamber. Julia reached the finished Star first and swallowed it; when Atlas cornered her in the valley demanding it back, the genuine Ashleigh, disguised as the Cretan officer Herschel, ambushed and killed him.