Human Sacrifice

In the manga and 2009 anime, a Human Sacrifice is an alchemist who has passed through the Gate by way of human transmutation and lived through the aftermath. Doing so demands rare skill to open the Gate, the nerve to step inside it, and the luck to leave without surrendering something vital, which makes such people scarce. Two things set them apart: the Truth beyond the Gate recognizes them and calls out whenever it is activated nearby, and their own body becomes a living transmutation circle, letting them work alchemy without drawing one.

What binds the sacrifices as a group is not temperament but circumstance and resolve. Each is an exceptionally capable alchemist who chose to endure the Gate, and rather than flee, they stay in Amestris to fight the Homunculi. Pride judges that choice foolish despite their brilliance, since hiding until the Promised Day passed would have kept them out of Father's grasp, yet it is precisely their willingness to stand and resist that defines them.

Father's plan hinges on holding five such people on the Promised Day, when their opened Gates resonate and clash, unleashing the energy he needs to force open the Gate of the Earth itself. The five are Van Hohenheim, Izumi Curtis, Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric and Roy Mustang, the last of them shoved through the Gate by Pride when only four qualified naturally. Contrary to the name, they do not die; they emerge drained but intact, among the few whose souls stay in their bodies. Others were eyed as candidates, among them Jude, Solf J. Kimblee, Tim Marcoh, Isaac McDougal and Julia Crichton. The 2003 anime redefines the term entirely: there a sacrifice is simply an alchemist skilled enough to create a Philosopher's Stone and desperate or manipulable enough to spend many lives doing it, valuable to Dante because such a stone could grant her a fresh body and turn the Homunculi human.