Majhal

Majhal has a gaunt face framed by long, dark-brown hair. Wrapped around his right arm is a special bracelet engraved with a transmutation circle, a device that lets him perform alchemy without stopping to draw an array by hand.

Two decades of longing have twisted Majhal into obsession. He clings so tightly to the memory of Karin's youthful beauty that he cannot bear the truth, and that fixation drives him to murder village girls in his hunt for a flawless living copy. Even as he lies dying he rejects reality, going to his grave convinced he will finally be reunited with her. Watching his crude experiments from the shadows, Lust writes him off as a second-rate alchemist not worth her interest.

Because Majhal's name turned up in their father's letters about human transmutation, the Elrics detour to visit him while traveling to Central for Edward's State Alchemist exam. He first earns their trust by saving them from Clause's gang, but Edward soon links the noise of the village zombies to a section of Majhal's house and realizes he built the shambling figures. Having already failed at human transmutation, Majhal has been binding the souls of local girls, including Clause's older sister, into mannequin dolls shaped after Karin. The incomplete process leaves the souls rejecting their new bodies, so some of the dolls wander into the village.

Wanting the perfected soul-binding technique that Edward used on Alphonse, Majhal tries to force the boy to teach him. When Clause arrives to thank him for the rescue, he knocks her out and prepares to make her his next victim. Edward then exposes the frail old woman known as Lebi as the real Karin, aged by time. Refusing to accept it, Majhal lunges with a sword, but Edward transmutes the blue rose in Karin's hair to knock the blade loose; it falls and runs him through the stomach. He dies still denying the truth. Years later Edward admits to Winry that although the death was an accident, he blames himself for the circumstances that led to it.