Reunion

Envy keeps battering Ling and Edward, and Ed is unsettled by the wailing souls in the homunculus' true form, one childishly begging to play in a way that recalls Nina. Studying the debris around them, Ed notices fragments of the ruined city of Xerxes and realizes the Philosopher's Stone at Envy's core might open a path home if the three of them cooperate. Above ground, May and Scar trail Alphonse and Gluttony into an underground facility, cutting through a horde of guardian chimeras, while May senses an even greater presence deeper below. Sensing the intruders drawing near, the homunculi's Father waits. In his office, Bradley recounts to Mustang how he was raised from infancy as one of many candidates and given his Wrath through a Stone that killed eleven others before him.

Reassembling the Xerxes mural, Ed identifies it not as the five-point array from Lab 5 but as a human transmutation circle, and reasons that a controlled transmutation of his own body and soul could open the true Gate and return them home. Ling and Envy agree to trust him. Ed deduces the mural was designed to turn all of Xerxes into a Stone in a bid to surpass God, explaining the civilization's vanishing, and Envy confirms the trapped souls can never be human again. Drawing a new circle powered by part of Envy's Stone, Ed performs the transmutation, and one freed soul thanks him as they pass through the sea of blood. He reaches his own Gate to find a second one beside it, where Alphonse's emaciated, living body sits. Before he can reach it, the shadow hands drag Ed back, and the soulless body refuses to leave with anyone but its own soul, so Ed vows to return for him.

The episode adapts the manga chapters Lord of the Demon's Lair and Signpost of the Soul, and the title card shows Ed's variant of the Xerxes five-point circle. One Xerxesian soul calls to Ed much like Nina, and Ling likens Ed's circleless transmutation pose to prayer. In the manga Ed makes his promise before vanishing, but here he punches the closed Gate open to deliver it. This is the season's final episode and the last to earn a TV-MA rating on Adult Swim.