Secrets of Ishbal

Back in Central, Ross and Brosh press Winry and Sheska about the incident at command, but the pair stay silent, and Winry decides the capital is too risky and heads for Resembool with a reluctant Sheska in tow. Aboard a train bound for Reole, a masked soldier reveals himself to Mustang's dismay as the reinstated Crimson Alchemist, Zolf J. Kimbley, freed on Archer's claim that his imprisonment rested on false charges. Out in the desert, Edward, now aware that Martel rode inside Al's armor, admits he killed Greed, but Martel explains her grudge lies with the state, the other homunculi, and Kimbley above all, since Greed chose death to escape endless imprisonment. She then drops a bombshell: the barren ground they are crossing is what remains of Ishval.

Martel confesses she spent fourteen years caged in Laboratory 5, her youthful look preserved by her chimera nature. She reveals that her special-operations unit was sent to strike Ishval over a fabricated terror report, slaughtering priests at a monastery and leaving only Scar's master alive, which ignited the civil war. Once the fighting began, her surviving unit was handed to Grand and Marcoh, who turned them into chimeras to bury the truth. The Elrics then run into Breda and Havoc, follow them to a nearby outpost, and are formally placed under Mustang's command. Surveillance photos confirm Scar is inscribing an enormous array around Reole, and Ed learns the town rose against the military after the fallout from Cornello, news Mustang had withheld to spare him. Archer secretly recruits Ed for a scouting run into Reole on the condition Al stays behind, while Ed is ordered to leave his pocket watch, which Archer intends to hand to Tucker for red-stone tampering. In disguise Ed discovers the town's new figurehead, the Holy Mother, is Rose, while back at the outpost Martel spots Kimbley and lunges to attack, and in Reole Lust and Gluttony watch Ed as Scar seizes his shoulder.

This entry belongs to the 2003 continuity, which diverges sharply from the manga by rewriting the origins of the Ishvalan conflict as a manufactured pretext and by tying Martel's chimera unit directly to the cover-up. It sets up the coming confrontation at Reole and the collision between Scar's transmutation array and the military's ambitions.