Daydream

Perched on a rooftop with Winry tucked under his arm, Scar goads Kimblee below, and a furious Edward storms toward the Crimson Alchemist demanding to know why he let the girl slip into danger. Ed blocks Kimblee's transmutation long enough for Scar to flee, and as the search parties scatter again, Miles praises Edward's convincing act, only for Ed to insist he was not performing at all. The story then rewinds a few minutes to the building, where Scar refuses to apologize for Ishval yet accepts Winry's right to hate him, while she quietly bandages his wounds because that is what her murdered parents would have done. Miles, revealing his own red eyes, explains that he serves inside the Amestrian system precisely to change how his people are seen.

Marcoh and May argue that Scar's help is still needed to decode his brother's alchemical notes, so Miles proposes sheltering Scar, May, Winry, and Marcoh inside Fort Briggs until the notes, alkahestry, and the nationwide array can be understood. When Miles orders the captured Jerso and Zampano shot, Alphonse intervenes, showing his own hollow body as proof that alchemy or alkahestry might one day restore them. With a blizzard closing in, Yoki suggests the mine tunnels as an escape route, and Winry herself devises the ruse of posing as Scar's hostage so her disappearance will not tip off Kimblee. The group threads through the mines while May frets that revealing the Stone's secret could tempt the Xingese emperor into mass sacrifice. Word then reaches Miles that Armstrong has been summoned to Central and Briggs has fallen under Central Command's control, making the fort a trap; Alphonse, immune to cold and exhaustion, volunteers to race ahead through the storm. Mid-journey he is pulled before the Gate and glimpses his emaciated real body, a vision he fears signals his soul beginning to reject the armor. Beneath Central, Father lists Alphonse, Edward, Hohenheim, and Izumi as sacrifices, noting he needs one more.

The episode adapts Chapter 72 and Chapter 73 and opens the fourth season. It debuts the fourth opening theme, "Period" by CHEMISTRY, along with a new closing theme, "Shunkan Sentimental" performed by SCANDAL. Its title card carries the Blood Rune from Alphonse's armor. Ed's boast that his deception could fool Kimblee does not appear in the source chapter, and the totems Father arranges serve only as reminders of each intended sacrifice, their expressions loosely mirroring the characters.