A Forger's Love

Riding toward Central, Edward and Alphonse remember burning down their home to seal their commitment to joining the military and reclaiming their bodies, while in Resembool, Winry and Pinako mourn that choice at the charred ruins. A tip from a police officer points the brothers to Majhal, an alchemist near Linter Village whose name once surfaced in their father's letters, and to rumors of walking corpses terrorizing the locals. In the village the boys meet Majhal, who repairs a shattered statue with alchemy and seems oddly familiar with Al's bound soul. They also cross paths with a defiant girl named Clause, who insists a dead woman named Karin killed her sister.

Majhal recounts that Karin, a florist famed for cultivating a rare blue rose, supposedly died two decades ago when her carriage plunged off a cliff, and he refuses to believe so gentle a person could harm anyone. An elderly woman named Lebi drifts through the scene, and Edward, suspecting human transmutation, keeps his eye on Majhal as the only nearby alchemist. When Karin's apparition appears in the cemetery, Majhal burns it away, and the grateful villagers celebrate while Lust, unimpressed by his weak talent, slips off. Snooping in Majhal's home, Ed tumbles through a hidden stairway and finds dolls modeled on Karin before blacking out. Majhal reveals he has been sculpting these effigies as vessels for Karin's soul and has kept Ed chained to study soul-binding, then knocks out Clause and carries her off as a fresh subject. In the climax Edward exposes the truth: Karin survived the fall with amnesia, lived a new life, and finally returned as the aged Lebi, whom Majhal cannot recognize. Enraged and in denial, Majhal attacks, but Ed transmutes the blue rose to deflect the sword, which impales Majhal instead; he dies still clinging to his fantasy of Karin's youth.

This is a filler-style entry original to the 2003 continuity, exploring the horror of human transmutation through a self-contained tragedy rather than the manga's main plot. It closes on a lighter beat as a made-over Clause bids the brothers farewell, with Ed failing to recognize her out of her usual paper-boy clothes.