Bonus Chapter: The Blind Alchemist

During their travels, Edward and Alphonse call on Jude, an alchemist who lives with and serves the Harbinger family. As they enter the mansion, a small girl named Rosalie is drawn to Al's armor before the servants and Mrs. Harbinger usher her away. Jude greets the brothers, who notice at once that he has no eyes. Edward explains that this very rarity is what brought them, since rumor holds that Jude pulled off a successful human transmutation, a claim he brushes aside as baseless. When Rosalie refuses to leave Al alone, the younger Elric goes off to play with her while Ed stays behind to speak with Jude and Mrs. Harbinger.

Ed presses the question and Jude admits his eyes were the price he paid, prompting Ed to confide that he lost a leg and his brother's whole body. Reassured that they share the same burden, Jude opens up, and when Ed asks whether the transmutation worked, he laughs that the answer is Rosalie herself. Elsewhere, Rosalie lifts off Al's helmet, finds the armor empty, and, far from frightened, insists she has seen worse and drags him off to share a secret. Ed asks Jude for the technique, but Mrs. Harbinger refuses, calling it a family secret protected by the wish of Jude's master, and Jude apologizes and asks him to go. As Mrs. Harbinger walks Ed out, she urges him to abandon human transmutation, and he answers that he only wants his brother's body back. She then reveals she has something to show him: the truth. In her bedroom, Rosalie draws back a curtain to reveal a decayed body slumped in a chair among stuffed animals, explaining that this is the real Rosalie brought back by Jude's failed attempt, and that she is an impostor named Amy, taken from an orphanage to stand in for the dead girl in exchange for food, shelter, education, and comfort. A flashback shows the blinded Jude desperately asking his masters whether he had succeeded, and the master assuring him his transmutation was flawless. As a servant escorts the brothers to the gates, he confesses that everyone in the household keeps up the deception and always will, sparing the devoted Jude the truth. Watching the gates close, Ed and Al agree that these are good people who will nonetheless never find redemption.

The chapter carries the Japanese title Mōmoku no Renkinjutsushi and appeared in Fullmetal Alchemist Profiles, released in Japan in December 2003 and in the United States in June 2006. It was later adapted as the first OVA for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood in 2009, under the title Bonus Episode: The Blind Alchemist.