Chapter 108: Journey's End

The chapter picks up mid-duel between Edward and Father, whose hold on his stolen power is slipping fast. In a final gambit, Father impales Greed and drains his Philosopher's Stone. Defiant to the last, Greed turns a portion of Father into charcoal, carbon at its most brittle, before the homunculus finishes him, and he fades away glad to have made friends at all. Ed then drives his fist clean through Father's chest, releasing the trapped souls of Xerxes and, with them, Truth, who together tear the creature's body apart. Shrunk back to his original tiny homunculus form before the Gate, Father is told by God that his fate is to tumble back through it into endless despair, the toll for his conceit, the same kind of price others paid for opening the Gate.

Amid ruined Central, the battered victors still reel from Alphonse's sacrifice. Ling offers up his own Stone to bring him back, but Ed reminds him of their vow never to use one to reclaim Al's body. Van Hohenheim then volunteers himself as the toll; Ed refuses him as well, though at last he calls the man his father. Ed inscribes a human transmutation circle and stands before Truth. Asked what he will pay, he answers with his own Gate, the very source of an alchemist's power. Truth wonders how he expects to manage without his greatest gift, and Ed replies that even stripped of alchemy he still has his friends. Truth calls this the correct answer, concedes defeat, and Ed transmutes his Gate to recover Alphonse, body and soul made whole once more.

The brothers return to everyone's astonishment, and Al drinks in sensations his real body had long been denied while Hohenheim quietly wanders off into the dust. Olivier and Alex set to pulling civilians from the rubble their fight left behind, and Mustang's radio team broadcasts an account that exposes how the leadership schemed to harm the people through alchemy, all while shielding Bradley's true identity. Rebecca visits Riza in the hospital, and Mustang meets Dr. Knox and Marcoh, who restores Roy's eyesight with his Stone in exchange for a promise that, once he holds power, Roy will fully reinstate Ishvalan rights and let Marcoh work as a physician among them.

Ling and Lan Fan weigh his future as emperor of Xing, and she asks that the rival clans not suffer for his rise, a request he readily grants, moving May to tears of relief before they head home carrying Fu's body. Pinako approaches Trisha's grave and discovers Hohenheim slumped there, smiling, having died at peace beside his wife. Scar, mending in a makeshift ward, receives Olivier and Miles with an offer to help rebuild Ishvalan society, and when asked his real name he answers that he needs none. Ed and Al walk home, where Winry's dog barely recognizes the restored Al until Winry rushes out to embrace them both.

Two years later, Fuhrer Grumman speaks with the former Mrs. Bradley as a more childlike Selim runs in, free to simply be a boy again. Alphonse departs for Xing to study alkahestry, paying his respects to the Hughes family and taking Zampano and Jerso along the way. At the train station, Ed and Winry finally confess their feelings, and Ed proposes in the language of Equivalent Exchange. A closing collage checks in on everyone: Havoc grinding through rehab, the side-by-side graves of Trisha and Hohenheim, a restored and promoted Roy with Riza, a long-haired Scar beside Miles, Emperor Ling with Lan Fan, and a family portrait of Ed, Winry, their two children, Alphonse, and May.

This is the concluding chapter of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga. Pride ends the series as the only surviving homunculus, now living out a human life as Selim Bradley with no memory of his homunculus self; because the Stone within him is a fragment of Father's, a piece of Father may linger inside him as well. A Japanese newspaper once held a contest for the ideal words to say when proposing, and the phrasing Ed and Winry use here won, only to be pulled after organizers realized it came from a manga. The chapter's Japanese title is Tabiji no Hate, first published on June 11, 2010, with the English release following on December 20, 2011.