Chapter 21: The Brothers' Secret

Izumi asks the boys to account for everything that befell them since they left her training, opening into an extended flashback: their father's departure, the deaths of Winry's parents and of their own mother, their attempt to revive her through alchemy, and Ed's eventual enlistment. From an early age the brothers showed a rare gift for alchemy, teaching themselves the science out of the books their father left behind. Their proud mother urged them onward, but her sudden death shattered them, and unable to accept the loss, they swore a pact to one day bring her back. Taken in as their guardian, Granny Pinako watched them study ever harder alongside Winry, until the boys realized self-teaching could only carry them so far.

When a violent rainstorm brought flooding that threatened to swallow their village, Ed and Al set out to raise an alchemical barrier against the water. Before they could try, Izumi appeared and threw up an enormous wall herself, sparing the town. Awed, the brothers resolved to make her take them as students. She refused at first, then relented on the condition that they prove themselves over a one-month trial. Traveling back to Dublith with Izumi and her husband Sig, the boys were deposited on Yock Island in the middle of Kauroy Lake, left to survive with nothing but a knife: no shelter, no wells, no comforts, and a strict ban on using alchemy. On their very first night, a huge monster tore into their camp as they slept.

A flashback recounts the Elrics' childhood: their gift for alchemy, their mother's death, and the pact to revive her that later doomed them. Izumi saves their village from a flood, prompting the boys to beg for apprenticeship, and she agrees to a one-month survival trial. Ed and Al are abandoned on Yock Island with only a knife and forbidden from using alchemy, only to be attacked by a monster on their first night.

Edward references a film in which a man transmuted while a fly was inside the circle and became a fly-man, likely a nod to the classic horror movie The Fly.