Chapter 46: The Distant Image of Their Backs

A carriage bound for the rural outskirts carries Van Hohenheim among its passengers, and while he studies a family portrait lifted from Pinako's home, a fellow traveler draws him into conversation. He admits that a recent homecoming ended in a quarrel with his older boy, yet feels certain the two will cross paths again, since both practice alchemy. The journey turns violent when raiders seize the coach and gun down its driver, who has just loosed a warning flare. Hohenheim protests the treatment of the frightened passengers and takes fire himself, but the attackers flee in terror once they see the wounds close over his flesh. When rescuers and the shaken riders press him on how a man riddled with holes can still breathe, he answers plainly that he is a monster.

Over in Central, Lan Fan slams onto a shorter rooftop, her arm and shoulder gushing blood, and Wrath, his blade snapped, credits her thrown kunai for blunting the cut. Gluttony lunges to devour her, but Ling carves the homunculus apart and hoists his wounded retainer onto his shoulder. The prince slips past Bradley's guard by circling into the blind zone left by the eyepatch, earning grudging praise before a regenerated Gluttony hurls the pair through a nearby window. Cornered indoors, Ling refuses the Fuhrer's suggestion to save himself by dropping Lan Fan, telling him instead that a genuine sovereign exists only through the people who follow him. Lan Fan sparks a flash grenade; Ling shuts his eyes and rides the air currents toward the door, only for Bradley to bar the way, revealing that the Ouroboros branded on his hidden eye still sees. The Fuhrer scoffs that the world holds no true kings at all.

At the graveyard, Winry visits Maes Hughes' resting place alongside Gracia and Elicia, reflecting that his death during her absence echoes the last goodbye she shared with her parents before Ishval. She had glimpsed her father's resolve in Hughes and, in Gracia, the steady strength of her mother, and the household briefly felt like her own family restored. Heading home through town, she overhears locals gossiping that the Elric brothers are locked in combat with the alchemist-slayer Scar, and she hurries off in alarm.

Meanwhile Edward and Alphonse stall against Scar, waiting for a homunculus that never surfaces. Al challenges the killer for branding alchemy a sin while wielding it to murder, naming Shou and Nina Tucker among his victims. Scar counters that their vaunted alchemy could never have undone the girl once she was fused into a chimera, and that ending her suffering spared her a caged existence in a laboratory. The reminder guts the brothers, who left Nina to her fate. Edward fires back that Scar cannot excuse every death either, demanding to know why a servant of God would slay the two doctors who saved his life, the Rockbells. He does not realize Winry has arrived and heard every word. Devastated, she seizes a fallen soldier's sidearm and levels it at Scar, ignoring the brothers' pleas, while Scar recalls his master's warning about the endless chain of hatred.

Hohenheim survives a bandit ambush unharmed and openly names himself a monster. Ling rescues Lan Fan and escapes Gluttony, but Bradley reveals that his branded eye pierces the flash-grenade blackout. Edward blurts the truth that Scar killed the Rockbell doctors, and Winry, arriving unseen, takes up a gun against him.

The enigmatic figure known only as the man in white appears among the townsfolk as Winry and the Hughes family leave the cemetery, one arm bound in a sling.