Chapter 6: The Right Hand of Destruction

A nightmare about his late mother rouses Edward, and he and Alphonse travel to the military's eastern base hoping to learn what awaits Shou and Nina Tucker. Riza Hawkeye delivers grim news: Shou faced decommissioning and a court-martial, yet both he and his daughter have been slain by someone unknown. Examining the killings alongside the guards left dead at the house, Maes Hughes and Alex Louis Armstrong tell Roy Mustang that the method matches a suspect they have tracked for some time.

Far away in Reole, Lust and Gluttony watch rioting from a church tower and sneer at the townspeople tearing one another apart. A figure resembling the preacher Cornello shares their contempt, boasting that the region swallowed their plot even with Fullmetal interfering. At Lust's prompting the false priest sheds its borrowed shape, becoming a slender young form crowned with dark dreadlocks and marked by an Ouroboros on one thigh. This is Envy, another servant answering to the shadowy Father. After Gluttony silences a bystander named Cray who glimpsed the change, the two weigh how risky it would be for the unknown murderer to move near Mustang or the boy they consider a needed sacrifice, then decide to follow the trail toward East City.

Reporting back to Mustang, Hughes and Armstrong describe a wanderer who has been executing State Alchemists nationwide, recognizable only by a broad cross-shaped mark on his brow, which earned him the name Scar. Warned to stay hidden, Mustang instead frets for Edward and dispatches soldiers to fetch him. The brothers sit in the rain grieving the two people they could not save, until an officer arrives to bring them in. Scar overhears the target's name, cuts the officer down with the ruinous power in his right hand, and turns on the Elrics. Their attempt to flee fails; cornered, they fight and lose ground fast as Scar rips open Alphonse's armor and reduces Edward's metal arm to fragments.

The chapter's turning points are the deaths of the Tucker household, the reveal of Envy hiding inside the guise of Cornello, and Scar's ambush of the Elrics. Envy's unmasking exposes a third homunculus operating for Father, while Gluttony's murder of the witness Cray shows how ruthlessly the group guards its secrets. The confrontation ends with Alphonse pierced and pinned and Edward disarmed in the most literal sense, marking the pair's most dangerous encounter to that point.

Envy mentions overseeing yet another town, hinting at a second of the ten Crests of Blood, though the source never names which one. Scar's tally is given as ten fallen State Alchemists across Amestris, among them the Iron-Blood Alchemist Basque Grand. Smaller touches deepen the world: Edward's automail joints reportedly throb in wet weather, and Lust needles Envy about being hideous beneath his chosen face, a jab at his real body. This installment also has Scar become the first to work out that Edward transmutes by clapping his hands to form a circle with his arms.