Sealing the Homunculus

Sloth lures Alphonse away by mimicking Trisha's warmth, while a recovering Wrath, his gate-scarred mind muddling infant memories, comes to believe Sloth is his real mother rather than Izumi. Edward reaches the warehouse, rebuilds his automail hand, and confronts the pair, unable to convince his brother that the water woman is only a counterfeit. Springing a sealing circle he prepared with Lust's help, Edward fuses a fragment of Trisha's corpse into Sloth, horrifying Alphonse, who flings the container out the window rather than see their mother's remains used this way.

Wrath grabs the box first and merges it into himself to guard his supposed mother, unaware of the trap he has taken on. As the fight scatters, Sloth pours herself into the gap in Alphonse's armor to seize control, and Lust holds off Wrath while Edward gives chase. Cornered and forced to expel her store of red stones, a weeping Lust is made to see that her wish to be human is really a wish to die, and Wrath runs her through, the second of the creatures to fall. Shaken, he begins to doubt his own longing.

Edward outwits Sloth by drawing half a circle on each of two tables and joining them to freeze both her and Alphonse's armor. Sloth breaks loose by vibrating her cells for heat and admits she truly carries Trisha's memories, born from the brothers' grief the night they tried to revive their mother, later named and shaped by Dante to serve as the secretary Juliet Douglas. When Edward's blows fail, Wrath's fusion with Sloth proves fatal to her, since he already holds Trisha's remains within him. Edward transmutes her body into ethanol and vaporizes it, and Wrath tears away with burns while Winry, watching from outside, smiles strangely as Sloth dissolves.

Edward seals Sloth with a fragment of Trisha's remains, though Alphonse's refusal and Wrath's meddling turn the plan into chaos. Wrath kills a red-stone-drained Lust, the second homunculus to die. Sloth reveals she was born from the Elrics' failed resurrection of their mother and reshaped by Dante into the military secretary Juliet Douglas. Wrath's fusion with Sloth undoes her because he carries Trisha's remains, and Edward finishes her by turning her body to ethanol and vaporizing it.

The chapter delivers the deaths of Lust and Sloth, the second and third of Dante's creations to perish, and it forces Edward to face and atone for the sin of trying to bring his mother back by destroying the being that grew from it.