Chapter 53: Signpost of the Soul

Ling ties a rough splint onto Ed's fractured wrist as the two get ready to flee Gluttony's interior. Studying the recovered fragments, Ed concludes that the homunculi used Gluttony's failed portal to bury the evidence of what truly happened at Xerxes.

Bradley tells Roy that he remembers neither his parents nor his birth name, having been raised as one of many candidates groomed to become Fuhrer. The group trained in fencing, martial arts, military combat, leadership and even anthropology, and on reaching a certain age each was injected with the Philosopher's Stone, and any who could not endure it perished. Bradley's body kept dying and regenerating until he mastered the stone, which won him the country's leadership, the name King Bradley, a single remaining soul, and the disposition of wrath. When Roy suggests he might simply live on as a man instead of a homunculus, Bradley refuses, saying he has risen beyond humanity and that homunculi take the same pride in themselves that humans do, adding that the woman Roy killed died with her pride whole.

Gluttony and Al finally arrive, and Gluttony swings the door open to unveil the presence that has waited below all along, Father. Inside Gluttony, Envy gathers the last ruin fragments, and Ed recognizes them as part of a mural he saw passing through Xerxes, then realizes it is an array for human transmutation. To cross back through the portal, they must perform it on themselves rather than on the dead, with any error rebounding on the caster, meaning Ed. Redrawing the mural, he reads its inverted symbol for God as a command to pull God to earth by one's own hands to become a perfect being, and the lion swallowing the sun as devouring the Philosopher's Stone.

From this Ed deduces that the homunculi sacrificed all of Xerxes to forge a Philosopher's Stone. Envy hands over its own stone, promising to explain more once they are out, and Ed recognizes the figures spilling out of Envy's real shape as the vanished citizens of Xerxes. Ed tells Ling to reveal the homunculi's plan should anything happen to him, but Ling insists it is not his own country and that Ed has people awaiting him, so he ought to go back and deliver the news in person. As Ed apologizes to the trapped souls and activates the stone, Ling notes that his joined hands look as though he is praying.

The portal opens, and Ed must guide his body through to arrive whole. On the far side he finds not one gate but two, and before the second sits Al's frail, empty body. Ed rushes to carry Al's soul along with him and is turned away for not being Al's body, vowing instead to return him to it soon. Ed, Ling and Envy then burst out of Gluttony, and contact with Al's armor confirms they are back in the real world. Their fear of never meeting again eased, they steady one another, and as Ed turns to get his bearings, Father approaches, his face startlingly identical to Van Hohenheim's.

Ed reconstructs the Xerxes human-transmutation array and uses Envy's Philosopher's Stone to reopen the portal. Bradley recounts becoming Wrath by conquering the stone. The three escape Gluttony back into the real world, where Father is revealed to share Van Hohenheim's exact face.

In the 2009 anime, Ed bursts back through the gate to promise Al his return, whereas the manga has him say it before passing through without reappearing. The chapter's events align with Episode 26, Reunion, of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and marked the close of that series' second season.