Late that night
Alphonse Elric dreamed.
That in itself was strange.
He didn't have a body. He hadn't for years. His soul, affixed to a suit of armor through alchemy, was meant to be severed from such things — touch, sleep, warmth. But now, as he stood in a vision both too vivid and too distant, he realized he was dreaming in spite of it.
He was standing in a field.
Not one from his memory.
The grass swayed under a sunless sky, gold and red and dry like old parchment. The air felt too thin. And in the middle of the field, there was a tree.
Black. Leafless. Twisted upward like it had once been struck by lightning and then kept growing.
Alphonse stepped toward it.
As he did, the tree whispered.
Not in words.
In feelings.
Grief.
Resentment.
Loneliness so deep it scraped against the soul like wind against bone.
He stopped.
And in the roots of the tree, something shifted. A shadow.
His own reflection — but it looked older. Human. Tired. And sad.
"I could give it back," the shadow said in his voice.
Alphonse tried to answer, but no sound came.
"I could make you whole," it whispered. "All it would take is letting go of the others. Of their hope. Their guilt. You could be free."
He stepped back.
The tree's branches reached toward him.
And then he woke.
The forge-light in Central's lower levels hummed faintly. Alphonse sat still, arms curled around his knees. He hadn't said anything about the dream.
Not yet.
Edward was leaning against the opposite wall, flipping through a report one of the officers had handed him earlier. His expression was tight, focused—but distracted.
"You've been quiet," Ed said after a while, not looking up.
Alphonse nodded. "Just tired."
It was a lie. He didn't get tired.
Not like that.
But something inside him ached.
Not physically.
Existentially.
Elsewhere, Aeon stood on a high support beam that overlooked the inner mechanics of Central Command. Pipes hissed. Stone groaned. Energy pulsed faintly through the alchemical infrastructure like blood through hidden veins.
He was watching.
Not intervening.
The boy—Alphonse—had changed. The corruption had touched him, but not like the others. It wasn't possession. It was mirroring.
The Shadow had begun to use emotional pressure instead of force. Temptation, not domination.
And Alphonse's pain was fertile soil.
Aeon looked down at the shard he still carried from the broken anchor. It pulsed faintly—like a heartbeat matching Alphonse's sorrow.
"Too soon," he murmured.
Behind him, Greed leaned against a pillar. "You always talk to yourself like that?"
Aeon didn't flinch. "Sometimes I'm the only one I trust with the answer."
Greed snorted. "You'd fit right in around here."
He walked closer, gaze scanning the platform where the Elric brothers rested below. "They're stronger than they look. The older one's fire, sure, but the younger…" He narrowed his eyes. "He's the one the Shadow wants."
Aeon nodded slowly. "Because he still believes in healing."
"And that's dangerous," Greed said, more serious than usual.
Far above, in a private chamber deep within the military compound, Wrath sat in silence.
Not reading.
Not writing.
Just… thinking.
Which was rare.
His hand rested idly near the sword sheathed at his side. His eye—the one not human—glowed faintly beneath the closed lid.
He had felt the tremors, like everyone else.
But more than that, he had felt presence.
A familiar kind of divine weight. One he thought erased from this world long ago.
He stood.
It was time to watch the pieces move.
Later that evening, Alphonse wandered the edge of the Central courtyard. The stone benches and clipped hedges looked peaceful—clean and intentional.
But nothing in this city was ever just what it seemed.
He sat and looked up at the stars. Or rather, the faint outlines of them—blurred by light pollution and the weight of too many secrets between earth and sky.
"Hey."
The voice was gentle.
He turned.
Aeon stood a few steps away, cloaked in civilian clothing, posture quiet and non-threatening.
Alphonse didn't recognize him immediately. Not with the hood. But something in him stilled.
"You were with Greed," Alphonse said slowly.
Aeon nodded. "I'm not his keeper. Just a traveler."
"What do you want?"
Aeon sat on the far end of the bench. Not close. Not threatening. Just there.
"To understand."
Alphonse hesitated.
"Do you… ever feel like something is watching you?" he asked finally. "Like not a person. But something else."
Aeon turned to him, and for a moment, his eyes caught the moonlight.
"I do," he said softly. "And I've learned that sometimes, it's not watching to harm us. It's watching to see if we'll become like it."
Alphonse looked down.
"I dreamed last night. I saw myself. Human again. And… I wanted it. More than anything."
"That's not wrong," Aeon said.
"But it tried to make me trade the people I love for it," Alphonse whispered.
Aeon's hands folded in his lap.
"And that's how you know it wasn't you speaking in the dream."
Alphonse turned toward him. "What was it, then?"
"A shadow," Aeon said. "Of something broken. Still looking for someone to fill it."
That night, Alphonse returned to his quarters and sat in silence beside his brother's bedroll.
He didn't tell Ed about the bench.
Or the dream.
Or the way the stranger's eyes had looked like stars trying to remember how to shine.
But he felt something steady inside him again.
Not peace.
But resistance.
And that would have to be enough for now.
Far below, in the sealed chamber beneath Central, the second shard of the anchor began to crack.
It made no sound.
But the Shadow felt it.
And smiled.
To be continued…