It began as they crossed the western trench line—Alphonse, Edward, and Aeon moving in cautious formation under cover of night.
They had followed a lead from Mustang, heading toward a rumored breach in Central's outer defenses—one used, apparently, by something not quite human.
But it was a trap.
Envy had set it himself.
The world shifted suddenly.
Not a blast.
Not an attack.
Just… replaced.
Alphonse found himself in a sunlit town square. A woman waved from a doorstep. He looked down and saw fingers. Flesh. His hands.
He was human.
His mother stood nearby, hanging laundry. Ed laughed behind him, younger again. Innocent.
Alphonse blinked—this couldn't be real.
But the wind was warm. The light golden. His breath shook with joy.
Then a voice whispered:
"Why go back? This is what you deserve."
He turned—and saw a version of himself. Taller. Confident. Whole. But with hollow eyes.
"Let go," the copy said.
Alphonse took a step back.
And the vision fractured.
Edward stood in a white hallway filled with echoes. At the end: Winry, cradling a baby. Hers? His?
"You saved everyone, please stay we need you " she said
But something was wrong.
Another version of himself walked past, ignoring her. This Edward—dressed in black—smiled coldly.
"I took what I needed," the doppelganger said. "No regrets. No cost."
Ed clenched his fists. "That's not who I am."
"But it could be," the shadow said. "All it takes is one bad day."
Then the hallway cracked.
And the vision burned away.
Aeon stood before a white field littered with broken statues—gods long forgotten.
At the center: a child.
She turned to him, holding a flower.
"You left me," she said softly. "Because you thought forgetting would stop the pain."
His knees gave under the weight of the voice.
"I couldn't protect you," Aeon whispered.
The child stepped back.
Behind her, the Shadow stood—his severed self, cloaked in cold divinity.
"I am what you made to escape," it said.
Aeon stepped forward.
"I was wrong to create you."
He reached out.
And the Shadow flinched.
Envy watched from the rafters of the real world as each illusion crumbled.
He hadn't expected Aeon to resist.
Not again.
"They always break," Envy muttered. "Why won't you?"
Aeon stood now among the wreckage, chest heaving.
"You don't understand what it means to fall," he said quietly. "That's why you'll never understand what it means to rise."
Envy snarled.
And vanished.
The illusions faded.
Edward and Alphonse knelt on the cold street, dazed but breathing.
Aeon stood over them.
No blood. No bruises.
Just clarity.
And grief.
"Are you alright?" Edward asked hoarsely.
"No," Aeon said.
"But I'm not running anymore."
The wind carried a new scent through the alley — sour, acidic, wrong.
Aeon's head turned. The sky above flickered.
And something stirred beneath the city.
The scent of rot thickened as they descended into the tunnels.
Not the rot of decay — but the spiritual rot of a space that had been fed too long on things it wasn't meant to consume.
Edward pressed a cloth to his mouth. "This is where the trail leads?"
"It's not a trail," Aeon murmured. "It's a throat."
Alphonse glanced back at them, his armor glinting dully in the pale light. "Then what's at the end of it?"
The silence answered for them.
A hum. A pulse.
Gluttony was waiting.
But this time, Aeon wasn't here to fight.
He was here to understand what made a creature hunger for what it could never fill.