Morning had not yet broken when Aeon returned to the outskirts of Resembool. The silence of the land was still intact, but the air had changed—subtle as a shift in breath. The world had exhaled. The corrupted Stone was gone.
He stood in the fields beyond the Rockbell home, his cloak brushing the tall grass, dew wetting the hem. The light of the coming sun crept over the hills like a hesitant hand. He hadn't spoken a word since leaving East City, but his silence said more than any sermon.
Behind him, Hohenheim approached without sound. The man didn't need to ask where Aeon had gone. He had felt it too.
"A Stone, wasn't it?" Hohenheim asked softly, as if the wind might overhear.
Aeon didn't turn. "Half-born. Cracked. Fed by voices that don't belong to this world."
Hohenheim exhaled slowly. "Then it's begun."
"It never stopped," Aeon said. "It simply shifted."
They stood side by side in the awakening light.
Hohenheim ran a hand through his hair, silver catching the dawn. "I tried to contain the damage. I thought that if I stayed quiet—if I remained a ghost—I could stop it from spreading. But there's something else now, isn't there? Something older."
Aeon nodded once.
"It echoes in the Stones," Aeon said. "Not the human agony—I'm used to that. But something deeper. A will. A hunger that's not part of this world."
"Your Shadow," Hohenheim said.
Aeon flinched, the name still cutting deeper than he liked. "A fragment of me. Torn free. Sent away. But it found a foothold here, through the Stones—through grief."
Hohenheim crossed his arms. "Then it isn't just feeding off the alchemic transgressions. It's guiding them."
"Whispering," Aeon said. "Planting doubts in those already near the edge. Twisting what should be truth."
Hohenheim turned toward him. "Like Alphonse."
Aeon's gaze remained fixed on the horizon. "It almost reached him. His soul is still strong. But it found the crack."
"His doubt," Hohenheim said. "About whether he's real."
"And it will find others," Aeon said. "Every wound in every soul is a door."
Elsewhere in Amestris
The streets of South City bustled as soldiers filed through the gates of a nondescript warehouse. A routine inspection. At least on paper.
Major Solas, a short-tempered man with a penchant for cruelty disguised as duty, barked orders from beneath his heavy blue coat. He moved like a man who thought himself righteous—but carried a shadow like a second skin.
Inside, the warehouse smelled of scorched parchment and old metal. A failed attempt at Philosopher's Stone replication lay in its center—four lifeless test subjects slumped against their restraints. Chalk lines surrounded the circle on the floor. Unstable. Familiar.
A lieutenant hesitated at the threshold. "Sir… something's wrong here."
"You're imagining things," Solas growled. "Secure the documents. Burn the rest."
But as they stepped into the circle, the room pulsed—just once. Like a heartbeat under the skin of the world.
And the shadows lengthened.
One of the test subjects—the smallest, a girl no older than twelve—jerked. Her eyes opened. They were black.
Not from corruption.
From something else.
She began to whisper.
——————————
Back in Resembool
Hohenheim stirred uneasily.
Aeon turned his gaze to the east.
"You felt that?" Hohenheim asked.
"Yes," Aeon said. "Another Stone. Another tether."
He closed his eyes.
"She's still alive," he said, quietly. "Or something in her is."
"What will you do?"
Aeon was silent for a long time.
Then he spoke. "Watch. Wait. Intervene only if I must. I'm not the god of this world."
Hohenheim studied him. "But you carry one inside you."
Aeon finally looked at him.
"No," he said. "I carry what remains of one."
The silence after that was gentle, heavy with understanding.
They walked back toward the house, side by side. Neither man was whole. Both had been broken by time, power, and the price of knowledge.
But they walked forward anyway.
To be continued…