The scent of rot thickened as they descended into the tunnels.
Not the rot of flesh—but something deeper. A spiritual stagnation. As though the very walls had fed on failed desires for too long.
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, walking ahead, paused. "Then what's at the end of it?"
No one answered.
A low hum shivered through the walls—barely audible, but felt.
The corridor widened into a vast chamber, circular and pulsing with faint red light. Organic matter clung to the stone like moss—except it breathed.
In the center sat Gluttony.
He hunched near a pool of viscous liquid, fingers twitching, eyes unfocused. His stomach groaned as if something inside him hungered beyond food.
"More," he whispered. "More more more…"
Aeon stepped forward slowly. His divine senses felt twisted here, as if emotions were muffled, soaked in bile.
"Careful," Edward warned.
But Aeon was already lowering himself to one knee—not in submission, but in listening.
"This isn't just a lair," he said softly. "It's a cage."
Gluttony's head twitched up. "You smell like… old things. Like secrets. Like pain."
"I know what hunger feels like," Aeon replied.
Gluttony's lips trembled. "I don't want to be hungry anymore."
And suddenly, the chamber convulsed.
Reality rippled outward from Gluttony's body, and in a blink, the world folded.
Aeon opened his eyes in darkness.
Not absence-of-light darkness.
But darkness that watched.
He stood alone.
The world here was barely formed — an inside-out version of reality, all distorted gravity and bleeding echoes.
He had fallen into Gluttony's false Gate.
He stepped forward.
The ground held, but barely.
Every thought tried to fragment.
He remembered Nivi's voice. The moment she touched his hand.
That memory lit the space around him for a heartbeat—and he realized: emotion shaped this place.
It wasn't logic or alchemy.
It was feeling.
Elsewhere, Edward and Alphonse stood in similar half-real rooms—twisting corridors looping endlessly.
Alphonse shouted Edward's name.
No reply.
But Aeon's voice came from the dark.
"Remember what binds you," he called gently. "Not the pain. The purpose."
Light flickered in Alphonse's hands.
A warmth.
A circle drawn not with chalk, but with belief.
One by one, they found each other—torn but whole.
And the door they needed shimmered into view.
Not a Gate.
A choice.
They stepped through it.
Together.
Far above, the Shadow stirred.
It had not known Aeon could shape emotion against it.
It would not forget.
And it would not forgive.