The chamber beneath Central trembled with restrained power.
It wasn't the chaos of a battlefield or the fury of a storm — it was the sound of control, of a system nearing completion. A ritual older than any map, written not in ink, but in sacrifice.
The circle was alive now.
Alchemic lines spiraled outward like veins, carrying energy not from the world, but from within it — stolen breath, blood, and belief twisted into fuel.
At the center, Father stood with his arms outstretched, his expression calm as a statue.
Not triumphant.
Not angry.
Just certain.
Edward stumbled slightly as he crossed into the room, stopping just beyond the circle's outermost ring. His boots scraped against etched stone still warm from activation.
Greed was the last to enter, moving warily, his eyes scanning the walls and the ceiling as if expecting them to fall inward.
"We're too late," he muttered.
"No," Aeon replied, stepping forward with measured calm. "We're exactly on time. The ritual hasn't completed. It's only inhaling."
Alphonse stared at the five figures positioned around the central seal — living sacrifices, gaunt and barely conscious, suspended by runes that glowed faintly at the edge of pain.
"They're still alive," he whispered.
"Barely," Edward added grimly.
"And not for long," Greed said.
Father opened his eyes.
They glowed like twin suns — golden, ancient, bottomless.
"I have waited centuries," he said slowly, "to silence the screaming inside me. And now… I am finally heard."
His voice echoed unnaturally. Not louder, but deeper, as if it had bypassed their ears entirely and spoken directly to their bones.
Edward stepped forward. "You talk about silence like it's peace. But you've killed for this. Turned living people into ink for a circle."
"They were necessary," Father replied coldly. "What is one life next to a perfect world?"
"A world where you rule?" Edward snapped. "That's not peace — that's obedience."
Aeon's eyes drifted across the glyphs, reading them as one might read a prayer carved in reverse. His gaze fell on the ring of symbols where the circle converged — the philosophical core of the array.
He felt it then.
The Shadow.
Not as a presence above or beside, but within the formula itself — coiled like a hidden wire inside the very logic of the ritual.
It wasn't corrupting it.
It was riding it.
Using it as a doorway.
"You don't even realize what you've done," Aeon said quietly.
Father turned to him. "You carry something strange. Not alchemy. Not divinity. Something… buried."
Aeon's voice was calm, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed the pressure building behind his eyes. "You created this circle to become complete. But something else already saw it for what it could be — a path back in."
"A path for who?" Father asked.
Aeon looked to the pillar of light rising from the center of the circle.
And beyond it — inside it — he saw a shape.
It was human.
And not.
It looked like a mirror drawn in shadow.
The Shadow.
Watching.
Waiting.
Aeon took a slow breath. "For what I left behind."
Greed cracked his neck, flexing one hand into its armored form. "Look, I don't care who's whispering in the light — can we kill the old man yet?"
"Not yet," Aeon said.
Greed froze. "You're joking."
"If we strike now, the ritual breaks unevenly," Aeon explained. "The energy will scatter — and the Shadow will escape again. We need it centered, visible."
"So what?" Edward growled. "You're gonna invite it in?"
"I already did," Aeon whispered.
The beam at the circle's center surged higher, burning with unearthly brilliance. It pierced stone, structure, even sky — rising like a signal to the void.
And something answered.
In the deepest space of the array, the light darkened — not dimming, but becoming layered.
A shape began to form behind Father, coalescing inside the beam.
Arms.
A face.
Eyes like broken glass.
The Shadow.
But not just a flicker or a glimpse. Now, it looked directly at Aeon.
And smiled.
Edward instinctively raised his arm, readying a transmutation.
Alphonse stepped in front of one of the sacrifices, shielding them with his bulk.
Greed growled. "I've got his neck the second you say go."
Aeon stood motionless.
The Shadow tilted its head inside the light.
And spoke — not aloud, but through the ritual.
"You invited me, Aeon. You built the door."
Aeon's fingers trembled.
Not from fear.
From memory.
The ritual began to accelerate.
The bound victims cried out.
Father turned, finally sensing something wrong inside the pattern.
"What is this?" he growled.
"You made a perfect design," Aeon said. "But you didn't ask what it was perfect for."
The Shadow surged within the light.
"Come find me, Aeon."
"Come see what you abandoned."
The walls cracked.
The circle flared.
And Aeon stepped forward into the beam — not to fight, not yet.
But to face what waited in the heart of the ritual.