A/N: First anime, bros. No, I was not high when I wrote this. (I make less than minimum wage, you think I have money for drugs?) No, it does not make sense even if you are high. Review?

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The phase of Blackening: he feels his wings peel off, feathers to ashes, soot in his eyes, gunpowder black, black blacker than black. This is soul alchemy: his body calcined in the center of the circle's fire.

Soul alchemy: "I am a Philosopher's Stone with a single soul's worth of energy. "

Think of it like that. Like that. He is one soul, and a soul is energy, life; his soul is tied to his body through his spirit, and his spirit is tied to Al's soul through their blood and shared sin; that is what he reaches for. Reciprocity. Equivalent Exchange, because there can be no other price for a life.

And he'll give anything – his arms, his legs, even his heart –

Even if there is nothing left of him –

Edward Elric burns into

into

The alchemist dying in the flask. It has to be a willing sacrifice, has to be a fair exchange. Truth cannot be cheated, Truth is fair and he must be as well. He has spent all his life fighting the flow of the world, but now, "Here is all of me," he speaks to the Void, and unravels into

Something bright

into shreds of himself, layers flaking away in the blaze

Like the crumbled leaves of books floating on pillars of smoke, burning white glowworms in the October night that twist and curl in on themselves, the serpent eating its own tail. He ends where Al begins, and let this sin be his last.