One

The world was red. Red with blood. Red with pain clawing through his body. Red with the light rising around him. He watched it brighten, growing as each breath slowed, until one last breath felt like it wasn’t air any more. The world was red, and he was red, light and hollow and and rising like the glow.

The light flickered. Faltered. He blinked and didn’t feel his eyes. Was it finished already? Shouldn’t it be longer, for all the soldiers to die, like he was dying? Like he was…

An image hit him like a hammer, of the circle over the city, completed by his body.

His body.

The last length of the array wasn’t inscribed. It was only… filled. And now it was being emptied as the array consumed him along with everything else.

Now he struggled. Now he grasped after that last length of the pattern with hands that only existed any more in his mind. His will. He had to hang on. He had to stay, or the circle would fail. He had to stay just a little longer.

Revenge. Lives. Solid life, condensed into Stone. Into flesh. Into metal. His remaining flesh had to stay or it would all be for nothing. The lives that the army had eaten. The life that his brother had given him. The life and chance and curse he had passed on to Alphonse Elric.

He clutched at solidity, at presence, fighting against the rising current of red. He had to stay just a little longer. Just long enough. He had to hold on.

Hold on.

He felt his fingers digging into the dirt and the light surged up. Red speared the sky. The world was red.

Black followed after it.