The Brothers' Alchemy

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is the Law of Equivalent Exchange.

Alchemy is not magic — alchemists say it with the frequency and tone of those who know nobody quite believes them, but that doesn't make it less true. It is science: the understanding of the natural law that governs the composition, decomposition, and recombination of matter. Everything that exists has an alchemical structure, and whoever understands that structure can transform it — metal into water, earth into steel, a broken body into one that works. The price is the Law of Equivalent Exchange: to obtain something, something of equal value must be given. This law is neither metaphor nor warning — it is physics, as literal as gravity. State Alchemists work for the military government of Amestris, the central country of this world, receiving the title of State Alchemist — the Dogs of the Military, as those who don't like them call them — in exchange for resources, research, and the obligation to serve when the army needs them. Those who abuse the Law of Exchange, those who try to skip the price, those who attempt the Great Transmutation that every alchemist thinks about doing at least once — bringing the dead back to life — pay a price that makes death seem preferable. At the Gate of Truth, on the other side of the attempt, waits something that calls itself Truth and has as many teeth as definitions of justice.