Chapter 43 The Smile That Burned Until the End
The world had been broken long before Kimblee left it behind.
The ground trembled beneath the remnants of battle, blood mixed with dust and stone, and the air was heavy with that smell that only appears when too many lives are violently extinguished in the same place. Before him, Pride—Selim Bradley—could no longer hide his true nature. The shadows writhed like a black, starving ocean, twisting with childish fury.
Kimblee could barely remain standing.
His body was shattered. Every breath was punishment. And yet… he smiled.
He always smiled at the end.
Pride screamed, furious, unable to understand. He could not comprehend how a human—a mere alchemist—could still stand before something that had existed since before history itself. Before Amestris. Before war. Before sin itself.
"You are nothing!" Pride roared. "Just a broken human!"
Kimblee laughed, a low sound, wet with blood.
"Nothing?" he repeated. "Maybe. But even nothing can detonate… if you press it in the right place."
In his final moments, Kimblee remembered Ishval. He remembered pure hatred, unmasked. He remembered soldiers shouting orders no one understood. He remembered civilians running, alchemists hesitating… and himself, advancing without ever doubting.
For Kimblee, the world had always been honest in its cruelty. He never believed in excuses or absolution. Every explosion was a truth: something had to break for something else to exist.
Pride advanced, intent on devouring him completely.
That was when Kimblee acted.
There were no grand gestures. No heroic speeches. Just a final decision, made with absolute clarity.
He threw himself at Pride, embracing him with what little strength he had left, forcing contact. Alchemy—his crimson alchemy—responded as it always had: obedient, perfect, merciless. The exchange was immediate. Kimblee offered himself as the detonator, the catalyst, the willing sacrifice.
Pride screamed. For the first time, it was not a cry of mockery or superiority. It was a scream of panic.
Kimblee, his face covered in blood and his smile intact, spoke for the last time:
"This little sea of hatred you call torture…" he coughed, "…this is nothing."
The shadows twisted violently, torn apart from within. Pride—the sin that believed itself eternal—was dragged along with Kimblee into a destruction he could not escape. There was no redemption. No salvation. Only mutual annihilation.
When it was over, nothing remained of either of them.
No body.
No shadow.
No laughter.
Only silence.
Final Message
Solf J. Kimblee never sought to be a hero.
He never asked for forgiveness, nor did he need it. Unlike others, he never lied about who he was or what he enjoyed. In a world built on hypocrisy, Kimblee was brutally honest. And that honesty, monstrous as it was, made him dangerously human.
In the manga, Kimblee understands something many other characters take a lifetime to accept: hatred does not disappear if you ignore it, nor is guilt cleansed by good intentions. Amestris was founded on blood, sustained by lies, and defended by men who called themselves necessary. Kimblee did not deny this. He embraced it.
And paradoxically, it was that clarity that allowed him, in his final act, to choose to destroy a sin greater than himself.
Not because he wanted to save the world.
But because that was how it had to end.
Kimblee did not die as a martyr.
He died as he lived: faithful to his nature, without regret, using destruction as his final language.
And perhaps therein lies the most uncomfortable reflection of his story:
Sometimes, even monsters can bring down something worse.
Not out of kindness… but out of coherence.
Thus ends the story of Kimblee.
Not with redemption.
But with an explosion that, for once, was necessary.
(End of the chapter)
This isn't the end of the fanfic; now we'll cover more characters, gradually completing the canon. If I see support, I'll start uploading more often.