Asgore had seen death.
Though he was only twelve years old, he had been to several funerals with his family; he had seen the elaborate urns, and once, someone even showed him the dust within.
Death was not supposed to look like this. He had spotted it upstream, caught in the reeds, twisted limbs and torn fabric mistaken for fish. A closer inspection informed him that he couldn't have been more wrong. This was no fish. Purple lips nearly as dark as his naturally black ones gaped open, revealing dull, gray gums pulling away from small square teeth. Puffy, sallow flesh clung to broken limbs, skin pulled taut over a bloated, distended stomach. Dark brown, almost black, hair whipped over cloudy, brown eyes pulled wide open to stare into nothingness; Asgore could have sworn at any moment they would turn to look at him, but they never did.
The longer he looked, the more his stomach churned. Monsters weren't supposed to get sick. The dead weren't supposed to linger on like this. He could see a few tiny fish nibbling at the corpse's fingertips. He wanted to scare them off, but he couldn't bring himself to move any closer than he already was.
This corpse, this human child, couldn't have been older than eight.
Asgore's vision began to cloud over, and soon, large tears began rolling across muzzle. "D…" His voice, at first, could barely be heard, but quickly grew into a yell, a scream. "Daaaaaaaddddd!"
He fled.