Not with a Bang but with

by Randomcat1832

The Barrier has been broken. Frisk has settled down happily with a loving monster family. Everything should be perfect. But as the past comes crawling back and as a bond of unfathomable power between two people is realised, the man with the cracked face reaches out from the void in search of the child who Saved them all… [STORY DISCONTINUED ON FFN. NOW ON AO3 ONLY, SAME USERNAME]

4. INTERLUDE

.

Not with a Bang but with

Before we hit Chapter 4, a brief interlude. I should warn you all that Chapter 4, which is nearly finished, is going to be very long – more than 10k words – so if you'd rather read it in two sittings, feel free. I don't want to scare you all away!

---

INTERLUDE

oOo

The Underground was a funny sort of place: incredibly beautiful, humming with magic, but small, and dark. It was a part of the universe, but surrounded as it was by the Barrier, it was also a sort of universe all on its own.

Time had a funny way of working there – it was contained, almost compressed. Airtight.

The arrival of the first anomaly caused Time a lot of suffering and a lot of extra work. In the anomaly's defence, it was hardly aware of what it was doing: manipulating the Underground's timeline, Saving and Resetting, came to it as second nature. The anomaly did not even know what happened when it Saved and Reset, apart from how those actions impacted it directly.

Time, however, felt it all. It collapsed in on itself, rearranged and rewrote itself, there in the Kingdom beneath the mountain, and that kind of strain caused it to tear.

On the very edges of spacetime, the Void lurked, waiting.

By definition the Void did not abide by the rules of space and time. It swallowed them up.

The Void had a lot to thank the anomaly for.

And so spacetime in the Underground tore, and though it worked very hard to rearrange itself in a way that made sense, it remained wounded.

Technically it had always been wounded.

Time is funny like that.

The greater the damage, the larger the tear.

Every Save, every Reset, everything undone and erased, caused it damage.

Not every Determined being is an anomaly.

But every Determined being carries memories across the timelines.

Determination is funny like that.

Time collapsed in on itself. It rewrote.

Time collapsed in on itself. It rewrote.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Rrrripp…

.

.

.

H̭͎͉̱̭͕̳̘͔͔̖̼̰͙͟͡e҉̴͎̗̜̲̫̗͇͚̥̤͓̩l͏̶̡̛̛̦̗̫̩̼̝̟͈̖̗̟̺̦̬ḽ̡̢̧̝̦̥̙͚̝̥̪͕̱͙̜̝̀o̶̷̶̗̪͍̺̱͢͡ͅ ̶̡̨̙̤̙̗̱̰̠̟̭̲͙̲͘͟ṱ̳̞̜̜̱̳͘͡ͅh҉̬̮͙̼̺̫͔̣ę̟͖͖̭̣͕͔̠̫̞̮ͅr̢̭͚͔͚̼̱̬͔͓̫̞̠̮̤̣̭͘͟é̛̟̼̰͓͈͔̬͟͡.͜҉̣̭̣̯͚̖