The machine hummed loudly and regularly. Intricate metal and tech work helped guide the mixture of rational and supernatural energy through the complex wires on every wall and floor. These machinations spread for miles inside the massive mechanical structure, even going deep into the earth itself.

This machine resembled a massive factory building that towered over the whole underground world, with hundreds of floors and countless rooms. This awe of scientists and engineers stood proud on top of a river of magma that powered the whole facility.

They called this machine The Core. A fortress for technology, science and even magic. Every wire, every frame so intricately designed, powered every computer, every light, and every particle of magic in the air of the underground kingdom. And inside, plenty of monsters worked, tinkered, and researched the known and natural, and the unknown and spiritual.

But The Core itself has many mysteries. No one could recall when it was even built, for starters, or even who built it. A few elderly construction workers have faint recollections of putting together walls, panels and others. But no monster could recall the masterminds, the architects or the planners behind it, as if something erased memories of its origin from existence.

There are also other stories. Tales that speak of forgotten rooms and places where strange things take shelter.

The Cry from the Void

❄︎ ︎ ︎ ? ﾸﾎ❒︎⍓︎ ︎❒︎□︎❍︎ ⧫︎ ︎ ︎ ✞︎□︎ ︎ ︎

It was early in the morning in the Hotland region. The plump and short yellow drake monster, Alphys, put on her white coat and entered her lab, which was only downstairs from where she slept. She gave out a big yawn as she watched the coffee pour into her dinosaur shaped cup.

Cup in hand, she sat down in front of her large computer, going through the feed for her daily checkups. There were some spikes in the heat here and there, graphs for daily power usages in various places. The highest power usage was in the capital, as usual, and some ordinary stat boosts here and there. Like every other morning, everything appeared to be in order.

Alphys yawned and drank from her cup. She didn't like the taste. Maybe she should've just stuck with soda. Or better yet, she shouldn't have spent all of last night binging the entire disk collection she found in the dumps.

Just one more episode, she constantly told herself, until it was 5 AM and there were no more episodes and thus no more distractions. Whoever kept dumping down all these pieces of human media down this mountain was both a benevolent and sadistic benefactor.

She leaned in her rolling chair, putting her legs on top of the desk. She looked at the time. It was almost 7:30. Around this time, all the engineers and scientists should be just about waking up for the dayshift at The Core. But being The Royal Scientist, Alphys always had to wake up first. A bit of payment for being the top of the line. But in reward, this job was very relaxing with little work outside of special events, such as group experiments or managing disasters of scientific nature. Ever since she gained her esteemed title a few years ago, her job consisted less of work and more of answering the questions and confusion from the other scientists. Thankfully, it meant she had enough time and resources for her own personal studies and experiments.

Alphys twiddled her thumbs, looking around her lab for something to do. Maybe she could make up her own private experiments? There's still so much unknown in the world. The biggest mystery she couldn't figure out was The Core itself.

To Alphys herself, it was there before she was born. As far as she knew, it had existed for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Maybe the foundation of The Core was even older than King Asgore. Perhaps it was here even before the first monster came into existence.

Alphys gave out another big yawn. This seat was so comfy and warm, and the cracklings of hot magma flowing outside sounded so soothing.

She had so many big questions, all big and tiring. Why had she never wondered about The Core before? Why had she never asked about the secrets behind that metal fortress, about the countless wires along the long metallic corridors? What lurked behind all of it?

Alphys yawned one more time just as the questions in her mind started to lose interest.

Maybe she knew all she needed to know about The Core. Perhaps she never had a reason to question its origins, or it was never of any importance. The Core existed just as magma was hot and snow was cold. Maybe some things were better left unknown.

The questions left her mind just as her consciousness did.

"How would you describe non-existence?"

"Non-existence is the lack of any perceivable thing, so logically, you can't," said another, more familiar voice.

"Are ideas non-existent then?" said the previous voice. "Does that mean money is non-existent? What about connections? Love, family, friends? Do they exist, by that definition?"

"Those are different things," the voice replied.

"Perhaps they are-" the other voice said.

The discussion suddenly halted there.

When did I ever say that? Alphys thought. And who is that other one? They sound so familiar.

The figure stopped existing as the scene faded into obscurity.

Wait, there was more, Alphys thought. There was something else after that. Much more and- wait.

Where was she? When was she? It looked like her lab, but something was wrong. Things were missing or misplaced.

Alphys looked down at her body and saw nothing. Yet, she could see everything else, every detail, every colour, and every particle in a 360-degree vision. She is just a formless thought floating in the air, ripped out of her physical form. Then the room opened up into pieces as it was torn apart by something resembling darkness but was, in fact, something other than darkness. Not greater or lesser, but different. A void would be the best descriptor. Echoes of a space where there is no space. Outside of time, outside of perception. Outside of structural logic and natural rules. Entropy. Non-existence.

There was something else with her. Or rather, something that desperately wanted to be with her. It was very close, so desperately close, but it just couldn't reach her.

But then, it finally came. It was something only able to be described as noise. Noise louder than space. Louder than life itself. Louder than gods.

It echoed on atoms, on the cosmos. Like light on a mirror, echoes of noise bounced themselves across and across everything, growing louder and louder with each nanosecond as it bounced, even echoing on other echoes until it blinded the whole of reality.

And the floating thought screamed in response. It screamed as loud as it could, yet it could leave no marks on the endless cry.

Something was coming. It was breaking out with spectacular colours. Returning with a cry and one last hurrah as it tore itself out of non-existence.

Alphys rose in her seat, panting. She had almost screamed herself awake. She placed her claws over her chest and found her heart beating rapidly. Her palms and neck were sweating as well.

She adjusted the glasses that had fallen halfway off her snout and then herself in the chair. Not the first time she had fallen asleep on the job, but it was the first time she ever woke on the verge of screaming.

She told herself in her mind over and over again that it was just a nightmare. It doesn't mean anything, and it's over. But she knew better. Somewhere past all the logic and rationality in her mind, she knew. It wasn't over. She felt it in her soul. A permanent black spot branded into her consciousness.

Alphys, Alphys, the rational part of her told her. What are you doing? Why are you so scared? Do you even know what you just dreamt?

The yellow drake sighed and leaned into her chair. It was telling the truth. She was just overthinking things. It was not the first time she had nightmares. Those weren't anomalies, and as far as she knew, dreams and night terrors were just a result of your brain resting. It didn't mean anything. Nor was it an omen signifying something about to happen. Right?

"Oh, there you go again," Alphys told herself. "I should take a break from watching cosmic horror movies."

As her breathed became stable, there came a distinct alert noise from her computer. There was a red blinking error message over The Core's feed.

What the H? Alphys thought to herself.

She sat up straight in her chair and clicked the folder, which opened up a 3d blueprint map of the entire facility, and a red blinking error symbol pointed to a single room at the very bottom of The Core. Next to the error symbol, there hovered a text in an ominous red font that read:

Warning:

Broken connection with the floor.

Error with connecting to the floor's generator.

With growing nervousness, Alphys opened the file for the room. No one had been on that floor for a long time. Neglecting a lower level floor was very common with the engineers Most are just old generator rooms or storage areas for outdated tech, and the floor with the error sign was no different. According to files, all it included was one large outdated generator room.

But Alphys believed better. It was clear as day now that the room, and the lower area in general, had been abandoned too long. It would've been easy to blame the engineers and checkup monsters for this, but she knew she was just as much to blame. She was complicit in the negligence, and now it appears she, and most of The Core staff, was paying the price for it. Much of The Core's equipment is still taking fuel from older models, so if the bottom generator is now rusted or broken, it could possibly have far-reaching consequences of unknown proportion to the rest of the structure.

Either way, in a best-case scenario, it was a problem that she could solve remotely. So she opened up the files for the room and checked the cameras for certainty. But there was only static.

Confused, Alphys checked again, and then the sensors and the power usage. But there was nothing but static there as well.

That bad?! Alphys thought.

She gulped. Not once in her entire career as the Royal Scientist had everything just spontaneously stopped working in a single room no matter how bad it got.

It's alright, Alphys, it's just a generator room, the lizard thought to herself. You're just letting the nightmare get to you.

Now the best course of action was to send someone down there to check and fix it manually. There was, of course, the problem of finding someone available. Not many workers had clearance for the lower levels, not that clearance should matter in these unusual circumstances. But it was still early in the morning, meaning the monsters currently working were either leaving or overworked from working the night shift. Alphys was the first one to arrive in the morning, as was customary for The Royal Scientist. That meant that the others were still asleep, and the last thing she did was to be a bother.

So, instead, Alphys chose to do something she knew to be reckless and foolish at the same time.

Deeper and deeper the elevator kept descending. Alphys stood in it alone with a backpack full of gears, tools, and other things of possible use. The last time she fixed a generator was only several weeks ago, and that one was about the size of a house. So a smaller one of less importance should prove no challenge.

She thought it fortunate that her lab connected to The Core through complex passages, as it meant she didn't have to sneak by to be unnoticed by anyone. There was no reason for widespread panic, just in and out in under several minutes.

Then, after a few long minutes, the elevator stopped, and the doors slid open into darkness.

Perhaps just a simple power outage, after all, Alphys thought to herself as she gazed into the void.

She turned on a flashlight and took a step inside. The steel floor was cold to the touch, and the air was strangely light. It felt closer to a cool forest in early autumn than the bottom of a structure on top of a flowing river of lava. If the power was off, then the ventilation surely should be as well.

Is the bottom always like this, with fresh air and coolness? Surely not, Alphys figured.

Then again, she didn't have a frame of reference for how the room should be, so maybe this was normal.

First things first, though, find the problem, fix it, and then think up a hypothetical explanation for the cold later once she was back upstairs.

It wasn't hard to navigate the room, after all, as it is mostly empty with a wide-open space in the middle. Alphys spotted some outdated monitors and computers, some long control boards with old-school microphones, and some old files and instruments. When Alphys struck her finger over an old, box-shaped monitor screen, the collected dust on her finger was about the size of her thumb.

This room was busier than I thought, Alphys thought. Maybe there's-

She bumped into something large and heavy, and she felt her flashlight almost fly out of her claws. Her heart stopped beating and shut out all oxygen from flowing inside of her. But as the shaken drake managed to adjust the flashlight back into her claws, she illuminated it and only saw a large, fridge shaped generator. Alphys sighed in relief, with a cloud of cold smoke exhaling from her mouth. The room was getting colder and colder.

She thought nothing of it and began to examine the generator in detail. It was clearly of outdated design, more closely resembling an old server rack.

Alphys wracked her memory of ancient tech and even grabbed a manual from her bag that she collected beforehand. The generator appeared to be in good condition from the outset, despite the large assortment of dust.

After some time, she finally managed to piece together the most likely cause of the issues. From the look of things, the generator was simply out of juice. Either that or the battery had simply died.

In the past, she would have had to rip the generator half apart and replace the battery before putting back together again.

Fortunately, Alphys now simply pulled a laptop out of the backpack and placed it on the ground. She then ran through countless cords she brought along, one for at least all the possible socket varieties.

But as she ran through them, dread began to grow, and before she noticed, she was breathing irregularly. The place is quiet, and she is not alone. She knew she wasn't alone. Alphys didn't know how she knew, but she knew. She was being observed, watched.

Alphys paused her search and looked behind her, panting. Then she looked around, but she saw nothing.

You're just letting that nightmare get to you.

Putting on a brave face, Alphys resumed her job. At last, she found the right cord and connected the laptop to the monitor through a noticeable plug on the front. Immediately, the screen turned on. The files for the generator looked promising.

"B-better than I expected," Alphys said out loud. "Maybe I don't need to open up and switch batteries after all, heh?"

The room got even colder, and she felt herself trembling. There was something about this darkness that felt different. Alien. It just wasn't the absence of light that surrounded her. Was it the absence of space? Was it the absence of perception?

Maybe it wasn't an absence of anything. It was more like it was coming from somewhere, seeping out from a hole in reality, like a black hole in space, but instead of sucking things in, it was exhaling. Or it was being exhaled. Maybe the darkness was the hole.

Then, perhaps due to a coping mechanism, a battle against overwhelming stress, she began to wonder if this darkness had a life of its own. Perhaps it did. She felt like it did.

This place is getting to me, Alphys thought. What the hell kind of pseudoscience am I thinking?

There were other questions in her mind to busy herself with, like why the entire floor lost power due to it or why she lost contact with it entirely. Nor could Alphys understand why not a single backup generator turned on immediately in response. Either way, the fact that the generator had worked undisturbed for such a long time was the least confusing thing to her.

So, Alphys pressed a single button, and without any loading whatsoever, The Core began to inject power down to the lowest floor.

Thank god for modern technology, Alphys thought in amusement.

She leaned back and watched the bar fill up. 20 per cent. 50 per cent. 90 per cent. It was full.

And then nothing happened.

"What?" Alphys muttered.

She leaned back forward, staring intently at the screen as she tried to wrap her head around it. She tried to think of some vital step she missed. Her laptop was remotely connected to The Core's main servers meaning the connection interference wasn't from the room itself, right?

But just as she was thinking, a red error message flashed over her laptop screen.

"Oh, what n-now?" Alphys said out loud.

Warning:

Generator power overload.

"Overload?" Alphys said out loud. "What do you mean overload?"

Before Alphys could read further, the laptop spontaneously crashed.

"Wha- no!" Alphys said.

She tried to turn it back on again, plugged and unplugged, and pressed almost every button in frustrating anxiety.

"Come on," she muttered. "Come on!"

She almost felt herself on the verge of cursing. None of this was a good look for a Royal Scientist, and Alphys recognised that. But there was no one around to see her either way.

As she calmed down, Alphys managed to clear a bit in her head. In all likelihood, it wasn't the power that was the issue. Maybe she simply made a quick and desperate assumption to be done with this floor.

What a great freaking Royal Scientist you are, Alphys! Alphys thought to herself. Just a complete ideal figure!

So no what, she wondered. She could go upstairs and snatch another laptop. Maybe send someone else down here that time. But as Alphys read through the manual, she remembered that these old generators had killswitches inserted on the back. There was nothing wrong that could happen by turning it on and off again, and since she was here, Alphys thought it was at least a good idea to try.

Putting down everything on the floor except her flashlight, Alphys attempted to move the fridge-shaped generator. She felt her muscles almost shatter just with a single pull, and all she managed to gain was a tiny crack for her arm.

I don't have time for this.

Flashlight in her mouth illuminating the opening while she squeezed an arm through. She felt so much dust and cobwebs cover her arm, her only companions in this increasingly deafening blackness.

She wondered if creatures of prehistoric times, the first ones to gain awareness of the universe, would've worshipped this darkness. Alphys chuckled at the thought. It was easy to think of it as a deity of sorts. Especially in the way it grasped her so and seemed to swallow each particle in her body. Outside of her torch, you wouldn't think that there was anything in existence down here in this consuming void. Alphys figured she should start praying. When was the last time she prayed? Her father and mother pray to the angel every day. Some of her siblings do as well. Maybe this blackness would become her angel, her deity. Now that she embraced it fully, it calmed her so much instead of frightening her. It was almost as if-

Wait, wasn't this crack smaller? Why does it seem bigger now? Now that Alphys thought about it, the entire room seemed to have grown. Everything felt much more spacious now.

The calmness was gone, and the momentary embracement left her as her rational thinking kicked back into gear, and it dawned on her so many things.

Why was an entire floor relegated to a single generator? Why had no one gone here all this time? And now that she thought about it, why does this room look so eerily familiar? Alphys couldn't recall ever coming here before. Then again, it was all much different back when he-

Click.

"Huh?" Alphys muttered.

At last, she had found the killswitch, and it brought her back to reality. She stood still for a moment. She heard nothing but silence. What was she pondering again? She couldn't remember anything. She couldn't remember pressing the switch either. All she could recall was blacking out.

That was weird, Alphys thought. Anyway, all I gotta do is press-

Her flashlight began to flicker.

Aw crap, Alphys thought.

Removing her loose hand, she reached into her lab pocket and pulled her phone out.

"Huh?" she muttered.

The phone wouldn't turn on.

"Oh, no," she muttered with a full mouth. "Oh gods, no, no, no!"

She couldn't fathom the sense of anxiety that began to take hold of her. It was an insurmountable dread that was worse than a gathering of all her phobias and terrors.

Not now! Alphys thought. I'm so close! Please! Don't leave me in this darkness, just one second!

She cursed herself for having moved her arm and losing the switch. But now, she couldn't decide whether to finish or book it. Then in her panic, the flickering flashlight fell from her jaws and onto the cold metal floor with a large thunk, but she didn't care. She was close, so very close. Just a bit more, a bit further. If only she could see. Then she felt her fingers touch a big round button.

"There!" she exclaimed with joy.

And, without haste, she pressed it and-

In a greasy restaurant bar in the town of Snowdin, the owner, a fire elemental, was sitting behind the bar getting ready for the morning shift. Only a single customer so far, laying on the counter face down, next to the old boombox. The fire elemental wondered if he should ever bother to fix it. Then the boombox started playing, and the restaurant bar owner stood entirely frozen as if paused by a remote when he heard the music. A strange mixture of songs that were yet to exist played in a volume higher than the boombox could physically make, shattering some glasses and windows in the establishment. The sleeping customer abruptly woke up, grasping his ears as they began to bleed. He screamed at the owner, who unfortunately couldn't hear because he had frozen in time. When the customer ran out the door, the inhumanly loud noise immediately stopped. Several inhabitants of the town exited their homes, some having woken abruptly from the noise.

Back in the restaurant bar, the fire elemental finally regained consciousness. But to him, no time had passed at all, not even a second, hence why he was so confused seeing all the windows and glassware broken. Not to mention all the angry and disturbed townsfolk outside now barging in.

Inside an isolated farmhouse on the outskirt of Waterfall, a bear monster, sleeping in his chair, was abruptly woken by a strange electric noise from his TV set. The screen showed strange static that shifted colours. But instead of unease, the bear monster leaned forward. A beautiful and hypnotic light show had formed from the static.

The bear stood up from his chair and crawled towards the tv screen on all four. In the beautiful spectrum of colours, there were figures. Silhouettes. Like an entity trying to form itself but having forgotten what form was.

First, it was a mountain and then a formless cloud. Then it took the silhouette of a bug like entity, then a floating creature with many eyes and a head made out of memories, before, lastly, becoming humanoid. A humanoid being with floating skeletal hands and a body that appeared to melt.

Then the light show seized as abruptly as it began. All that was left was the bear monster's reflection on a black screen.

In the only film studio in the capital, a box-shaped robot entertainer was alone in his dressing room getting ready for the final scene in his seventh assured box office hit, which was also his seventh movie in general.

When the light in the room all began to flicker wildly, it took him a while to notice when things went wrong. It started with an uncomforting tingling sensation in his chest area, similar to a stomachache.

Then he discovered that something was very wrong when he exited the room outside his own volition. Confused, he tried to speak and fight back, but it was futile. Then came a white flash completely blinding him, and in the darkness, two minds took hold.

The outer mind was furious for being so ugly, so hideous to the core, and to be beautiful, he has to tear the cocoon apart and murder the butterfly within until nothing but a pure idea remained.

The ghost within was screaming as electricity touched his soul. He was everywhere and everywhen. He was in a void outside of space, and he saw forms and constructs with impossible geometry. But it was only a fracture. He somehow knew this was only a fracture, and that made him scream.

When he regained consciousness, he saw his producers and actors standing over his exposed body. Now torn to pieces by his own hands, everyone was shocked to see for the first time the ghost living inside.

In the old, abandoned ruins of a city, the old queen sat by herself, sipping morning tea while a human boy slept in his room nearby. Suddenly, her phone rang for a single second in a heavily distorted version of her ringtone.

Curious and mildly spooked, the queen reached for her phone. The number of the missed call was utterly illegible and seemed to shift wildly at random intervals. The queen nervously hesitated to call back, but politeness never costs, so she pressed the "call back" button. Her phone immediately shut down as if refusing to indulge her request.

In the kingdom's castle, the king was sipping his morning tea while reading the newspaper. It seemed like a fine morning enough. But, suddenly, the king was hit by an uneasy feeling. It was like he forgot about something important. Or maybe someone.

He looked around the throne room anxiously as another sensation replaced the former. He could feel it on his fur, in his nostrils. Something was happening.

He didn't know who or what or even where. But something, or someone, was coming back.

"W… what?" Alphys said with bafflement.

Darkness. Imperciavable darkness.

She couldn't even see her own clawed fingers in front of her. She might as well be blind. There was no difference when she closed and opened her eyes.

What the hell?! Alphys thought. It should've worked, right? I pressed it two times, just like I'm supposed to. I didn't do anything wrong, so why didn't it work?!

"Hello?!" she called out. "Anyone?!"

There was no response and no sounds except for her panicky breathing.

"Someone?!" she called out again. "It's… it's Alphys. I c-can't see anything. It's so dark in here. Anyone?! Oh gods, oh gods. I can't breathe. I can't breathe!"

It was growing colder and colder, yet her body refused to move. Something was approaching. It made no sounds, but she could sense it. Something was coming out of the darkness.

"This is a nightmare?" Alphys muttered. "Please, this has to be a nightmare! Oh gods, Alphys, just wake up. Please, just wake up!"

When everything appeared to be at its worst, a bright white beam of light appeared and shined the darkened room behind her. Slowly looking at it with dread, Alphys saw that the light came from her laptop still plugged into the generator.

She slowly pulled back her hand from the crack and crept backwards. Some strange noise seemed to come from the laptop, like a distorted low-quality speech.

Something compelled Alphys to look at the screen. Before she knew it, Alphys stood still and stared at the laptop from few feet away. It was all pixelated, with a strange hue over the screen like a filter, and it flickered smoothly through an assortment of colours. Despite the unimaginable terror, Alphys couldn't move her gaze no matter how she tried. Sweat had formed on her brows and ran down her neck. Something was moving in there underneath all the static. A strange, uneven form appeared to be attempting stability.

Through great attempts, she managed to take a few steps backwards. Then she stopped as she felt her feet enter a pool of warm liquid.

"Huh?" she muttered.

That shock finally let her manage to move her gaze away from the accursed screen as she quickly looked down at her feet. A pool of glittering black liquid resembling water was forming as if being poured from some open leak in the floor. The liquid rose and submerged her bare feet. While it looked like water, and it moved like water, it, strangely enough, didn't feel like water. It felt like nothing. Just pure, liquid warmth. It also flowed slower over the room than natural law should make it so, encompassing the ground only partly despite it all being on the same level.

The strangest and perhaps eeriest part, however, she discovered when she rose one leg up from the liquid. It wasn't wet. This liquid wouldn't stick to anything even if it were fully submerged.

The distorted speech from the laptop grew louder and louder until Alphys could make out some words.

"All," the voice spoke. "All… this…"

"A-all of what?" Alphys said in a low voice as if expecting a reply. "What are you saying? Who are you? W-what are you?"

"All…" the voice repeated. "Th-this… know… me."

"K-know you?" Alphys asked fearfully. "What are you saying? I don't understand! Know you? All this-"

She stopped herself as her eyes opened wide in shock.

"All… this…?" she repeated. "Al… phys…?"

"Alphys," the voice repeated.

Flashes of her memories returned out of some forgotten recesses of the brain. It made her grasp her head with both claws and shake wildly.

No, this is wrong. All of this is wrong.

All her memories of this room were lies. It wasn't a generator room. The very bottom of The Core did not serve such a singular purpose. She didn't know where this information was coming from, but she knew. Deep within her, she always knew.

But then why was this floor built? What was the original purpose then? What technology, what horrors had they crafted down here? What in this room made him fall?

"Darkness…" the voice said. "So close…"

"Wait, who is "him"?" Alphys asked herself.

The liquid submerged the old laptop, yet it still functioned.

"I… know… you," the voice said.

There was an eerie hint of glee in it.

"Who are you?" Alphys asked.

"You… know… who I am."

"No," Alphys said, tears of fright forming. "I don't know. I don't know."

"Know me…"

"I don't know who you are."

"Light… form… so very close."

"Please, just stop this!"

"I see you. I can touch the air."

"Who are you- just tell me who you are!"

"I'm so close. I can taste it. Alphys."

"I don't know who you are!" Alphys cried out.

"YOU… KNOW… ME."

And then the laptop blew up into smoke and sparks, forcing Alphys to fall back into the liquid. She breathed heavily wiped away her tears and sweat. There was no quiet, thanks to the calming sound of moving liquid. It also wasn't dark as before. The fluid, covering the entire ground of the room now, was glowing with a strange rainbow luminescence, like the legendary northern lights of the surface, despite no apparent light source.

But all it was to Alphys at the moment was a helpful illumination, so she scrambled to her feet and ran towards the elevator door. She pressed the button and heard the noise of the lift descending.

"Come on, come on!" she muttered impatiently after a few seconds.

After a few more moments, she noticed something awful. The luminescence was diminishing.

"Oh no," she fearfully muttered. "Come on, just how high is it?!"

The last bit of light was almost gone now, but the elevator was still descending according to the noise.

It should be here by now! Alphys thought. I swear, it should've arrived!

Only a few moments of light remained, and now Alphys could barely see the other end of the room.

"No, not again!" Alphys muttered. "D-don't leave me in this darkness again, p-please."

She closed her eyes as all light faded. When she opened them up, there was barely any difference.

Just a bit more, she thought.

At last, the elevator's noise came to a stop. And nothing happened.

"What?!" Alphys cried.

She began banging on the door, then tried to force it open with her weak strength.

"Come on!" she cried in frustration. "Open, damn it! Open-"

Then she saw something flick past her eyes. She hoped it was just a mirage, a trick of eyes desperate for patterns in the black void. Then when she turned around, it appeared again and again for a split second here and there, flickering wildly in the dark. She couldn't even get a good description for it.

"Go away…" Alphys whispered.

There was no reply. The scientist placed both her claws on her head and slowly sat down on the liquid covered floor. The shape flickered again more wildly.

"Leave me alone," Alphys whispered.

The shape jumped and jumped around in the dark as if it was trying to choose a spot. Then the whispers came.

"All…" it said. "Al… this…?"

The shape came together into the centre and resembled a human skull with a large crack in it.

"No…" Alphys muttered as tears formed in her eyes.

The skull opened its mouth wide open. The lights above began to flicker rapidly, followed by loud sounds of electric crackling.

"This isn't real," Alphys told herself, shutting her eyes. "This isn't real!"

The skull flickered from existence and non-existence as the light began to shift in random rainbow colours.

"Al… phys…" he said.

Alphys grasped her ears and shut her eyes before crying out with more despair than she believed she ever had.

"GO AWAY!" Alphys cried out into the air. "LEAVE… ME… ALONE!"

Author's note:

So this was a long time coming, if you ask me. Here's the story of a man returning to time and space, but not as himself, and certainly not in a way anyone expected. It's more horror based at the start, although it will take on a more, less scary route later on. This intro is perhaps some of the spookiest it will get. Also, this intro is split into two, possibly three parts because it was much, much longer than I anticipated. But the next part is pretty much 99% done, so you won't have to wait for it.

Also, for any new readers(who bother with author's note) this story is techincally speaking a prequel to my ongoing AU story, The Royal Hunt, but it can be read entirely indepented because here is where most of the timeline begins to diverge. Either way, I hope you'll all continue reading and I'll see you again soon (I'll try. Heads up, I'm kinda of an uneven uploader).