Sans ran.
He didn't remember deciding to — his feet had moved before his mind caught up, bones aching, breath ragged though he didn't need to breathe.The world was wrong. Time was wrong. The air tasted of old dust and fresh rain. Places he shouldn't be seeing, memories he shouldn't be remembering.
The Ruins stretched endlessly around him, the crumbled walls closing in like ancient, crooked teeth. It smelled of old leaves and damp earth. The old paths where so many children had fallen before.
He finally skidded to a stop.
There.
At the edge of the great pit where the surface light barely reached, where every lost child had plummeted down to the world below… someone was standing.
Asriel.
Wearing that old sweater — the one with green and yellow stripes. The one he always wore when he ran through the golden flower fields. The one that matched Chara's.
The little prince's shoulders were shaking, silent sobs wracking his small frame.
Sans swallowed hard and took a step forward.
"...kid?"
Asriel didn't turn.
His eyes were locked upward, shimmering with tears, reflecting something — someone — above.
Sans followed his gaze.
And his soul, what was left of it, clenched.
At the very top of Mt. Ebott, silhouetted by the storm clouds, framed by the broken sky and scattered sunlight, stood a figure.
A girl.
Small. Human.
Familiar.
A face burned into the memory of every monster who'd lived, fought, and died in that Underground.
Chara.
She stood still, rain darkening her hair, her face unreadable. Like someone watching from behind glass. Like someone unsure if she was still dreaming.
And then — she smiled.
Not cruel. Not mocking.A simple, quiet smile.
And that, somehow, was worse.
A cold dread sank into Sans' bones.
He took a step back, his voice weak, his old grin long gone.
"...what the hell is happening?"
Asriel's voice broke beside him.
"She's back…"
—
The clouds above Mt. Ebott parted — slowly, silently, as though the heavens themselves were holding their breath.
Sunlight spilled through in broken shafts, piercing the mist and rain, making the patches of golden flowers around Asriel glow like scattered embers. The light caught in his tears, turning them to drops of glass on his furred cheeks.
Up above, at the mountain's crest, the girl stood unmoving.
Chara.
Her lips moved, the words meant for no one but herself.
"Have fun," she repeated softly, like the phrase was some strange, foreign language she'd never known how to speak. Testing the weight of it on her tongue. Rolling it over in her mind.
A humorless little huff escaped her.
"I never understood you," she murmured to the empty sky. "Taking your place… it only made things more complicated."
The wind whispered through the high grass, carrying faint echoes of old laughter, old names.
Chara trailed off, her voice cracking slightly.
"And after hearing Asriel…"
Her words broke, unfinished, dangling in the open air like a noose.
But then — she shook her head, almost amused, almost bitter.
"Doesn't matter anymore," she said with a quiet finality. "Nothing matters."
"I guess…."
Her crimson eyes glimmered with something fractured. Something that might have once been sorrow, or fury, or maybe just the hollow space left behind when you lose both.
"I'll find another way."
She leaned forward now, gazing down from the mountain's peak, her hair hanging around her face in dark, wet strands. She saw them.
Sans. Asriel.
Both staring up, frozen in place by a sight they hoped to never see again.
Chara's lips pulled into a crooked smile. A smile that promised no mercy. A smile like a knife's edge.
"Well well," she muttered. "Looks like he arrived."
For a long moment she simply stared — the fracture lines in her soul widening, light flickering in her eyes like dying stars.
Then, with the casual madness of someone already halfway off the edge, she took a deep, steady breath, raised her arms to the sky, and shouted down at them:
"GREETINGS!"
Her voice cracked across the mountainside like a whip. A cruel, singsong tone that made Sans' bones clench and Asriel's sobbing halt.
And then it came — the words they both dreaded. The name that even now held the power to twist the air and turn hearts cold.
With a wicked, jagged smile plastered across her face, she called out:
"MY NAME IS CHARA."
And somewhere in the dark hollows of the world, the Timeline shuddered.