The elevator doors parted with a mechanical sigh, opening into the heart of the CORE. No flashing lights, no stage. Just the cold emptiness of a silent battlefield.
And there he stood.
Mettaton NEO.
Wings of light spread wide behind him, a gleaming blade at his side. His SOUL core pulsed bright in his chest, the glow reflecting in the emptiness of the room. He raised his weapon, eyes fixed on the approaching human.
"FRISK," his voice boomed, though it wavered at the edges. "YOUR REIGN OF DESTRUCTION ENDS HERE."
A pause.
Then softer, almost a whisper:
"I… I have to try."
Frisk didn't stop.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't care.
A single flicker of movement.
A blur of a blade.
And Mettaton NEO's shining form shattered in an instant. No resistance. No epic clash of wills. The final, desperate hope of a fallen world broken like brittle glass.
His SOUL cracked.
His frame fell.
A single line of static echoed in the chamber:
'Goodnight.'
Chara didn't even blink.
"Pathetic."
There was no sorrow left in her voice now. No horror. No pleading. Just cold, tired finality.
"Once, I thought heroes meant something. That standing up mattered. But even that's a joke now, isn't it?"
Frisk walked through the remains, the dust of Mettaton's form rising like gray mist around his ankles.
—
The door to the True Lab yawned open with a hollow hiss, its mechanisms sluggish from neglect. No alarms. No warnings. No pleading voice on the intercom.
Just the stale, metallic scent of old, dead things.
Frisk stepped through, the flicker of his SOUL's crimson glow briefly illuminating the decayed walls. Cracked tiles. Rusted panels. Faint streaks of dried… something. The flickering lights above hummed like the last breath of a dying world.
He moved without hesitation.
Without curiosity.
Chara followed.
Not the child of the Ruins. Not the frightened, pleading shade who once begged him to stop.
No.
This Chara was different now. The pain, the horror, the desperate need to save something—anything—had all drained from her eyes. In its place, a weary calm. A final acceptance.
"I used to be afraid of this place."
She spoke it quietly, more to herself than to him.
"I thought… it meant something. That all these broken things were worth mourning."
They passed an observation window. Inside, glass tanks sat empty, the remnants of the Amalgamates long gone or long forgotten. Some of the machines still blinked, displaying meaningless readouts of heart rates and magical signatures. An old clipboard lay on the floor, scrawled with a faded note:
'It's not working. They keep falling down. I… I have to fix this.'
Frisk didn't glance at it.
A silent speaker above sparked to life for half a second.
"H…hello? I-is anyone th—"
Static.
Then nothing.
No Alphys.
No desperate voice hoping for redemption.
Only the echoes of what could've been.
Chara ran a hand along the cracked wall as they walked.
"Do you even care what happened here anymore?"
Frisk didn't answer. Didn't even acknowledge her.
Somewhere deep in the lab, a light flickered and died. A terminal crackled out one final line of corrupted text:
[ALL SUBJECTS: TERMINATED]
"Goodbye, Alphys."
Chara didn't expect a reply.
There was no one left to give one.
The last light in the True Lab died.
—
Above, the girl clutched her book to her chest. Her hands shook. The rain soaked her hair, plastering it to her face, but she didn't move to wipe it away.
She raised a hand. A small, trembling sign.
A question.
The man across the fire met her eyes.
"Yes… There were people here. Good ones. Monsters who believed in something. They tried to fix what broke. Tried to heal what couldn't be healed."
His eyes lowered.
"And like everything else… it didn't matter."
The girl's face twisted—whether from sorrow, frustration, or fear, the man couldn't tell.
"No… No one could stop it."
His voice sounded old, worn thin by memory.
"Even the brightest lights go out."
The girl's lip quivered. Her book slipped slightly in her grasp.
The fire between them hissed as another drop of rain struck it.
—
Chara trailed behind Frisk, her gaze far away, lost in shadows.
But her words still reached him.
"Keep going."
A smirk touched the edge of her lips.
"There's only one left who matters now."
The elevator ahead flickered.
Judgment Hall.
The last step before the end.