The CORE towered ahead like a dying monolith, its metallic body pulsing with dim light. The doors parted with a mechanical sigh, not from recognition—but resignation.
Frisk stepped into the heart of it.
No fanfare.
No resistance.
Just silence.
The air inside was dry, heated by a thousand silent engines. Bright panels lit the corridors in strange, sterile colours—pink and orange and pale green, flickering like tired thoughts that had forgotten what they once illuminated.
The puzzles that once stood tall, clever, inviting—were now static. Lasers hung dead in the air, turned off permanently. Conveyor belts rolled in slow, mindless loops. Timers blinked 0:00 over and over, waiting for a player who no longer played.
The CORE had lost its purpose.
Just like everything else.
Chara's voice echoed in Frisk's mind, not mournful like before—but sharp, clear. Admiring.
"You've come so far. Look at this place. Empty… like a discarded toy. It couldn't stop you either."
She wasn't whispering anymore.
She was speaking.
With pride.
As Frisk descended deeper into the corridors, the CORE began to change. The walls warped with heat. Strange flashes of energy burst from broken conduits. Static swelled in the speakers, occasionally howling out garbled announcements from a system that no longer remembered who it served.
A spark burst too close to Frisk's foot.
He didn't flinch.
Another corridor. Another flickering light. Another abandoned camera—its lens shattered.
Behind glass windows, the silhouettes of monsters trembled in the dark. They didn't run. They didn't fight. They just watched—paralyzed in fear, waiting for judgment to pass by like a storm.
Chara watched them too, floating beside Frisk.
Her expression unreadable.
"They should've tried harder."
The words weren't cruel.
They were cold.
Matter-of-fact.
As if compassion had been scrubbed away with each reset, each scream, each unanswered plea for mercy.
The lift groaned as it took Frisk to the upper decks. Far above the CORE's belly, where a long-abandoned control room overlooked the chaos, a familiar voice once would have guided them forward.
But there was no Alphys.
Just silence.
Screens glitched endlessly, blinking through old feeds: the ruins, Snowdin, Waterfall—empty now. Places that no longer mattered.
Frisk didn't stop to look.
There was only one direction now.
Forward.
—
Outside, atop Mt. Ebott, the girl sat stiff and pale.
The book rested unopened on her lap.
She hadn't turned the page in minutes.
The man's voice broke through the downpour and the fire's quiet hiss.
"Do you understand it now?"
She didn't nod. Didn't gesture.
Just stared ahead.
So the man continued.
"This is what happens when power is left unchecked. When pain becomes silence… and silence becomes purpose."
She swallowed hard, her fingers twitching as though caught between turning a page and closing the book altogether.
—
Inside the CORE, Frisk stepped into the chamber that led to the next trial.
Chara followed closely.
Behind them, the lights dimmed one by one.
And ahead…
a final performance awaited.