Content: death, existentialism (is a bit of a sad one), gore adjacent (vague description of the void wanting/trying to eat something).
This tale technically does not start itself in the void but it may be the place to start telling it anyway. Just know that I will be telling this story as a mere spectator of the whereabouts of the space between and its inhabitants, but it is not mine to be lived in a sense.
You must know that time does not pass in the void but it does pass through it. It is not able to function in its normal expanded state since the void coalesces around it harshly; that’s why it condenses itself in the most fine thread thought possible, and links the times of ‘times’ -the timelines, the alternatives universes- together. Is it obvious that time as a natural force has existed as long as the concept of reality emerged, a constant of evergoing lines that stretched forward; a web of interlocked strings that extend to infinity.
Recently though… there have been some new developments; time was overlapping itself, cut and reattached constantly over and over…and over…and over…
Recently though… there have been too many intersections, cut and reattached parts on those threads made by the endless resets and overwrites.
Recently though, soon enough, from all the going back over and over again, some knots had begun to form, corrupting the strings and creating void tears without anybody opening them.
As you may know, beloved, time and space are tightly knitted together. There are just a few beings that use that to their advantage; certain skeletal individuals -maybe I should call them multiples since there is such a large amount of them- have the ability to travel through the in-between to arrive to another space without altering its time current. Those beings are clumsy sometimes; they are living, they're made to make mistakes.
I said before that this tale does not start itself in the void, right?
That's because it starts with one sad and tired classic.
Sans woke up with a startled gasp, the memories of a time that no longer existed swarming his mind harshly as he sat up in his bed; hands cradling his head in an attempt to cease the intense thrumming that threatened to split his skull in two at this rate. He knew what was coming now, they reseted so Papyrus was going to knock at his door and those infernal days would begin yet again; maybe if he was lucky it would be a pacifist run this time and he would have some days of reprise to forget about all the dust that fell in the one before.
Soon enough the loop began and his brother yelled at him for sleeping in, signaling the start of the run; he knew what came now, he was going to teleport to his brother and then go and wait in the snow before the door to the ruins waiting for the child to emerge. He opened the portal tiredly, sighing softly, and stepped through. What he couldn't expect was how, as he was in the middle of the gateway, half one place half the other, blue strings would tear his world apart.
The pained screams were left unheard as the void slowly ate him inside out; he was a foreign object, stranded, lost in the space between spaces. There was no way to get out without knowing exactly where he was so he drifted, even though he couldn't feel the motions of the void beaconing him closer to its center… his soul and body fading piece by piece to black, to nothingness. His last thoughts as he was consumed were delirious, his blurry vision confusing the endless void where his dust drifted out, shining with the last light of his soul; the last frail thread of his voice was one of peaceful contemplation.
“Ah...At least I got to see the stars...”
The void was starving, it wanted that soul to be its; it had been long since a living being fell upon its hands and he was voraciously welcoming what was left of the skeleton to come closer to its center. It wanted to savor it, eager for the release of energy a consumed soul emitted as it was feasted on. In its rush to beacon the soul closer before it disappeared the void was tactless and the tired, sad Sans grazed upon my threads.
Ah, have I forgotten to mention? I am the narrator, I am time, I am the one that looks upon your stories as they tear me apart one knot, one reset and overwrite, at a time. As so, who could blame me, at the moment when that lost soul brushed my existence, for giving it the chance to live on? Since this occurrence was an anomaly, an opportunity for me. You see, dear, I cannot displace myself, even if I always move forward I cannot undo the knots that plague my strings; I had always been at the mercy of myself and the beings that bane my existence. But a creature with a soul tied to the void, with the ability to move through the space between spaces... ah... that one can help me, indeed. As so, when it touched my strings I threaded through it, binding the last remaining fragments of his soul to the void invading his body; I held upon it, rebinding -remaking- his existence.
That is how a story that started so.. so many times before met a different end; one that meant a new beginning.
