Frisk RESET.
And RESET.
And RESET.
Kill.
Meet her.
Die.
Over and over.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Tens of thousands.
The world crumbled at his hands more times than the stars in the night sky.
Entire realities left in ruin just for a single moment with her.
To see her face.
To hear her voice.
To defy her.
To beg for mercy that would never come.
"Again?"
"Still crawling back, little pest?"
"Is that determination… or desperation?"
The monsters never remembered.
But the world did.
The air grew heavier with each RESET.
Colours dulled.
Music turned hollow.
The laughter of Snowdin's townsfolk carried a brittle, artificial edge.
Everything — everything — felt wrong.
And Frisk felt it.
Deep in his bones.
The weight of his own obsession.
Each death was another shard of pain buried in his heart.
Each RESET a tighter noose around his soul.
And still, he smiled.
"One more time."
"I'll stop her this time."
"I swear it."
But every time he reached her…
Every time their battle ended with the same red-stained blade through his chest.
And every time she offered the same deal.
[YES]
[NO]
And every time, he chose [YES].
—
The rain still fell in soft, steady sheets around them, hissing against the fire's glow. The man's voice seemed to weave with the sound of water on stone, as though the storm itself remembered the weight of what he spoke.
The girl sat motionless, legs drawn up, arms hugging her knees, watching the flickering flames. She no longer gestured questions — not yet. Not this time. She waited, as if afraid a single movement might tear apart the fragile thread of the story.
The man stared into the fire. "Do you know what obsession does to a person?" His words came slowly, carefully chosen. "It wears them down… like a river carving through stone. Little by little, piece by piece."
"Frisk… at first, he remembered everything. The faces. The laughter. The feel of a hug, the taste of butterscotch pie. Names, smiles, warmth." He let the words hang there, a faint, wistful echo of a world long since shattered. "But then… the RESETs kept coming. And those little things? They… slipped away."
The man's gaze lifted, as if seeing something far beyond the fire's reach. "One day, he couldn't remember the colour of Toriel's eyes. Or the sound of Papyrus's laugh. Or the way Sans's grin shifted, just slightly, when he was proud. The world bled into itself — one timeline into the next, until they weren't memories anymore. Just… fragments."
"Then, it was his name." A silence settled thick and heavy. "He stopped being Frisk. Or maybe he stopped believing he ever was. Names didn't matter when you weren't sure which world you'd wake up in. Or if you ever really left the last one behind."
The girl's fingers twitched against the fabric of her damp clothes. Her wide eyes glimmered with something unspoken.
"That's the cruelty of Determination," the man said, voice low. "It keeps you going… long after your heart's in tatters. It makes you think you can fix what you've broken, no matter how many times you shatter it again trying. Frisk… chased a ghost through a graveyard of his own making."
"And every time he reached her — Chara — it wasn't for redemption. Or even revenge. It was because… he didn't know how to stop."
The fire crackled. A single ember danced upward and vanished into the rain-soaked dark.
The girl finally moved. Slowly, she reached out toward the man — not quite touching him, but close — her small hand hovering in silent question.
The man glanced down, offering a weary, faint smile.
"Is it still him, you mean?" The girl gave the smallest nod.
The man considered, then spoke softly. "There's a thread. Fragile… thin… but it's there. Somewhere beneath the blood, the resets, the broken worlds… there's a boy who once wanted to save everyone. And maybe… just maybe… he's still trying."
The girl's hand lowered. She stared into the fire, her face unreadable in the shifting glow.
The storm rolled overhead.
And as the fire crackled between them, the man's voice dropped once more into the quiet.
"Now… let's finish this story."