Void World

"And I, the great... Waluigi, will be your friend and help you move on from this relationship!"

As Papyrus spoke, he patted the bones of his chest.

Frisk was speechless. What on earth was Waluigi, and why did Papyrus keep calling himself that?!

In Sans's room.

"Yep, this is the key." Linde took the key from Sans's room and went around to the back of the house while Frisk was still on her date.

With a click, Linde opened the door to the Timeline Observation Room.

"So this is the Timeline Observation Room." Linde sighed in wonder and began looking around.

"What's displayed on this screen... anomalous temporal fluctuations in the current timeline: nineteen." Linde pondered this. "Two were Frisk, seven were me, and the other ten were probably Flowey..."

He searched the drawers but found no group photo. Well, it seemed Frisk really was on her first playthrough.

There was an old photograph with "Don't forget" written on it. The three people's faces in it were too blurred to make out.

Linde picked up the photograph. In his previous life, this Deltarune Easter egg hadn't been particularly well known, but he knew at least a little about it.

Suddenly, Linde felt himself touch something.

Timeline Disruptor activated. Disrupting the current timeline. A space-time rift is expected to appear in five seconds.

"Huh?!" Linde frantically looked around, trying to find the source of the voice.

But he didn't have much time to search.

Warning ⚠ Space-time rift forming ⚠ Move away immediately ⚠ Warning ⚠ Warning ⚠ ...

An eerie fissure silently appeared beneath Linde's feet...

"Ugh..." Linde could only watch as he was dragged into the space-time rift.

"Linde!" Frisk searched everywhere for any trace of Linde, but she couldn't find him.

She loaded her save and returned to the library the day before, when she should have been standing behind Linde...

But there was nothing in front of her.

Unable to believe it, she kept going further back. At the spaghetti spot, the spaghetti on the table was frozen solid, but no one was there to thaw it for her...

In the Ruins, there were only her and Toriel. When she mentioned Linde, Toriel knew nothing about him.

It was as though Linde had never existed. No matter how far into the past she went, he was nowhere to be found.

Frisk sat on the ground in a daze. "Where... did you go..."

Not far away, Flowey propped his face on his roots. "That's a little strange. After that human entered that smiley trash bag's lab, it was like he got erased..."

Sans looked at the strange phenomenon in the lab and quietly sighed. "I kept our agreement."

Linde's eyes snapped open. He was floating in a gray space.

"Huh? You actually made it in... No wonder I couldn't see your future after you entered the Underground..."

A calm, steady voice sounded behind Linde.

"Who are you? Where am I?" Linde looked around but couldn't see anyone.

"I'm Gaster... Hmm... Very interesting... You've reached the Void World, the only place where you can speak to me directly."

"Gaster? The Gaster who fell into the Core?! How did you end up here?" Linde was a little surprised.

"Oh, the Core shattered me, and the chaotic magic energy swept me into the void. And that is precisely why I became omnipresent."

"Why?"

"The Void World exists independently of the Main World, simultaneously in the past, present, and future... You were brought here through space-time turbulence... Take a look. Your existence in your original world has already been erased."

An image of Frisk searching for him through space and time suddenly appeared before Linde, and his heart ached. "Doctor Gaster, do you know how to get back?"

"There is no exit here. Once you enter, you can never leave..."

"Never?!"

"Perhaps not, but time has no meaning here in the first place, so calling it forever isn't wrong."

"..."

Watching Frisk's frantic search, Linde helplessly slumped in the void.

This feeling of powerlessness really was enough to drive someone to despair...