Before it had begun, before the true battle had commenced, before you had even met Nightmare on the field of battle, the war was already over. You were helpless, hapless to the flowings of the world around you. From a stupid mistake, an arrogant choice that could have been so easily avoided! Despite the insistings of those around you, despite everything, you blamed yourself. Because it was like you had told Error, it wasn't fate or destiny that decided the future, it was your own actions and the results that followed. You had done this to yourself and in turn eradicated any hopes of defeating Nightmare.

If you had just been able to summon that damn magic! If you had been able to use your powers against Dust than there would have been no need to use the knife and in turn bind a piece of your soul to the wretched thing and be in the mess you were in now. But in the heat of the moment you hadn't been able to summon the magic like so many times before and picked up the blade, sealing your own future in the process.

"I'm going to kill us all, aren't I?"

Error looked up, his eyes meeting yours for a brief moment. In his clutched hand was the knife, your knife, the very thing that called out to you and sang throughout the whole time you marched. It hadn't even been two hours since the conclusion of the battle and already you were feeling the effects of having your soul split in two, part of it in the knife that was meant to be in your hands. You needed it and it needed you!

The glitch of a comedian seemed to want to make a sarcastic remark and then thought better of it. This was something new you also noticed in him, the development in being able to restrain himself. But you wanted a witty comeback. a snarky remark, anything but this damn pity everyone kept shoving down your throat anytime you tried to talk to them.

It had been a subtle change but one you noticed well. When your group set up camp for the night, a watch was established. Fresh and the others assured you it was only for the reason of making sure that there were no midnight ambushes like last time, but their wary glances and nervous postures suggested that they were doing more than that, making sure that you didn't get any bright ideas and take the knife to slit their throats while they were sleeping.

"I can't go on like this," you shuddered, feeling cold. "It's hard to explain, but having a part of myself in the soul weapon, I can almost see myself inside of it at times. It's like being in two places at once all the time, never quite staying in one body. With every blink it feels like I'm going to detach from this body and wake up in the knife or the knife is going to wake up inside of me."

Error wasn't much at offering comfort and surely offered no relief. "Well when you kill us all, at least make it quick. No sense in drawing it out." But as he said this there was again that flash of remorse as if the comedian actually wished he could do something to help, the thought of that! The destroyer of worlds wanting to help someone!

"I guess I'm not fit to replace Ink after all," you chuckled. "Maybe I'm meant to replace you and there's someone out there already who's probably the spitting image of the painter." It was something you had thought a lot on recently. There was no way you could replace Ink, not the way you were now. If this so-called balance actually existed, how could you take the painter's place when you now couldn't go a second without wanting to kill something? Maybe Error was destined to die and you would take his place alongside another chosen to replace Ink.

Assuming the artist was dead. You refused to truly accept that untl you saw his ashes for yourself. Your eyes flickered back to the knife and a strange sensation ran through you, a longing so great and powerful that you felt you would collapse right then and there if your hands didn't wrap around that damn hilt and cut a few things down. Oh how much you wanted to kill, to see them all scream and bleed...

"Ink will figure out a way to fix this." It was the first time you had ever heard Error admit the possibility, admit to the want and need of the painter alive, how essential he was to the functioning of the multiverse. Error's interjection snapped you back to reality, snapped you farther away from the pull of the knife if even for a moment. And a moment was everything now.

"You said it yourself, Ink's dead," you replied, staring at the ground. What point was there filling your head with false hopes? Better to admit the truth then build an empire out of false words and promises only to have it ripped right underneath your feet once the truth was finally exposed. "Why would Nightmare keep him alive? Even Dust said he saw Nightmare cut him down."

"Monsters and humans will say anything if they think it will give them a gain over their adversaries," Error replied.

"I thought I was your enemey?" You cocked an eyebrow. "So why should I trust you?"

"We reached a truce, I thought? We are neither friend nor foe so you have neither a reason to trust or distrust me. I could be trying to sway you to your inevitable death or I could be attempting to assist you, it is up for the interpretation of the listener in the end." Error shrugged as he waved his hand, a black sleeping bag appearing on the ground. Fresh and the others stopped in their march, all sharing the claws of fatigue that had been ravaging them for days. There was a quick brief of murmuring before Error was waved over, sharing in their discussion. A part of you already knew what the skeletons were talking about before the glitch walked back over to you, your knife in his pocket.

"Looks like I get first watch, these idiots actually trust me," he chuckled darkly, noting your fixated reaction on the knife. How badly you wanted to pin the comedian to the ground and rip the knife from his hand, turn the blade on him and then cut down the others. You would be unstoppable, nothing alive could take you down. But you needed the knife, needed to feel again what it was like to have a complete soul. Because once the knife was in your hands you could once more interact with the missing part of you and become whole again.

"Try to get some sleep," Error advised, shifting his position so that the hilt of the knife was no longer visible from his coat pocket. "It's going to be a while before we can sleep safe and sound again. The Void tells of things to come and I don't think all of us will be living to see the next day tomorrow."

His words haunted your thoughts as you rolled over on the ground, closing your eyes. What would you dream of tonight? Could you even dream now that you were missing some of your soul? It was often said that it was essential for humans to dream lest they go insane so would you be pushed off the edge anyway, not being able to dream now that some of your soul was gone?

Would you -

It turns out that you could dream. Or at least you were pretty sure you were dreaming because you were no longer in your body but in another form entirely. But as the surroundings adjusted and you drank in the playing of what was going on, horror dawned on you. In the midst of your sleep your consciousness had shifted towards the knife, become a part of the knife just as much as it was you. You were inside the knife, resonating with the part of your soul trapped inside. Because a part of you was still awake within the knife, never sleeping or resting. So when your mortal body slept, it seemed that you would live within the knife until you were woken.

You were in Error's coat pocket, you were sure of that. That was where the knife had been when you drifted off to sleep and the slight swaying motion indicated that the glitch of a comedian was walking back and forth, keeping watch. It was quite a boring few hours that passed, nothing eventful happening all the while.

But light suddenly flooded your senses as you were lifted from the coat pocket, looking into Error's face as he examined you for a moment. "An interesting thing," the comedian commented, moving you back and forth. Of course there was nothing you could say or do because you were the knife and knives could not move on their own. A part of you sensed your sleeping form off in the distance and longed to reunite with the other half of your soul, to be whole again.

"Hey my broski, our bread amigo Geno says it's time for my shift. We thank you for your service to this radical country and all that funky stuff," Fresh piped in, throwing a mock bow. Error scoffed and said nothing, handing the knife over to the PSA skeleton. And you were moving farther and farther away from the other half of your soul, a sense of disparity clung to you. You had to go back, you had to meet the missing part of yourself!

"This isn't going to stop anything," Error growled, looking from the knife to your sleeping form. "Unless we can find a permanent solution, the human will manage to reunite with the knife and kill us all, you know that right?"

You wanted more than anything to be with the rest of your soul, you had to, had to! And the familiar sensation of insanity was chipping away at the edges of your logic and reasoning, leaving behind only an insatiable anger that could only be cured through murder and bloodshed. The skeletons were doing this to you on purpose, weren't they? They were keeping the other half of your soul away from you because they were afraid of the power you could wield if you were made whole again. You would show them, you would show them all!

But knives cannot move for they were inanimate objects or so the laws of physics dictated. But these would not bind you, you refused to allow such petty things to command your existence. The knife began to move, directed from your want and increasing desire to unite once more with the other half of your soul. Excitement coursed through you, watching through the knife's inanimate form, observing the look of confusion growing on Fresh's face.

The knife darted from Fresh's grasp and onto the floor, snaking its way closer and closer to your slumbering form. It was like your unconscious body knew all along because the moment the knife was inches away from your palm, your hand darted forward and clasped around the hilt and -

Awake!

You were awake and every sense in your body had been magnified in ways never though possible. It was better than before, better than the first time you had held the knife. You knew now that you could never live in full without this knife and you never wanted to live without this weapon again. It was essential to your life and you could never imagine a time when you would not have the knife, always in your hand and always with you, always killing and always slaughtering.

You could hear the shouts of the two skeletons, Error and Fresh as they called themselves, the two idiots rushing towards you in an attempt to restrain you. They would not kill you, the damn fools. But that would change when -

There was a skeleton who had just woken from his sleep, G, the seventh letter of the alphabet. The knife wanted him, wanted to feel the dust on its blade and so it commanded. The hunger burned inside the very depths of your core and you flung yourself onto the skeleton, slashing the knife across his chest, exhilarated as every fibre of your being was renewed as euphoria coursed through your veins, relishing in the kill. But you wanted to feel like this all the time, not only catch brief snippets of it. So you brought the knife down on G's skull and then on his arm and everywhere that a knife could stab. When he was nothing more than a pile of ash you were still cutting, still slicing.

A bony hand clasped on your shoulder. No, you would not have this! You would not be stopped again, you refused! The knife would never leave you again and you would never leave it. Anything that tried to do so would meet the blade.

But Error was there and another emotion came up, a different emotion that was a stark contrast from the knife's constant want to kill. You didn't want to kill this skeleton, and you didn't think you would feel the same joy if you killed him than when you did with G and the thousands of others you would soon slaughter. The anomaly stared into your eyes for a moment, trying to read, trying to catch a glimpse of any former of your self still remained. He must have detected some trace of yourself still alive, still fighting and struggling for existence.

"[Y/N]." The name felt foreign to you, had that been your name? You had no name now for no name could fully express what you were right now. You were nothing more than a knife and the knife was nothing more than you.

And then you did something you had never thought possible before. The knife in your hand glowed a deep ebony, reflected with a thousand stars that pulsed inside. You seemed to cut the air, burying the blade into the air and dragging it downwards, creating a rift that led to another dimension with a name unknown to you but a name did not matter for all inside would soon be dust.

You stepped through the rift with a smile on your face, waiting, anticipating the rush of exhilaration that would course through your veins when you turned the knife on those living inside. Error was still staring at you as the rift began to close up, some unreadable expression on his face.

"I'm going to save you." Those were the words that fell from him and those were the words that stirred up that weird feeling inside of you again. You didn't need to be saved, you were perfect, you were happy? What was there to change?

And then the rift closed and your view of him vanished, leaving nothing but the universe you had placed yourself in. Despite the euphoria that now pumped through your heart, there was another feeling that you did not like, a feeling that would not go away no matter how hard you tried to carve it out of you.

You felt alone.

And the chess piece on Gaster's chess board had left its army into an unknown, uncharted enemy territory where it was surrounded on both sides, no where to run and no where to hide.

Gaster chuckled to himself.

Everything was falling into place.