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Karl was once a man with power.
Not power in a traditional sense as his fiance once had. Karl was never one to get himself involved in politics or running a country. He was powerful in a different definition of the word.
He could navigate the threads of reality itself. He could tangle and weave both the past and future to his own design and watch the events unfold before his very eyes. He could craft new timelines at the drop of a hat. With this gift he was more powerful than even the god he’d seen nestled into the fabrics of both the far past and the distant future.
Except he wasn’t.
With great power comes great responsibility, and he was reckless- desperate.
And messing with the very mold of existence is bound to have consequences.
The first time he’d stepped foot into the past he was excited- determined to watch and observe and figure out what exactly made the world what it was today.
He’d observed a small village from atop a tree, bright clothes not fit for the time contrasting against the stark green. Events of the far past unfolded beneath him acted out by faces far too familiar for comfort. His heart constricted in his chest as he watched citizen after citizen succumb to the wrath of the town mayor and a man in a mask. A child with the same bright eyes and small stature of L’Manberg’s president nursed those he could from the brink of death.
No- this wasn’t right. This was cruel and tragic. He couldn’t just sit and watch when he had the power to prevent the suffering of the possible ancestors of people he knew. (After all, why else would Quackity and Helga have the same mischievous glint in their eyes and crooked smile?)
He made his decision and took a step back in time once more, walking the same dirt road for hopefully the final time. The shy child whom he learned was named Robin asked what he was wearing when he stated he needed to speak to the man in a mask. He had a theory to test. He leaves with a sense of pride blooming in his chest after speaking with the man dubbed Cornelius and the town mayor. He’d talked with them for hours about the plans he knew would doom the first life when the dusty sky faded to ink. They yelled at him for hours. The confrontation ended with a bribe and pleading to get through in any way he could. The mayor was the first to crack and with his partner in crime flaking, the other did as well.
Pride brewed in him after learning to weave time in any way he desired. The timeline was corrected. Tonight, nobody would die. None of these innocent people would suffer. That was how it should be.
A man with a wooden mask watched him climb a tree. Karl gave him a bubbly smile from above. The man waved back curiously.
If the first time was heart wrenching, watching it unfold again with his interventions was disastrous.
The masked man was the first to fall victim, and his blind partner and grieving son joined not long after. In the end bodies piled up like Karl’s increasing guilt until only two remained. Two overlooked by most of the village and driven mad with a desire for revenge.
With Karl’s interventions, they finally sought it and won.
He’d done enough irreparable damage.
Karl passed through the swirling bubbling portal with tears welling in his eyes. Maybe time should’ve been left to weave its own story.
He scrambled around the present day for his fiances and clung to them. He ignored their concerned questions on why is he crying? “Can you tell us what happened?” “Please we just want to help you.” He sobbed harder. A cold void grows and implants itself in his chest, gripping tightly and sucking out the warmth from his bones.
Nobody but him needed to carry the weight of what he’d just caused.
The second time he travels, it’s with a heavy heart that he is reminded of the last disaster. Ever since then something has changed. Even his fiances have both told him how tired and distant he looks. Each time they do he strains a sad smile onto his lips and tells them he’s fine. The worried glare they send his way tells him they don’t believe that for a moment.
This time he is pulled into the delicate thread of the distant future. Water stretches across the world further than the eye can see and houses secrets lost to time beneath its waves. Pockets of above water civilization litter the ocean and the closest to one of the biggest secrets is a group of four fishermen.
He wakes up with a fog hovering over his mind. What was his name again? Isaac, right. He’s a fisherman. Today would be just like any other with his 3 friends. Their voices are familiar in a way he can’t explain. Maybe he knew them in another life. What were their names?
A weight sits in a navy blue pocket, light yet not unnoticed as he slides to sit on the edge of his bunk. He pulls out a brassy metal object. Hm, since when did he have a pocket watch? The foreign weight in his palm tells him that he’s missing something- the answer is on the tip of his tongue- a name: a person, if only he could reach out and grasp the missing string that would tie this all together. He’s pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of his friends arguing over breakfast.
A book signed by a mysterious “K” greets them instead of the usual calm fading into boisterous laughter that accompanies them out to sea day after day. It tells them the location of a city lost beneath the depths of time that holds the answers to their burning questions surrounding the past. They’re joking and laughing on their way to find the lost city mentioned in the book, and Cletus is yelling at Benjamin for snacking again. Crumbs fall into the water and a few brave fish swim up to claim them. Isaac swallows a lump forming in his throat. Something is off. He shouldn’t be here.
Much to everyone’s surprise the city comes into view below them in the shape of circular domes scattered across the ocean floor. The entrance is ripe with cobwebs clinging to an iron entryway to the sea floor. After some tinkering and fooling around someone manages to pry the thing open. The group descends a stairwell that lands them in one of the many smaller domes. Colorful fish dance around in harmony with the piece of history they now intruded upon. The next room contains a person. His skin is splotched in black and white mismatched yellow and purple eyes to go with. When Isaac asks their name, they hesitate. They call themself “Ranbob.”
Ranbob states that he has poor memory, and doesn’t one hundred percent know his way around this place. There may be keys to search around for and not every room will be accessible. They also introduce themself as a descendant of one of the people this place had previously held worship to before being abandoned.
“Who?” Benjamin asks. A reasonable query.
Isaac and Ranbob say “Ranboo” at the exact same time. The name spills out of his mouth before he can try and temper it. They share a shocked expression.
He’s never heard the name Ranboo before. He brushes it off as word of someone so important is sure to get around, though the moment sits in the back of his mind for most of his time there.
He was forgetting something. Something extremely important- but what?
Ranbob appears to buy the excuse. They lead the group from dome to dome, showing off various rooms and the history surrounding them.The lump in his throat that refuses to leave each time a book is read tells him to take everything he reads with a grain of salt. He’s not sure why portions of the floor are stained with dried blood or littered with bones and dust, and he doesn’t ask. And he isn’t sure why the secret room of colorful swirls containing an entryway to the sea calls him like a home.
Things are going well- until they aren’t.
“Nobody lives here.”
Isaac is frozen in icy shock as Charles’ body drops to the ground nearly dead. A pool of blood forms around his middle after Ranbob pulls the diamond sword from the fatal wound. Light blue wool presses against his trembling form, he’s backed into a wall. He’s next.
“Nobody leaves here.” Ranbob’s eyes snap over to him, The person’s eyes filled with bloodlust and a desire to please the deity-like figure they worship: Dream..
His body moves on its own: pulling out the pocket watch and clicking it open before he can't process anything.
The sword plunges into his heart and he gasps, but the pain doesn’t come. He stumbles out of a portal and collapses onto a stone floor.
Holy shit. What just happened?
He’s trembling. What was his name again? Karl, that’s right. Not Isaac. He’s a time traveller.
Was that really what would become of their future? Just a deranged killer in a sea of nothing to remember his friends and loved ones by tangled and knotted history?
He pulls himself over to lean against a stone wall to process what happened before climbing the ladder leading to the secret room in his library.
The timeline is tangled, and he’s the only person with the power to fix it.
His fears are only confirmed when he travels a third time, and doomsday unravels around him. TNT rains from the sky and bloodlines drag the bodies of the dead. In the rubble he spots his two most favorite people clinging to each other with what little life they have left and explosives fall right on top of them and-
He knows what he has to do, even if he has to sacrifice himself to do it.
Every time he redesigns the current timeline to prevent a catastrophic event, another one takes its place.
He’d hidden the button that sent Manberg to nothing but ashes and rubble during the first festival. In its place a massacre happened. He’d attempted to mend what had been broken in the village again and again but any further changes led to just as if not worse than before.
He doesn’t even know if it’s possible to save them anymore.
But he could never forgive himself if he didn't at least try.
Every time he travels bits and pieces of his memory fly away and allow the cold void to grow and latch on harder. It gets harder to tell apart the events of today and the past or future. Dozens of people blur into one. He’s called Tubbo Robin and Quackity Cletus multiple times without realizing the mistake until they point it out to him.
He knows his fiances are beyond worried- they have every reason to be. He knows he’s not so slowly slipping away and soon he’ll be a shell of what he used to be. A corpse shambling around in his body. He’s already halfway there.
There’s been many times in which he wakes up with a figure on either side of him and he panics. He doesn’t remember where he is or who he is or who they are until one of them stirs and presses a feather light touch on his arm and tells him everything is alright.
He has nightmares about what he’s seen. Horrible, vivid nightmares in which he relives the events he’s visited, and that’s what he uses to excuse the far away and terrified glint in his eyes that accompanies him more often than not upon waking. If they see right through it neither of them say a word..
Each time he travels he loses more and more of himself. And they’re losing him too.
He knows it’s only a matter of time until he’s completely gone.
It’s time for him to prepare- to decorate his final resting place.
He writes in books for himself so if- no, not if. When he loses it all he may be able to read the notes and remember just a little bit. He’d been keeping diary entries. The first several books had neat handwriting and complete thoughts. The most recent was erratic and barely readable even to his own eyes, obviously scratched down in a state of panic and confusion.
He finds memories stored in pictures of himself and his friends to snatch and store away in a new book, scribbling down what little he knows next to their names. Next to Quackity and Sapnap he writes “We’re married, I think. Or we were planning to get married before this whole shitshow.” He.. he thinks they had a wedding planned out and everything.
During a fleeting moment of clarity in which he can actually remember most everything, he writes a proper goodbye letter.
He can feel it in his bones: The nothingness that devoured him bit by bit was reaching its final stages. One of these days he would walk through that all too familiar portal and be completely gone. Not physically, but Karl as he was would never come back. Maybe, he might forget how to travel back altogether and get stuck in a place he shouldn’t exist. Who knows what would become of him then.
He’s close. He has to be. He’s right on the brink of finding the missing piece that would right all the wrongs of the world and make everything worth it if the others could have a happy ending.
If he could at least give them that, every time he had to watch someone he knew die and be unable to tell anyone how it felt to hold the entire weight of the world, would all be worth it. It’s worth dying for the people he cares about to the ends of the Earth.
He makes sure everything in his secret library is in order: all the books in a place he’d find (if he ever rediscovered it, that is). And the note in plain sight in case someone else stumbles upon it and would return it to its intended recipients.
He’s fully aware that if he comes back, Sapnap and Quackity could very easily come to resent the shell of a person that’ll take his place. Grief is powerful. And Karl resents him too in a way. He knows he shouldn’t but the person that’d be born from his ashes is a reminder of all he sacrificed fully aware he’d almost certainly gain nothing from.
The portal is open. Teal and magenta swirling together and taunting him with a bright glow- beckoning him. Soon, he thinks to no one in particular. He’ll answer its call soon. He has one final thing to do before he leaves.
His trusty pocket watch. It’s the only thing that has stayed with him consistently wherever he travelled beside the clothes on his back. Even when he isn’t in his own body it finds a way to him.
He flips the covering open and carves into it as carefully as someone with unmanageable shaking hands can.
Don’t forget who you are.
Karl.
There’s a very good chance that it’ll never mean anything to his future self. That he would never remember anything and it all was just a waste of time. But for now it eases his last anxiety.
Now, he’s ready to go.
He flips through the pictures of the people he would gladly endure all of it for again before he steps into the portal for the final time with a smile painted on his face.
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The man in the multicolored hoodie doesn’t know where he is.