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Ethereal.
Light and shadows.
Mist and woods.
Malice swirling around crumbling stone.
Towers risen from the ground shining blue in the twilight.
Fields littered with broken swords and rusted shields.
Silence.
No crickets chirp.
No birds sing.
No moon shines tonight.
Above it all, dragons dance, a symphony of magic swirling around them. They carve paths through the world in between, guiding the magic of this abandoned world.
Magic flakes off them like feathers, drifting onto the world below. Life grows in every spot they touch, a shining essence of the goddesses. Flowers bloom from embers of flame along the edge of a mountain ravine. In a lake, fish swim below electric light. Ice falls into boiling springs, flush with healing magic. Everywhere the dragons dance, life continues, even a hundred years after the rise of darkness once more.
The dragons guide the light to where it is needed, surrounding monster camps with poisonous plants and biting bugs and murky swamps. They warn them, stay here, stay away. They call to their people, here is danger, here is evil. Watch. Listen. They cry out for change, the poison in the air thickening with every revival.
The hero awakens, young and lost. He is weak, feeble, his mind empty. He holds no connection to the race he belongs to or the world he grew up in. Instead he finds himself tangled in the magic of the land. He finds it guiding him to forest sprites and fairy pools and treasure chests. He does not heed the warnings but embraces them, black blood spilling over soil as steel cuts through the evil, only to rise again under a red moon. He finds forgotten temples and fills them with his presence, reading aloud from their stone walls and conversing with the statues they protect. He follows the magic to the dragons themselves, watching their dance from afar, chasing after fallen stars and harvesting from the life they bring with them from the space that is not, the world between.
More monster blood is spilled. The soil grows thick with it, the earth draining away the darkness only for it all to rise under red light. Monsters feed on the darkness, coats shining with silver fur or pools of shadow. The dragons dance, over and over and over the land, magic falling in their wake.
The hero arrives before the spirit of fire on a moonlit night. He asks only for a single scale. The dragon does not pause its dance, but the winds increase and the hero rises, wood and fabric lifting him towards the heavens. A single scale is pierced by iron, falling like a meteor to the world below, shining with divinity, a beacon to the hero. Here I am. This is yours, from me to you. Take me, it calls. My magic here rests, yours to use.
The hero takes his scale with great care, the magic inside radiating even from the slate at his hip. It escapes in motes of light across the land the hero travels, spreading into every nook and cranny.
The hero takes the scale to a spring, hidden in the hills. He drops it in, its magic pulled into the blessed water where it dissolves, filling the air with its blessing.
A hero awakens. An ancient shrine opens to the world for the first time in a century, and out emerges Farore’s chosen. He is weak and lost, but a light guides him. He gains strength. He finds what others miss. He looks in the hollows of trees and the deepest of lakes and climbs sheer mountain walls.
He finds his home with the wild, rather than in it. The dragons watch him cleanse corruption from the world, fight relentlessly against reviving foes. They watch him fish from their rivers and harvest from their woods and speak to their people, the Koroks and Fairies and the Great Spirits.
He finds the nests of civilization that persist in the darkness, songs on the air, and laughter in the breeze. He learns from them, traveling to every hidden settlement, from mountain to coast, desert to volcano. He learns to cook and heal, to weave magic into a dish and focus it through a weapon. He finds not an abandoned world but a broken one, healing and strong despite its troubles.
He finds another spirit, entangled in the darkness above a goddess statue as the sun is setting. He clings to a paraglider riding the breeze, a bow ready to draw, an arrow ready to notch. Four shots into the evil eyes and the spirit is freed.
The hero alights upon the frozen stone before the statue of the goddess. A single scale lays before him, a voice of divinity echoing in his head. The spring shines with divinity as the scale falls into unfrozen waters. The magic expands, the spring feeds the world. The land rejuvenates as the blessings saturate the soil. The monsters stop growing stronger.
The Hero awakens from a hundred year slumber to repeat the task of his predecessor ten thousand years ago. He pulls a magic blade from a magic wood. He gathers armor and items, crafts elixirs, and musters his strength, facing test after test. He travels the land and helps its people, faces its enemies and comes out triumphant. He brings hope to people who have lost so much.
He finds the final dragon deep in the jungle, emerging from a waterfall near another sacred spring. It rises above him in a silent dance, feathers of electricity falling around him to crackle and snap at the grass. Farosh pauses as it hangs over the edge, the thunder of the waterfall seeming muted in the face of this force of nature. The hero kneels before this creature, but the dragon inclines its head, a single scale falling into the lake below.
Nearby is the final spring, guarded by the maw of a dragon. Its walls are filled with old magic, something reflected in the land here, with ancient trees and crumbling stone. The final scale is set into the waters with utmost respect for its nature, a gift from one so high. Little has caused this hero to pause on his journey, but he takes a moment to pay his respects in this sacred spot, his last stop before his greatest battle yet.
Light floods the waters, a statue watching, the land receiving this final blessing. Ancient evils loose foothold as the magic seeps into earth and sky, a sacred dance carrying it across the land. They flirt the line between the here and there, the space between.
The hero makes one final journey, through the jungle and past a coastal town, towards the center of this land where the great evil waits.
He travels through the deepest parts of the castle up to the highest peak, into its inner sanctum where a great seal finally breaks.
He fights a monster that was once a man, and cleanses his world of darkness once more.
Above dragons wind a path through the heavens, celestial beings spreading healing magic over every region and through every breeze, until the divinity they shed has soaked into every river, rock and tree.
Perpetual. Everlasting.
The light of a full moon bathes the world in silver light. Frogs croak near the creek, crickets stir in the tall grass. Sparrows chirp their final song in nearby woods. The world is not abandoned. It is healing, surviving in spite of its trauma. And above it all a new story is woven into the heavens, to stand for all time.