Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Darkness. All he can see is darkness. He can’t feel anything nor see anything beyond the black that colors his vision. However, this is… not an unfamiliar feeling. For sure he has never previously experienced what he is experiencing right now, but there is some sort of comforting yet unknown familiarity. It’s almost as if he is in a situation like this in his past life… Almost.

That familiarity he feels disappears as his senses return to him. Time. Place. He can feel it all. As he opens his eyes to a blinding, ethereal light, he begins to register every fact present to the situation. He can see a bright sky both day and night. He can see floating islands. He can feel the coldness from a passing wind. He can see glass both brilliant and obsidian. With all this, he draws one conclusion:

Unearthly.

That is the only way he can describe this strange new world.

Never has he seen such a white world and never has he seen glass acting so autonomously. They flit around, dance in the air and float along slowly like leaves in the breeze. The strangest part is that they reflect all but nothing. It’s quite a shame since he doesn’t know himself at all. Not even his face, and not even his name.

“This world…” he says to himself, and winces at his hoarse voice. He must have not spoken for a while.

The boy clumsily wanders around the island he awoke on, getting a grasp of the surroundings. The place is high up, terrifyingly so. In fact, it is hovering in the sky, above the pale world beneath. Aside from similarly floating platforms out of his reach however, there isn’t much else. That is, except for the bizarre and prismatic glass beckoning him to give it attention. They gleam and glimmer with mystery, with an ethereal aura that promises something that no mind can imagine. The boy reaches out his hand, drawn in by the sparkle of the floating glass, and is greeted by some sort of vision.

He can see someone smiling in a brightly lit room, and he can hear faint laughter. Soon, the vision fades out and his gaze is set on the glass that showed him it. In bewilderment, he turns the shard around and around in his hand, wondering about what it is and its nature. Despite his confusion however, he feels a certain affinity for the strange glass. It had called out to him and he responded, their peculiar bond established and tightened. But it’s time to go back to the present, he feels. If the bright glass shows happiness, then what would the dark glass show?

…

No. He already knows the answer, and he doesn’t like it a single bit. However, his curiosity drives him to touch the glass as dark as night. Soon, death and tragedy stare him in the face. Guilt and regret not belonging to him drives into his heart like wedges. The boy looks at ‘his’ hands for some sort of solace, to take his eyes off the tragedy before him, but realizes that they do not belong to him. He checks the rest of his body, and realizes that it isn’t his. Fear suddenly grabs him by the fist and squeezes him tight, afraid that he would not end up where he started.

However, the death grip on him relaxes and slips away as a familiar feeling of fading washes over him like a soothing blanket of light.

And yet… Even as the ‘nightmare’ ends, he is still frozen in place. His eyes are filled with terror and his throat feels constricted.

Death…

For whatever reason, it feels familiar. And that ‘guilt’ he experienced…

It too is disgustingly familiar. He can’t place where or why, but it’s like he knew it as an old confidant in a past life.

However, despite the familiarity, it didn’t belong to him. So what exactly is the glass? Visions, perhaps? Portals? Could they even be portals? Memories…?

The last answer makes something in his mind click, and everything falls into place.

“Memories…” he whispers.

They’re memories. Recollections of certain events in a person’s life.

If they are memories, then how can they be stored in glass? Are they even magical in nature? Whose memories are these? How is it even possible for them to exist? But most of all… Where is he? How is all this possible?

He begins to pace back and forth to collect his thoughts and for whatever reason, the glass seems to trail around him. Annoyed, he tries to scatter them by waving his hand.

Unexpectedly, they follow where his hand goes. Noticing this, he lifts his hand above, and they trail behind. They fly around wherever his hand directs them such as looping around on command and swirling like a whirlpool. So, he can control them and can make them bend to his will. For a while, the boy simply entertains himself by swirling the shards, making them rise and fall back down like rain. He forgets all his questions and fear, too enchanted by the glass and its capabilities.

But as he manipulates the shards, an unwelcome question makes its way into his head: How can he do this?

He stops, and the glass falls down like rain. How can he do this? He shouldn’t be able to. More importantly,

Who is he?

A sound like tinkling chimes distracts him. He quickly turns around to find the source of the sound, and sees a lone blue shard that stands away from its fellow fragments. It feels… different. It feels like it can answer all his questions. It feels like the missing part of his soul, fitting like a lost puzzle piece in the strange and gaping hole of his memories. It calls for him, and his mind is screaming for it. He can’t think, consumed by his desire for that shard. Its song is melancholic yet hopeful, oxymoronic yet makes perfect sense. He can feel it. That shard is a part of his being.

He races towards the mysterious shard, ignoring all the other drifting fragments at the side. They make way for him, spreading out as he reaches his hand out to grab it tightly. As he holds it close to him, he can feel the world begin to change. This is a memory different from all others. This memory… is his.

Once upon a time, things surely were better… Or were they? Was the past really any better than the present?

The one known as Wild was a young boy forced with the destiny of a hero. A destiny so heavy that his voice was to be heard by none. Chosen by the Blade of Evil’s Bane, he was destined to fight against an abomination sealed away ten thousand years ago.

But in the end, did that even matter?

He will say it once, short and sweet:

He failed.

Everyone died.

The amount of people who survived the tragedy that still lived until the present could be counted on one hand. The comrades he may have once known are dead, and no one remembers their names. Looking at the warm bodies littering the ground whose blood dye the battlefield red… Smelling the iron like it isn’t a scene from his memory… He doesn’t know how to describe how he feels. It’s not fear. It’s numb, but terrifying.

No, not even terror could describe it.

What he is looking for is… horror.

Knowing what exactly happened and the circumstances behind it while also knowing precisely the grim future that lay ahead... It is disgusting. Knowing everything, what would change? Truly, he is damned with fateful knowledge. And what he can do… is nothing. Nothing, except for screaming, but even his desperate screaming would not do anything. Because no matter how much he screams, the past is the past. It’s a memory.

It’s his memory.

Even he, as a viewer of his own memory, can’t help but shriek. Unlike in those memories previously, he can’t control his body. He can’t move. He can’t change things. Dark skies mourn the passing of the kingdom’s only hope and fire crackles around him to serve as a reminder that things would only get worse.

As his consciousness fails, the world begins to weep. He plummets into the watery blackness of unconsciousness, too similar to the void that encompassed him when he first woke up in this new world. In the same fashion, blinding light forces him to wake up. It is golden, and he can hear a saddened voice telling him to save the world. So he does.

He walks out of the cave and gazes upon a world still healing from the deep fractures of a tragedy. A world forever scarred. Looking at such a tragic yet beautiful sight, his heart can’t help but hurt a little.

As he picks up the pieces of a broken world, he begins to repair the land with his own hand. He meets new people, helps retake the corrupted mechanical wonders, purges the blight from the land and saves what little life is left after the tragedy. At the same time, he picks up the fragments of his scattered memory. Perhaps it is for the better that he hasn’t remembered all of it.

Perhaps it is for the better that Wild and the Link from a century ago stay separate.

Upon heading to the castle sanctum and facing what had taken everything away from him, he can feel rage. A white-hot and pure fury. His grip trembles as he tightly grips the hilt of the sacred blade in his hand. Over and over again he strikes, rage poured in every single slash.

It had taken everything away from him.

Everything.

He keeps on slicing and slashing, the hits only getting stronger as he pulls on more of his strength and courage. With a final strike, he defeats the abomination.

Filled with fear, it flees to the fields of Hyrule where it unleashes unhinged destruction, razing the fields with unholy fire. In response, his princess creates a bow and arrows of pure light, granting him use of it to strike the beast’s weak points that she opens with her sealing power. The last arrow that lets loose strikes the beast’s writhing eye, letting the goddess reincarnate emerge from golden light. Radiance pours from her hand as a swirl of dark pink and black tries to escape from her and her sealing power. The divine light keeps expanding and drowns the abomination within it, its brilliance unfading until the last of it has been snuffed out. Then, it shrinks into nothingness and ends.

…This had taken one hundred years. One hundred years to avenge everyone. One hundred years to save his princess from her own seal. And he has to ask himself as he stands in the middle of a grassy field after the battle:

Is this really a victory? Is it really a victory when the cost is so great?

At least there is one silver lining he can take comfort in; He can finally rest, now that his duty is finished... or can he?

Heroes of Courage are bound by duty to save the world, whether past, present or future.

However, as he tumbles into a new time, eight other people stand by him for the same reason. Unlike that cold slate hooked on his hip and the wolf which accompanied him, he can truly converse with them. Ironically though, that wolf turns out to be a different form that Twilight, a fellow Hero of Courage, took on this whole time. Said hero had nearly died, his gravely wounded body bathed in the orange hues of a sunset. Even so, all of those other heroes have stuck with him. Even before that nightmarish sunset, they have always cared for him and helped him. By day, they would travel across many different lands to help the people there and by night, they would share stories by the campfire.

Ever so recently, an anomalous glass shard appeared while they were resting, dancing among the flames. Its alluring melody and reflections of an unfamiliar land reached out for him and he took its hand, reaching into the fire for the glass. A blinding flash of light and then…

Oh. He had been the one to cause all of this, hadn’t he? How could he forget? How dare he forget.

This may be conjecture but since no one else woke up with him, they have to be somewhere else in this world. Not only that, they may or may not have lost their memories like him.

But he will find them.

Wild will make sure of it.

Chapter Text

His head is pounding. His heart is throbbing. His breathing is rapid. His arms, sore. His legs, tired from flailing in response to the sheer agony his past had wrought upon his mind.

He failed his kingdom. He failed his comrades. He failed his friends.

What caused all that? His damned curiosity. A hundred years ago, he had pulled the Sword of Evil's Bane out of childish curiosity. That had led to disaster. And just recently, he had grabbed the peculiar shard in the campfire out of that very same curiosity. Why is— No! Now’s not the time when the rest of his brothers are in separate parts of this world. He pushes away these thoughts and snaps back to the present, observing his surroundings.

The strange glass shards from before had gathered around him, beckoning the champion to touch them. He does so, a brilliant light briefly flashing before the glass flies towards the empty sky. They line up and piece together up at the edge of the platform, forming what resembles steps in a flight of stairs leading downwards. Strangely, nothing connects them, simply floating in suspended animation.

A spark of hope flashes in his eyes, brightly burning, and his heart is set with resolute determination to reunite with his lost family. However, before heading down the glass stairs, he checks his equipment. Most of his equipment is gone save for his sword, slate and paraglider. As for his hood, it is on his person the entire time.

At least he has the essentials, albeit the bare minimum. Where has it all went?

He carefully steps onto the first step, then the next, the one after it and so on. There are no railings to prevent a slip, but that is fine since he has a paraglider after all. Even so, he is in the heavens above, where one wrong step could determine your fate.

The thought makes even him slightly scared, heart beating slightly faster. Even worse, the stairs are completely clear. For that reason, he doesn't look down. He has been in high places but never this high, not to mention descending glass stairs without railings.

He descends while looking around, seeing many clouds and a magnificent sky around him. He can see spires and cliffs below along with a myriad of ruins, pausing for a moment to capture the sight in a picture. Once the beauty of the heavens is captured in a slice of digitzed time, he then continues downwards into the spectacular and equally mysterious land that awaits him. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, Wild finds himself faced with a vast, grassy plain which reminds him of the wilderness which he calls his home. On impulse, he quickly falls behind on his back to take in the softness and warmth of the grass.

Softness is present, but warmth is not. Instead, unclear and ephemeral visions flash in his mind.

Wild quickly sits up and gets on his feet at the intrusive visions. As far as he can see, there are none of the strange glass shards floating around. However, the visions feel similar to the memory glass he touched while on the island.

As such, there is only one viable answer. He kneels down and plucks a bit of grass... and yet another memory is shown to him. Despite looking like grass, it is simply the memory glass having taken a different form. Maybe, just maybe he can find some answers regarding this world.

For the next hour, or two, or perhaps even more, he combs the field for answers. And yet, all he is shown are evanescent visions of forgotten pasts. The only two memories that he can prevent from slipping away are about a pink haired girl reaching the sky with a spiral staircase and twins watching the night sky from atop a lighthouse. So far, all his efforts have been fruitless. There really is no point in trying to search for answers in such a huge field, so he turns to face the fork in the road at the edge of the field.

The rest of the area is surrounded by cliffs that lead to different areas, all of which are inaccessible. The left leads to an ordinary looking coast. At the right is a huge courtyard with towering structures, ancient buildings with countless complex arches. For whatever esoteric reason, his heart suddenly urges his legs to run towards the courtyard, to break into a sky-splitting sprint.

Letting go of all control, he breaks into a mad dash for the source and simply follows where his feet guide him.

Nothingness. Then, a sudden warmth and white light. The first thing he sees is a grand and silent courtyard. The second thing he sees is some sort of labyrinthine castle, its spires touching the skies above. He tries to reach his hand above, to touch a wispy cloud and feel something, but light gathers into his hand and melds into a strange scarlet shard. The cold feeling in his hand causes him to immediately retract it, observing the foreign yet ethereal object in his hand. Strangely though, the glass doesn't reflect his face. Instead, it shows him a place he doesn't recognize; the view of a castle from the bridge atop a moat.

He tries to wrack his memory for anything, for even a single bit of information about this foreign place, and nothing comes up. He tries to search his head even more, and not even a single memory resurfaces.

His heart begins to beat terrifyingly fast as the realization that he can't remember anything comes crashing down on him like a tidal wave, like a drowning storm. His breaths become short and gasping as he can't seem to recall even one thing, even one place or face.

Not even his own name. It's just him and that red fragment. That red fragment is all he knows.

It sends him into panic as he frantically looks around, trying to find a trigger that will somehow make him remember. He blinks rapidly as he unsteadily gets up and looks around, breaths still racing. When he turns around however, a frazzled blonde with a mismatched blue tunic greets him.

They look at each other, one full of alarm and the other with excited hope. Then, the stranger speaks.

“Hyrule? Is that you?”

Hyrule? Is that his name?

“...I don't know,” he replies. The blonde puts his hand on his hips and observes the other's appearance, incredulous.

“Green tunic, brown inner, bracelet, definitely Hyrule,” the boy in blue remarks. Hyrule... Is that the name he went by in the past he can't remember for some reason?

“I'm not sure about that,” Hyrule remarks. Their meeting remains cautious, Hyrule suspicious and Blue-Tunic questioning.

“Just like me...” Blue-Tunic mutters. "You don't remember me? Wild? Not Twilight? Not Wars? Not Time? No one?"

“No one, not even my name.”

“...This isn't good. You can't remember a single thing, right?” Wild asks.

“Yes...”

“Just follow me. You and I, we search this place for your memory.” Common sense dictates that you don't follow a stranger. However, this stranger named Wild seems to know what he's doing, so Hyrule opts to pocket the red shard and follow the former when he turns to explore the nearby building. Wild disappears behind a sea of arches and Hyrule does too, entering a dim ruin filled with bizzare glass that seem to float, lit by soft golden sunlight. Wild softly snorts at the sight of the glass, moving his right hand in a beckoning motion to call the strange mirrors to his side.

With wide eyes, Hyrule watches as they fly to the other teen, witnessing a miracle. Out of curiousity, he imitates the motion and glass also follows his hand. However, they begin to attach and consolidate as they arrive, unlike Wild's disconnected flock. The crew of glass on the champion's side suddenly drops to the ground as he sees the wildly amalgamating glass like mismatched puzzle pieces.

“How did you do that?!” Wild suddenly starts, in equal surprise and awe. Spooked, Hyrule's assorted gathering of glass also clatters to the ground, the attached pieces disconnecting.

“I... I don't know,” he answers. "I just wanted to follow what you were doing and then it started to attach to each other."

“Can you teach me how to do that?” Wild asks. Hyrule does the same motion as before, the dropped glass rising like marionettes.

“Just... will the glass to do something, I guess,” the boy in green mumbles. Wild tries to will the glass to attach and consolidate, to form a jagged pane like his companion, yet the glass still stays separate. He squints his eyes and tries again, but they refuse to do his bidding. The champion sighs and turns to Hyrule.

“Well, it's not working.”

“Sorry about that,” Hyrule apologizes. “I just can't put it into words.”

“At least it makes the job of finding your memory easier. Let's go.” They traverse dark corridors, halls and chambers, calling countless glass to them. Wild shows Hyrule how the memory glass work and lets the latter peer into every shard, trying to find the one that resonates with him.

An unknown amount of time and building disappointment later, they emerge emptyhanded back into the light. Wild's eyes have dimmed, some sort of despair beginning to bloom in his eyes. The slump in his posture and softer volume when talking further proves that. In a somber mood, they exit the courtyard and into the plains.

Hyrule didn't live up to Wild's expectations, did he? He has disappointed the first person he met. With that realization, his posture follows suit as his steps become heavier and heavier for each blade of grass they pass by.

For a first day in a new world, losing all his memory and disappointing someone who used to know him isn't doing wonders for him. In fact, his eyelids begin to droop when Wild tells him that he can sense another presence like how he did with Hyrule nearby.

Chapter Text

The soft thud of Hyrule's boots with the brushing of reeds makes him feel something indescribable. He closes his eyes and takes in the cool of the wind, the chill of the empty air and sounds of swaying grass. Something in his head suddenly clicks, and his view becomes distorted. He clutches his left hand to his forehead as a feeling like being tossed overtakes him, nearly tripping as he tries to regain his balance.

The first thing he sees when the world stabilizes is a barren and desolate land slowly healing from utter destruction. Though filled with danger in every dark corner, the beauty of the guiding canopy of stars above or tiny flowers that grow in barren wastelands sow seeds of hope. Little life peeks through tiny cracks in the ground, bound to someday heal. A blanket of light overtakes all his senses, warm and soothing as it covers the entire world in brilliance.

Then, he sees Wild’s strangely understanding expression and feels coldness in the palm of his left hand. Hyrule chooses to pay more attention to the melancholy chill of the object enclosed in his hand, and discovers a clear glass shard. Looking at it, he can feel like it’s somehow not meant to exist. And yet, it feels… fragmented. Like it’s not whole.

As Hyrule continues staring and pondering, Wild almost chuckles.

“Now you know what I go through.” Looking up, he sees the other boy has a miniscule smile on his face, that understanding expression even more obvious.

“Know what you… go through?” Hyrule asks, unable to control his curiosity.

“I’ve lost my memory a grand total of two times,” Wild half-declares, arms held out. “I still haven’t recovered fully from the first and the second happened just hours ago, I guess. Before everything was wiped in this new place, I regained memories through flashbacks that pop up when certain things I associate with certain memories happen to be present. Not really fun in practice.”

Hyrule simply nods, getting the message. Losing your memory twice… He doesn’t even know how to deal with losing it once.

“Anyways, we should get a move on,” Wild remarks, continuing his not-so-leisurely stroll towards the coast just a distance away. They walk in silence, looking around at the cliffs and grass, both unsure how to talk to the other. Some tension settles between them as they head towards the beach. Sharp, overhanging cliffs greet them as they step from ground to sand, their footprints leaving a dent in the pure white sand like boots to snow. Water begins lapping at the edge of the shore as if in excitement and expectation, turning sand gray from its waves.

Without a second thought, Wild rushes ahead into the water and flings it skyward, the water’s sheen revitalizing the previously dull and discouraged look he wore. However, the water suddenly freezes in place and crystallizes into glass, standing still within the air as if having been frozen in time. Instinctively, the champion reaches out for a glimmering fragment, pulling it away from its stasis. He peers into the glass and sees the gentle shifting of an ethereal emerald ocean. Awed, he grabs another. And another. And—

“A bit distracted, are we?” Hyrule teases. Wild grins.

“Never change, Rulie. Never change.” A hint of confusion, doubt and sadness flickers across Hyrule’s face. However, Wild’s shoulders slacken as he realizes what he had implied.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” he apologizes.

“It’s fine,” Hyrule brushes off.

“Being compared to your past self that you don’t even know isn’t fun. I should know.”

“You… understand?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Wild turns back and walks over to Hyrule, gently placing a reassuring hand on the other’s shoulder.

“I’m not really good with all this emotional stuff, but well… just know that I can understand.”

“…Thanks a lot.” They stand in silence for a while, not knowing what to say or do. Despite that, the expected awkwardness in the air has been replaced by a sense of something like comfort and reassurance. Eventually, Wild begins walking in the direction of a rocky outcropping that holds a lighthouse. Hyrule follows, able to sense a strange type of magic in the direction of the lighthouse. How does he even begin to describe it? It’s like a pull. A whisper. A call to reunite.

His feet begin walking faster and faster without his permission, leaving a cloud of white sands in his wake when his walk turns into a frantic dash. Wild, also feeling this pull, runs towards the source. They race up a spiraling staircase that wraps around the lighthouse like a snake, zooming past the intricate ornaments attached and to a glass platform at the very top. The two step over an ornate golden railing and stop just under a dial depicting a moon and stars to see a turquoise tunic and a mess of wind-tousled hair the color of the sun sitting at the edge of the platform.

So engrossed in his little world, the one with the sunshine-like hair doesn’t notice until Wild puts a hand on his shoulder. Turning back, he jumps from shock and nearly falls forward, Wild narrowly grabbing the back of his tunic. Dangling from the edge, the boy gasps a bit, Hyrule having to assist Wild to pull him back.

“Crisis… averted…” the boy says, then bursts into giggles. Wild also laughs while Hyrule simply folds his hands with a small smile. As the laughter dies down, a certain air of cautiousness settles down like a thin blanket that threatens to get thicker with the wrong decision.

“Who… who are you?” the boy asks.

“I’m Wild. The one in the green tunic is Hyrule.”

It takes a moment for Wild to process what the boy has just said, but once it settles on him, his teeth grit together while his fist clenches.

“Not you too…” he mutters. “My luck must be terrible because everyone I’ve met has somehow lost their memory.”

“Wait…” the boy says. “You know your name? Do… Do you have your memories?”

Wild nods. “Not only that, I know your name as well.”

“My name? What is it?”

“Wind. Your name is Wind.”

“How do you know me?”

“All three of us used to travel with six others in a group before we got split up and landed here.”

Wind’s face scrunches into one of contemplation and doubt, yet quickly turns into joy.

“Tell me! Tell me who I used to be!” he shouts, unfiltered halcyon exuding from him.

“Well, let’s go down before you accidently jump off the top from excitement,” Hyrule says. Wild shoots an incredulous yet proud look at Hyrule, and the trio make their way down as for a brief moment, half of the sky turns to night from a red comet. As they go down, Wind’s felicity is only tempered by Wild's recollections.

“A sailor who could control the winds and had saved a flooded world…” Wind trails off, stars sparkling in his eyes. “That’s just awesome! I wanna know more!”

“Sorry, Wind.” Wild sighs. “I can’t recall much more.”

“Awww…”

Now back at the foot of the lighthouse, the trio head over to the east edge of the beach. Standing just a few paces away from a cliff that hangs overhead, they continue conversation.

“Did you wake up here?” Hyrule asks.

“I didn’t,” Wind answers. “I woke up inside a city of glass beneath the ocean. For a long time, I explored the strange ruin inside the glass dome containing the city. Suddenly though, as I stepped towards the edge of the city, a bubble of glass, please trust me, formed around me and brought me to the beach. For some reason, it felt so familiar…”

Wild places a curled hand in front of his chest, a look of intense thinking on his face. “Why did the three of us wake up so near to each other? I woke up in the sky, Hyrule woke up on land and you woke up in the sea.”

“Who knows?” Hyrule remarks. “What I’m more concerned about is how we’re even supposed to get,” he points to the top of the cliff, “up there.”

“Why?” Wind asks.

“There’s this strange energy or magic, whatever it is, I feel when I’m near one of you,” Hyrule replies. It led me—”

“And me!” Wild chimes in.

“—to you. Can’t you feel it too?” Wind shuts his eyes for a moment, trying to sense for some kind of strange signature in the air. Unable to feel anything, he opens his eyes in disappointment and vigorously shakes his head.

“Really? Nothing?” Wild asks.

“Nothing at all.”

“Then you didn’t feel anything when we approached?”

“Nope. What now? If I can’t feel that strange pull, then where do we go?”

“Up there,” Hyrule points. Wind looks up to see softly swaying vines that almost appear to reflect the light like a prism. The gentle breeze pushing them like a swing makes something deep within Wind flutter to life like a morpho butterfly flapping its wings for the first time. He reaches a hand out to grab the foliage, then raises it towards the sky to feel the air. All his fingers save for his index curl into his palm and he flicks his wrist downwards, to the left, to the right and up again as if tying it all into a neat bow. A missing jigsaw clicks into place when a heavenly wind begins to kick up, fluttering his hair and giving flight to grains of sand.

His world suddenly turns white as vivid blue waves lit by the bright and brilliant sun shift beneath a vibrant red boat, his hand repeating the same gesture as before but with a white baton. Then, the vision starts to melt away back into the present. Wind tries to keep it for as long as possible, to hold together the meager, fading scraps of whatever it is to at least find a single trace of his past, and yet it slips out of his fingers all-too-soon.

His shoulders droop as all that is before him returns to being a beach. However, he quickly smiles again when the lightbulb in his head begins showing the faintest trace of illumination. Wind raises his arm again and tries to call for that balmy gust and within moments, flowing air tickles his cheek.

“I know how to get up,” he declares.

“For how long you were ignoring us, of course you would’ve,” Hyrule replies, completely genuine with no hint of sarcasm whatsoever. A soft snort comes from Wild as he turns his face to hide his proud yet surprised smirk. Wind, catching onto this, groans.

“I thought you were supposed to be the responsible adult!” Wind shouts.

“Unfortunately for you, I have never been responsible and neither am I an adult,” Wild ripostes with the most smug grin anyone can ever wear.

“We’re absolutely doomed!”

“Yeah we are! None of us are competent with common sense and I’m the only one with memory here!”

“Am I really the only rational person here?” Hyrule nervously whispers.

“A bit bold for someone who started this whole mess,” Wind retorts.

“But… you were the one who ignored us.”

“Ya think I can talk to you when I’m literally seeing my own memory play before my eyes? Think Hyrule, think!”

Both Hyrule and Wild suddenly go silent. They share a knowing look, and the latter begins to speak.

“Welcome to the group, Wind. Want some uh, pudding?”

“Why?” the youngest asks.

“We have seen our own memories flash before our eyes,” Hyrule answers.

“And uh… What’s pudding?” The weird slate on Wild’s hip chimes as he frantically presses on it. A jiggling substance on a plate is produced, slightly reflective but oh so soft looking like a pillow of sweet sweetness. Wind goes quiet and approaches the strange thing, bending down a bit to watch it bounce on the spot gently. Wild taps on the slate again and makes it disappear, leaving a pout in Wind’s face.

“I swear,” Wild groans, “it’s like everyone’s just pacified by food.”

“How long has it been since we’ve eaten though?” Hyrule asks.

“I… actually don’t know.”

Wild looks down at the sand and begins kicking it softly, the crease in his eyebrows and squint in his eye accompanying the disturbing realizations in his head.

“I’m not hungry. I’m not thirsty. I haven’t felt either of these since the start, nor have I eaten at all ever since I woke up. I don’t really feel sleepy either.”

“Me too,” Hyrule adds. “What about you?” he asks Wind.

Wind shakes his head in response.

“Something’s happened to us,” Wild says. “I don’t know what, but it’s changed us a lot. Let’s go find the others to see if they know more.”

“And please, how do we get up there?” Hyrule asks, pointing at the cliff’s edge. A small breeze begins blowing from beneath the trio. Then, it quickly turns into an updraft that lifts them off their feet and into the air. Like leaves being carried along the wind, they are tossed from one updraft to another, clothes and hair being whipped around like vines against a storm. Out of the blue however, a horizontal gale forcefully blasts them onto the top of the cliff, three different bodies rolling at three different speeds into the nearest non-destructible object.

A tree trunk, a rock and a fallen pillar fall victim to said rolling bodies. Wild shakily lifts himself and uses the pillar as support, almost laughing at how familiar the sensation of being tossed by gales is. Hyrule fares worse, but he manages to get up with the champion’s timely assistance. Wind however, has already gotten up and is staring wide-eyed at a hollow path bisecting the sea of trees before them.

At the hollow’s sides are two willows of modest size, their twinkling purple blossoms softly rustling in the wind. A smooth and pale stone path between the willows runs beneath an arbor and deeper into the garden as glass taking the form of birds gather its cobbled steps. Flowers of many different kinds surround the path like reeds on a river’s sides, running along the path like a colorful comet trail.

Wind approaches the hollow, entranced by the magnificent and untamed flora of the place. He runs his hand along purple vines and brushes away a leaf that landed on his face from its glide above, his walk turning into a springy skip. Soon, he runs in and spreads his arms out wide. The coldness of the garden embraces him and chills flow throughout his body like a freezing stream, yet he only laughs and carries on admiring the many wonders of the little corner shut away from the world.

For whatever reason, the wind feels like his element. Well, of course it is, as stated in his name, but he can feel his entire being lifted up and soaring as soon as a gale passes by, ruffling every single leaf in the area. The passing breeze brings such a pure and beautiful melody that it almost makes him want to shed a tear. He can almost sense where it has traveled, the valleys and plains it has observed in its storied journey to the garden.

And in a sudden, he’s sleeping on a wooden watchtower as soft golden rays shine on the brown planks he’s laying on. Wind, through his own eyes, sees himself getting up and mumbling to a girl with hair like sunshine and dress as blue as the sea. Then, an overwhelming, inexplicable longing begins to drown him. Soon after, everything begins to fade into white and he desperately clings onto the vision, not wanting to leave.

He’s back in the garden again. The only way to describe him now is utterly confused yet hurting and longing. He frantically grabs the nearest plant to see if it is real and as its vines run across and down the edge of his palm like a stream, he sighs heavily. Footsteps quickly rip through the silence of the garden and momentarily, his shoulders strain. Then, they relax after knowing their source.

“Wild, Hyrule,” Wind says. “I just had the strangest dream.”

Chapter Text

Ouch… That fall really does hurt. Wild, a hand on his hurting head, gets up and withdraws said hand to find it has been covered in red. Still not that bad compared to his mildly funny accidents back at Hyrule, the place. More importantly however, where is Hyrule the person? The champion spots a flash of green in the corner of his eye and— there it is. The world’s most effective signaling tool. Considerably plain when it comes to detailing, utterly ostentatious when against a plain backdrop. Not that Wild minds because he himself is in the world’s second most effective signaling tool.

Come to think of it, he should really make a ranking in their little hero group based on how ostentatious their attire is. Warriors, of course, is first with that billowing blue scarf, emerald green tunic and that attitude bigger than the explosions Wild’s bomb arrows make. Next is Wind whose turquoise tunic is so bright sometimes that Wild wants to cover his eyes. Then comes Four with that four way mismatched tunic and golden detailing. Hyrule’s green tunic contrasts highly with his brown shirt and pants so that boosts him up to fourth.

Alright. Maybe Hyrule and himself aren’t really as flashy as Mr. Ego in first place or hyper kid in second. Wait a second… How much time has he wasted making this silly little ranking?

Wild skips over to Hyrule, the latter also slightly injured with a few scrapes on the back of his hand.

“You alright?” the champion asks.

Hyrule nods, but slightly winces upon seeing a bit of blood trickle from his wound. Wild follows suit, seeing the nasty abrasion from gravel on his other, non-bloody palm. His eyes squint as the wounds stare back at him, not tauntingly but as if trying to get him to remember something. Then, his squinted eyes glint with realization and his head quickly turns in Hyrule’s direction.

“This isn’t the best time to ask,” Wild says, “but in your past, you could heal us with magic.”

“So… you want me to try and do it again?” Hyrule replies, slightly curious.

“Yeah. You put your hands above someone’s injury and magic green light begins to shine, followed by the injury healing in seconds. The one time it didn’t work was when rancher nearly died, but that was because of some weird black magic, I don’t know. Try it on my palm.”

Wild extends his injured hand forward and Hyrule nervously hovers his hand above the injury. The latter shuts his eyes tight and tries to get something to click inside him and do some healing magic because for all he knows, this could be true.

Suddenly, the image of a dying person bathed in golden eventide light shows itself just for a moment, coupled with tense breathing from the side and worried expressions permeating his veins as he tries to heal said dying person.

Wait… tries to heal said dying person?

This… This has to be a joke, right? This has to be someone else’s memory.

But then he opens his eyes and the same green light he saw in the vision gently radiates from his hands. It really does belong to him, and now he has more questions than answers. Still, it’s rude to leave an injured person untreated, so he tries to mimic the feeling in the memory and heal Wild since mimicking is all he knows how to do.

Fingers slightly bent, a liter of pure focus and suddenly, a stream of something like cool water leaving his fingers and closing Wild’s wounds. Hyrule’s jaw hangs open as confusion and astonishment fight for dominance in his head.

“I… did it…” he mutters in disbelief.

“I knew you had it in you,” Wild replies.

Now normally, Hyrule would’ve chosen to feel conflicted but this time, he just feels proud. First step in the right direction, perchance?

He notices Wild’s other hand covered in blood akin to red paint, so he tries to heal said hand. But Wild quickly interrupts to point at the back of his head with an “Over here, traveler.” In a flash, wounds seal, injuries heal and both are back in prime condition. Well, prime is a stretch, but they’re in good shape nonetheless.

However, the uplifting mood is suddenly interrupted by Wild’s frantic searching for something as evidenced by his many glances at many different places and it hits Hyrule that Wind has in fact, gone missing. The pair rushes into a hollow guarded by two willows and into a dimmer and colder garden covered in a thousand different types of flora and inhabited by a hundred different types of fauna. Dappled white sunlight illuminates the main stone road as the path continues winding deeper into the garden. Then, amongst the many pastel colors surrounding them, turquoise blocks the way forward.

“Wild, Hyrule,” Wind says. “I just had the strangest dream.”

“Running off without others is supposed to be my speciality,” Wild jokes with mock exasperation that barely holds a candle to a certain someone’s vexation at his antics. Said someone is most likely somewhere out there, wandering the world and ready to be adopted by Wild’s mismatched band of amnesiacs.

“You guys were too slow!” Wind replies. “I’m not gonna wait for you to get up in five whole minutes.”

“We were injured and bleeding.”

“Oh. Valid.”

A chilly breeze suddenly passes by them as if mocking their banter.

“Before Arcaea makes fun of us again, how about we just explore this garden and try to get any nugget of info we can?” Hyrule says. In silent unison, they agree and the three venture deeper into the garden. Slowly though, behind the creeping vines and bush-like leaves, a wide, hexagonal plaza decorated with broken pillars and flora of all kinds reveals itself like a hidden treasure. The colorful glass reflects light everywhere and makes for a scene like walking through a forest in the afternoon. Animals curiously watch from the outskirts, some scampering to meet the new people who have visited the garden.

Wind quickly gets ahead of the rest to observe the animals, intrigued by their organic yet glassy bodies. This is especially true of the gulls that have gathered around him. Now, in a normal world, you probably wouldn’t find gulls in a garden atop a cliff. However, Arcaea is anything but a normal world.

So when an excited seagull jumps onto Wind’s shoulder, he flinches and suddenly sees stars before ultramarine skies momentarily blind him. Sand gathers around his ankles as he trudges towards a young girl with hair a similar shade to his own, a gull perched on her free arm as she waves for him to follow her. The moment he clearly sees her face however, everything fades out and the weight of a seagull presses on his left shoulder once more. He shakes it off and the whole flock flies away. Now, he has a little theory. Could these seagulls have been attracted to his forgotten memories of an island and a great ocean? These birds are made of memory glass themselves, after all.

But either way, he has a new memory under his belt that only fuels his desire to know more. Maybe if he goes deeper into this strange, ethereal place then he’ll be able to recall more. There and then, just like his namesake, he runs like the wind into a branching path to the right.

“Come on!” Wild shouts. “Is this what Twilight felt like when he had to babysit me in my adventures? Is this what he felt when I kept running off myself because I was so distracted? Let’s go ‘Rule, we’ve got a sailor to catch. Don’t get lost on us on the way since the two of us have the strange tendency to get lost.”

“I’m not that… Uh… Yeah,” Hyrule replies sheepishly as he runs behind the champion, surprised at how accurately Wild described him.

“Guys! Look!” a voice rings from the distance as Hyrule and Wild cross the path with the speed of a diving falcon. Soon, all three are reunited in a clearing whose center lies a strange carriage with no wheels that is shaped like a pentagonal prism. Something seems to wake up within Wild as his head tilts to the side, his eyes shut tight. Then, they fling open with remembrance.

“It doesn’t only look like the strange carriage I saw during my travels,” he remarks. “It also somehow feels like it. As if there was some sort of rail connecting it to a certain place in the sky.”

Wild skips over to the structure and scrutinizes it. That’s when he finds a peculiar circle shaped gap carved in the back wall of the carriage. The baby blue piece of glass containing his memories suddenly vibrates from within his back pouch and he quickly retrieves it. It glows softly and flies towards the gap, hovering just in front of a specific position within said gap. In a lightspeed deduction, he guesses that he has to collect the memory shards of everyone else or similar ones before he can operate this thing.

Just a moment after, he wonders; why would this carriage be locked behind memory shards? What’s so important, dangerous or worth protection that it has to be hidden behind this unconventional lock? Obviously, it has to do with the sky. Is it perhaps some sort of elevator that rises into an unknown area within the skies? Does it guard some sort of treasure?

Wild’s face turns displeased, knowing he can’t solve this mystery until all the memory glass has been collected. So, he does the one logical thing in this type of situation for once in his life: he leaves.

“Let’s go back,” he says, quickly making his way towards the main plaza. “We can’t do anything about that thing since it needs special memory glass like the one I have.”

“Special memory glass?” Wind asks, eyeing the shard in Wild’s hand.

“A strange glass that gave me back my memories.”

“Will I eventually find my special memory glass?” the younger boy says more quietly. Wild freezes in place for a few moments, then his strained shoulders relax.

“Of course, Wind. I’ll make sure you and Hyrule will find what you’ve lost. And if I can’t help, I’ll gonna turn my tunic into a jacket. Just so you know,” he says as he turns around, “I treasure this tunic with my life.”

The walk back is silent and solemn, juxtaposing the light mood at the start. Without a word, they head towards the path left adjacent to the one they took. However, this veil of tension is lifted when Hyrule suddenly interrupts the increasing thickening blanket of awkwardness.

“Is it me, or are the trees getting bigger?” he says, staring at the suddenly tall trunks of the surrounding trees.

“You’re right,” Wild answers. “I’ll go check it out.”

Wild runs back to the entrance, comparing the height of the trees with himself. He goes further and further, taking note of the ratio between his height and the trees. By the time he reaches Wind and Hyrule, the trees have quadrupled in height and Hyrule is gone. Wait. Hyrule’s gone?!

Like the wind, the champion goes after his missing friend, leaving Wind in the dust. Wind, not the type to wait around, goes after Wild. The two reach a glade with a tall glass staircase winding around a tree, Hyrule at its base. Seeing that his companions have arrived, Hyrule begins climbing the stairs on his own. Wind and Wild scamper up as they try to catch up, nearly slipping multiple times while Hyrule proceeds to ascend with no difficulty at a rapid pace. Poor Wild becomes Wind’s anchor as the two nearly tumble back down more than a few times.

Wind and Wild struggle against gravity and friction or more appropriately, the lack of the latter. The stairs’ handrails are pitter pattered with death grips and the force of dozens of kilograms onto a single point. The two fight for every step while Hyrule leisurely cruises up the stairs as if he were on a bumpy, bouncy cloud. After struggling against the stairs like forcing their way against a rising tide, Wind and Wild reach the last step and onto a platform suspended high above the ground, Hyrule leaned against the tree’s trunk that emerges through a hole in the center like a treehouse with its roof and walls removed. The platform is shaded by the tree’s crown and illuminated by light dappled through verdant leaves. Before the platform lies a network of other bridges and platforms spanning the entire refractive canopy.

Enamored by the sight, Wind takes in the cold whisper of a passing breeze and lets himself soak in the presence of otherworldly, glassy, prismatic nature. A sudden feeling of familiarity begins to churn in his gut however and he can keenly sense that somewhere in here lies something he has forgotten. His older companion, although equally curious, is not as content and begins reprimanding Hyrule.

“Don’t go running off!” Wild chides. “Two of us are amnesiacs, we all have no clue why we’re here and we don’t even know where we are!”

Hyrule shrinks back and mutters a quiet apology. Wild pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath, beginning to realize that he is becoming more and more like Twilight as the journey goes on.

“Never mind,” he says, still reeling from the revelation. “Hyrule, you know anything about the place?”

“Nothing,” Hyrule replies.

“Like, absolutely nothing?” Wind asks. Hyrule only shakes his head.

The reunited trio proceed as a group into the treetops, walking along the first bridge until it splits into a three pronged fork. Wild points towards the bridge as they come to a sudden stop. Wind and Hyrule nod, surveying the new frontiers. In unison, they point at a path and race off with smiles on their face, Wild to the right, Hyrule to the middle and Wind to the left.

Along Wild’s path, the world becomes a sprawling scroll of landmarks extending forever into the horizon. Crystals entrap ropes like translucent blue amber, as if climbing and corroding the walkway. Warily, Wild traverses the bridge towards some sort of enclosure that is suspended midair like a sky island, the floor reflective and rippling like water as mini waterfalls feed into the pool. Broken mirrors with gaps between them revealing some of the obscured world surround the island like walls. As he enters the place, a piece of glass emitting the innocence of a pure white lily drifts into view. Instinctively, he grabs it and sees a world bathed in pure light. It is this very same world, pearly and shining as ever, the hills still halcyon and the plains unchanging as if in stillness.

From afar, he can see a girl with white hair dancing with brilliant glass, carefree and blissful as her hand swings to direct glass like butterflies. He tries to get closer, but finds that he can only stay in place and observe like watching a video unlike some memories. So, he wills for that memory to reveal more, to tell him more about the story of this strange world. However, the only thing he gets is a sweet song in a language he doesn’t understand. Immediately after the first verse, he’s blanketed in nothingness and opens his eyes to the world of white.

He tries to view the memory again, staring at it as if commanding it to show its contents again. Instead, it gets reflected on the floating broken mirrors surrounding him. He tries to spot any potential differences and details, but finds nothing. Displeased, he walks up to a mirror and gives it a hard knock. Suddenly, the mirror reflects to show a snowfall and rain. Come to think of it, he’s never seen rain, only shine here.

He gives the mirror another knock, but rain continues to pitter patter onto a forgotten ruin and snow continues to bring icy crystals into a seasonless land. He tries again several times on other mirrors, but relents. That’s all it can show, he guesses. Now armed with new information, he makes his way back to the bridge.

Now, Hyrule and Wind waiting for him is an expected outcome. What isn’t an expected outcome is the latter looking absolutely confused and disturbed, Hyrule trying his absolute best to help but failing.

“What’s wrong?” Wild asks.

“Wind saw a memory of his past,” Hyrule answers, understanding and empathy filling his tone.

“What was it?”

“Someone… Someone dying…” Wind fearfully says. “Sunset… I felt overwhelming fear and sadness. I felt helpless for the first time… Is this what dark memories are like?”

“Damn it…” Wild mutters under his breath. That must’ve been the memory of Twilight fighting for every second he had left during a harrowing sunset and terrifying midnight. He looks towards Hyrule and remembers the latter’s determination to never give up, forcing himself to continue healing Twilight despite knowing that his hands would not even be strong enough to pick up a bottle and drink an elixir to relieve his exhaustion in the end. His own sunset played in his head. Seeing his mentor and best friend desperately struggling, him unable to do anything… Wild taps Wind on the shoulder and begins speaking.

“I didn’t really want to tell you about this part,” he admits.

“It’s okay,” Wind assures him. “I got to see into my past after all. I gotta ask though: Is there anything else as scary as this?”

“When you were traveling with us, no. On your own adventure, I don’t know. You didn’t say too much.”

“Aww… Well, I still want to know. I have to know!” Wind asserts, his determination renewed. “I want to feel complete and know who I am!”

Wild’s eyelids droop as his memories begin to play in his head. Memories are beautiful, yet very dangerous. If you lose them, you lose yourself. If you remember the wrong one or misunderstand another, you’re changed completely. If you have an incomplete set, then you’ll live with that incompleteness forever, wondering who you truly were.

“Wind,” he says with seriousness. “You don’t have to know everything. Trust me, you’ll be better off not desperately searching for them and just let them come to you.”

“How do I even get them to come to me?”

“Well, you just make a connection with situations and places that feel familiar,” Wild shrugs, vaguely gesturing as if trying to make some sort of air map. Wind and Hyrule deadpan. Wild facepalms.

“Alright, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” the champion says. “What did you two find?”

“A lookout,” Wind replies.

“A flowery and colorful place that has plants I’ve never seen before,” Hyrule answers.

“Anything interesting?” Wild inquires.

“Nope,” the other two say at the same time. e.

“Let’s just go back then. Though I really wanna go explore right now, I can’t waste time and let anyone get away,” he says as he turns back. However, he soon realizes that they have to go down the stairs. He frowns and immediately thinks of an objectively better solution: Glide to the plaza. Of course the glider wouldn’t be stuck in branches. No, it won’t break under the weight of three people. Everything will go fine, they’ll just be dragged down onto the ground in a few seconds or crash land.

“Guys, grab a side,” he instructs.

“For what?” Hyrule asks, beginning to get a bad feeling.

“Yeah, I’m not so sure about this…” Wind doubts.

“I know a way to get down,” Wild asserts.

“We’re not jumping off, are we?!” Wind alarmedly blurts.

“I’m not that terrible! Just grab on because we’re gonna get back on land in the blink of an eye.”

The trio head to the edge of the staircase and prepare for Wild’s latest stunt. Come amnesia or full set of memories, the entire group has a sixth sense for knowing when he’s about to do something stupid. Wind and Hyrule hold on, the former hoping he doesn’t faint and the latter praying to whoever watches over Arcaea to protect him from whatever nonsense is about to happen next.

With a daring smile, Wild gets on top of the hand rails and leaps, grabbing his paraglider at lightspeed. Freedom glides beside him like a wind and— Is that a tailwind he feels? Wild looks to Wind and sees the latter with a nervous smile, as if pleading for him to get things done quickly. The champion smirks and lets the feeling of soaring lift his spirits like a skyward gale, the world now like a map scattered with a hundred landmarks. Waterfalls, secluded caves and isolated ruins… A puff of snow lands on his nose as ice crystals slowly begin to drift down. Soon, a thousand more begin falling and soft white begins to coat the world.

Like one of those ice crystals, they drift and land on the plaza, a thin layer of snow having formed atop it. With wonder, Wind tries to catch it and recoils at the sudden coldness. Then, the snowflake melts immediately in his hand and turns into water, dripping from the gaps between his fingers and onto the ground. The temperature steadily drops and he begins to shiver, unused to cold temperatures. However, a bottle filled with shiny, fiery liquid gets tossed into his hand all of a sudden and dispels the numbness on his fingertips.

“Spicy elixir,” Wild’s voice says. “It’ll burn a bit, but at least you won’t catch a cold.”

With trepidation, Wind turns around the vial in his hand. Then, he takes off the cork and downs it in one go and like Wild says, burns his throat like flame turned liquid. He begins to cough a bit, but the pain immediately disappears, just like how it had come. Suddenly, a strange thought of salty seawater drifts through his mind like a stray strand of kelp. Somewhere in him, he simply knows that seawater burns if it gets into his throat.

Wind’s face scrunches up. What is it with all these feelings that he doesn’t understand and things that he somehow knows? What’s keeping him from the truth? Why can’t he reach for his past already and become whole?! These questions are already consuming him from the inside out ever since he took in the underwater city’s landscape.

Why is it that when he woke up, he knew the name Arcaea but not his own? Is it a coincidence that he and people who knew who he was before this entire debacle met? Who was Wind? What type of person was he? Where did he live and what dreams did he once hold?

His desire and longing only grows as he follows Wild and Hyrule towards another path in the garden blanketed with pure snow. Every step he takes threatens to mislead him, to run off and search for answers himself. In fact, he’s so occupied in his little world thinking that he doesn’t even notice that the group has entered what can be described as a conservatory filled with bookshelves containing glass and dozens of ethereal and impossible blossoms with changing colors and soft radiance. Fire still burns inside him, but the chill of a thousand questions dim its light.

Then, goosebumps run through the back of his neck. A pair of eyes are watching him, and he responds in kind by rapidly looking around. His hand balls and his legs strain, ready to either fight or take the others and flee. Then, a hand suddenly rests on Wind’s shoulder and his fist decks Wild on the stomach. Wind covers his mouth in shock and immediately apologizes.

“Oh gosh, sorry!” Wind says in panic. “There’s someone watching us and I felt scared.”

“I know that someone’s watching us,” Wild responds, a hand clutching his own stomach. “And it’s okay. Good to see you haven’t let your guard down, but could you at least be a bit more gentle next time?”

“Sorry…”

“And by the way, I found a memory,” Wild announces. “It’s one of this world.”

This immediately captures the attention of Wind and Hyrule, the latter immediately by Wild’s side.

“There’s a woman in an art studio with a man having an argument. The woman’s name is Alice and the man is Tenniel. Alice kept on pressing Tenniel about the truth of her memories and his existence. He then relented and gave her the glass holding her memory, disappearing. When she relived her life, Tenniel disappeared before my eyes. He said something about imitations unable to have their wishes granted. And I knew those two were from Arcaea. However, before he said that, I wasn’t able to tell he was one.”

“Two questions,” Hyrule says. “First, you saw it before your eyes? Second, you’re saying we could be imitations?”

“Well…” Wild trails off, slightly unsure. “I got to talk to Alice myself after she spotted me hiding behind the door of the art studio before she confronted Tenniel. Second, Tenniel knew he was an imitation and immediately disappeared after Alice viewed the memory.”

“We’re definitely not imitations,” Wind asserts. “It can’t be! He knew that he was one and we know we aren’t.”

“It’s only going to give us a crisis sooner or later so let’s not think about it too much, okay?” Hyrule interrupts.

“Yeah. I don’t like thinking too deep into this either,” Wild agrees. “We still have a problem. That problem is someone watching us.”

In a louder voice, Wild says “Whoever you are, show yourself. If you don’t attack us, we won’t attack you.”

Nothing changes. Nothing moves. Then, a dark red shyly peeks out from behind a bookshelf, a sharp piece of glass in hand.

Wild’s face immediately becomes extremely serious. His breaths become slightly erratic and tension suddenly falls like a stormy onset of snow.

“It’s Veteran…” he mutters. “The fact that he hesitated to show himself to us means only one thing, and I hate it.”

Wild tries to make his expression more amiable, but traces of seriousness remain. He withdraws his sword, only to drop it to the ground and approaches the person in red with his hands completely empty. The person in red only clutches his fragment tighter but upon seeing Wild’s empty hands, he takes a deep breath and also lets go.

“Do you have a name?” Wild asks carefully. The person in red is suddenly stricken with conflict, him blinking rapidly with confusion on his face. Wild’s stomach sinks to the ocean floor.

“I don’t,” the person quietly answers.

“I know your name,” Wild says. “Legend.”

“Legend?” the other person says. “My name? That’s highly ironic.”

Although Wild hears this, he knows that the name resonated with Legend. After all, when Wild himself first heard his real name after a century of slumber, he immediately latched onto that name for no apparent reason. And when he lost his memory for the second time, a voice whispered in his head like a sad yet beautiful song when he approached his memory shard, saying ‘Go, let the name Wild be yours again.’

“Why do you know my name?” Legend asks, snapping Wild out of his reverie.

“We used to travel together in the past before we landed in Arcaea,” he automatically responds.

“You… have your memories back?”

“After viewing it, yes.”

Legend’s eyes suddenly widen and only fear is present. He points towards Hyrule and narrows his eyes.

“Who’s that?” he asks.

“That’s Hyrule,” Wild answers.

“Word of advice: Don’t trust him. He’s holding the worst memory I have ever felt in all my time here.”

“Just because Hyrule’s the one holding it doesn’t mean he’s a bad person!”

“You mean this?” Hyrule cautiously interrupts, holding up a crimson pane of glass. Legend immediately pales. Then, he suddenly shoves Hyrule to the ground and pushes Wild out of the way, making a break for the exit and immediately disappearing into the trees. Hyrule winces from the fall and the large cut on his palm from the glass. He trails his other index over the injured palm and soothing green light follows, sealing his wound.

“What was that about?!” Wind shouts, indignation burning in him.

“Legend immediately paled when he saw the glass. I don’t know whatever’s in there, but he seemed to recognize it,” Wild adds, confusion also brewing in him.

“Maybe… Maybe this belongs to him.”

“Hyrule?” Wild asks, not expecting the answer.

“Just maybe… This shard could be his memory.”

Chapter Text

“His memory?” Wind asks disbelievingly. “That?”

The red glass in Hyrule’s hand is shaped like a broken wing, floating and revolving in his hand as the three of them stare at it within the growing collection of memory mirrors surrounding them within the conservatory.

“I thought you could feel it,” Hyrule replies. “This shard doesn’t belong to us. It’s like it’s rejecting me, you and Wild. When I held out the glass to Legend, he had a very bad reaction and it seemed to radiate longing in my hand.”

“How did you even end up with the glass in the first place?” Wild inquires, a serious look on his scarred face.

“It was in my pocket when I woke up,” Hyrule answers. Wild snaps his fingers immediately and begins talking.

“There has to be a pattern. Me, you and Wind woke up in the same range as if Arcaea knew we were friends back then,” he remarks, tapping his foot.

“So by extension… Does Arcaea somehow know a connection between me and Legend? Even I don’t know aside from the fact that well, we all weirdly share the same spirit,” Hyrule wonders.

“But if it is his memory after all, why would he not want it?” Wind interrupts, his query brimming with a desire for understanding.

“Not everyone wants to know the truth,” Wild replies.

“Why wouldn’t you? Don’t you wanna see the big picture or something like that?”

“The past isn’t always happiness and sunshine.”

“I know, but what sort of reason is that?”

“A valid one.”

“Can’t you just quit that wise older sibling act and listen to me for once?”

“I’m speaking from experience, Wind,” Wild says, annoyance beginning to bubble inside him.

“I’m my own person, I can do what I want and I want to understand why you and Legend are like this!”

“Maybe Legend can feel something that in his past he wanted to forget forever,” Wild suggests with increasing irritation.

“Well then instead of running away and constantly living with that fear, he should just face it and bear that pain until he can conquer it!” Wind shouts with his arms spread out.

“It’s not as simple as that!”

“What do you even mean not as simple as that?!”

“You don’t know anything,” Wild almost sneers, his slight lean forward making it seem as if he towers over Wind. “Imagine yourself in my position. You suddenly wake up in a ruined world with no idea who you are, even your name and appearance. You have to rectify that and find your past, so you did. Then, you slowly understood that it was you who failed, it was your fault, it was your fault alone and you can’t do anything about that because your incapability and weakness made the world fall into ruin! It was you! You caused everyone to die because you couldn’t do anything!” Wild shouts, his fists tightly curled on themselves.

“Then why are you still here and working to fix what you broke instead of giving up or even running from them?!” Wind retorts, swinging his arm out with a palm forward. Mixed emotions bubble like the forming of seafoam in Wild’s clouded eyes, regret and guilt mixing together like liquid mist and clouds. Wild looks down to the ground, and the words that come out from his mouth are directly from deep within.

“...Because it’s the only way I can apologize for my existence.”

Silence falls like heavy snowfall, silent but overwhelming. The span of hours and seconds seem to align perfectly, each moment frozen as ice and heavy as a thousand blankets piled on a shoulder. However…

“I’m leaving,” Wind interrupts with bitterness. “I’ll just go find my memory myself.”

The boy immediately turns his back on Wild and walks out of the conservatory, that walk turning into a sprint. Like his namesake, he disappears in a flash and leaves the other two without a trace.

Wild looks apologetically at Hyrule. He then looks to the ground and deeply sighs.

“I said too much,” he mutters with regret. “This is too familiar…”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but why is it familiar?” Hyrule asks with delicateness.

“Me and Fou— someone else you used to know had a big fight. We eventually made up, but we were in the middle of a harrowing situation so I wasn’t in my right mind.”

“Well, I guess arguments happen more easily when both parties are stressed.”

“Likely, but me and him were sort of like friends. Closer than acquaintances but not exactly good friends. Me and Wind… We just met. And while the other person I argued with was a more rational and logical person, Wind relies more on his emotions. That’s exactly what confuses me. I don’t know how to deal with emotional people.”

“I don’t know if this is good advice or if this is what Hyrule would say, but I think apologies are the first step to fixing a conflict. I’m not good at dealing with people in any way, but that’s the truth I believe in,” Hyrule says with a shaky but small smile. Wild gives a minute huff.

“You’re right. I have to fix things.”

Wild runs out of the geodesic dome and Hyrule follows. They slow down when back at the plaza, but quickly split up, Wild to the glade and Hyrule to the canopy. However, both reunite empty handed after a few minutes. So with one last option, they take the path leading to the cliff.

Moving through the sea of light-bending trees once more, Wild can’t help but reflect on his actions. It’s been only a short while and he’s already made someone upset. Why is it that he has a special talent for causing arguments? Why is it that now, when he looks at Wind sitting at the edge of the cliff leading into the garden, he can’t muster the courage to do anything? Guilt? Bitterness? Confusion?

Wild stares at Wind’s slouched figure. Well, you can’t move forward if you refuse to take the first step.

“Wind, I…” he begins. “I’m sorry for shouting at you.”

“...”

“It’s a tall order but, well, uh… can we go to the place you first woke up in?”

“Why?”

“I just want to see if we can find anything there.”

“...Sure.”

“Hyrule, grab on,” Wild says. Hyrule shakes his head and instead forms a small platform he can stand on before the cliff. Then, Hyrule begins to jump from makeshift platform to platform, shards coalescing beneath an extended foot before he falls further and using his momentum to launch himself to the next platform when he lands like a raindrop bouncing from leaf to leaf.

Wild follows nearby, gliding down like a petal drifting through the winds. Wind himself is the last to drop down, taking a large breath before dropping, letting the breeze catch him and guide him to the next current. All three land in close proximity to each other, stirring up a small cloud of sand as they land.

Wind takes the lead, heading near the tides that lap at the sand. He closes his eyes as he wades in the water, remembering the empty white city that has mourned for the many centuries forgotten. Taking a breath, he dives into the water and soon disappears within tides that seem to gurgle as the sky begins to darkne in anticipation of night. With hesitation, Hyrule and Wild follow. Beneath the waves, little iridescent bubbles gleefully glide by, a world long flooded reflected on their fragile skin.

Soon, these bubbles coalesce and become three large bubbles, one for each person. The sea begins to meld into inky darkness, the light blue tint of surface level tide eaten up by the light-swallowing almost black water of where the unseen sun’s light doesn’t touch. The bubbles continue to dive on and on, braving through the night itself having been condensed into the ocean.

Wild looks around with masked alarm as they go deeper and deeper. He quickly turns his head in Hyrule’s direction and sees the younger boy is almost panicking. Wild tries to cup his hands and shout, but finds out that his voice is contained within the opalescent chamber. However, a momentary gust forces a message from Wind to the two of them:

“You’ll be fine. Just breathe in and out. We’ll be seeing a different type of ocean soon.”

A giant bubble trapping air in a forgotten city of blue and white stone soon appears in the trio’s sight, their individual bubbles moving quicker than before. The bubble skins merge together with the barrier bubble, the barrier opening up where the bubble attaches to gently push the trio inside the forgotten city.

“Here we are,” Wind says as he turns to them.

“There’s been an entire city under the ocean?” Hyrule wonders aloud. He pokes at a broken column, part of what looks to have once been a port. Before them stands a path leading to a dried up fountain that has stopped working long ago. The lips of its basin are separated and bloom like flower petals, parallel ‘veins’ running across the petals.

The circle stone path surrounding the fountain branches off in opposite directions, the paths leading to different sectors shaped like a ‘T’. Cracks snake from the pale stone bricks placed into the ground one by one to act as a road like gray branches piercing the white skies. Little patterns dance by the smooth floors to the side of the brick road, swirling and twirling like regal dancers forever frozen in time.

Frozen waterfalls rest like perfect sculptures all across the different outcroppings and cliffs throughout the city, ornate bridges above a still river filled with sharp crystal water lilies connecting district to district. At the back of the city, beyond the many geometric buildings and spires like arrows surrounded by winding rivers, rests a castle, its giant yellow bell silenced for eternity.

The entire city is as white as moonlight, but also as azure as a watercolor scene of summer, its paleness juxtaposing the abyssal backdrop of the ocean. And as always, glass shards have coalesced into a thousand crystal formations that latch onto the pathways, the spires, the castle, buildings, and much more, their radiance warding off even the darkness of the abyss. It’s as if the entire city has been messily yet elegantly poured over with resin made from crushed opal.

Rainbow pieces of light from the crystals welcome the trio to a sunken realm. Wild takes the welcoming hand and strolls towards the fountain, sitting on the edge of the basin and pulling out his slate. He captures the view, the midnight sea and the soft brilliance of the white port coming into a harmony of light and dark colors.

“Why do you do that?” Hyrule asks, making his way to sit beside Wild.

“I don’t want to forget these little moments. The places I’ve visited, the memories I’ve come to make there…” Wild says as he flicks through various photos of lush landscapes, idyllic epochs and the smiling faces of him and eight others. Hyrule peers over to the slate, mesmerized by the slices of time captured within. Wind also sits beside Wild, similarly enchanted by the pictures of a vibrant land of colors.

“Where’s that place?” Hyrule asks.

“Hyrule,” Wild says, looking at it with fondness. “My Hyrule. Not you, the place.”

“So… I got my name because my hero title was something about Hyrule?”

“Hero of Hyrule, specifically. I’m the Hero of the Wild, that’s why my name’s Wild.”

“And what about those people?”

“They’re… they’re us. I mean, used to be us. You guys can see the three of us, right? Legend too. Let me just give a quick introduction to the rest. Twilight’s the one with the black markings and a wolf pelt. Time’s the one with armor and the tallest. Of course, he’s the oldest, so we call him Old Man though he’s in his thirties. Guess this is what happens when two thirds of us are teenagers,” Wild says, a ghost of a smile on his face. Briefly, he looks at the faces of Wind and Hyrule, seeing that they’re no longer the people he used to know. His eyelids droop in a sort of nostalgia, the maturity of the two beside him exceeding the versions of them he once knew.

“There’s Four, really short and has the most mismatched tunic I’ve ever seen in my life,” he continues. “And Warriors, the one with the flashy blue scarf like his personality, just call him Wars or Captain. Whatever you do, don’t compliment him. You’ll just balloon his ego more. And we have the local sleepyhead in Sky, big bright white cape with blue diamond brooch. He’s a nice guy who’s pretty harmless most of the time but can lose his temper if you mess with his sword. I was on the receiving end of one of his lectures.”

“What was that lecture?” Hyrule asks, leaning further to look at Sky.

“I’ll tell you while we go around this place.” Wild gets up, immediately heading for the path to the left. The other two soon follow, trailing behind Wild as he hooks his slate back onto its latch. He walks through an arbor encrusted with reflective crystals that serves as an entrance to a series of balconies with stepping stone floors bordered with white parapets connected by stone steps, small swimming pools frozen over and the houses nearby all but silent.

“Well, at some point, almost all of us wielded this sacred sword called the Master Sword,” Wild begins. “I broke it.”

Immediately, Wind and Hyrule pause on the spot.

“You… broke a sacred sword?” Wind questions. “You fixed it, right?”

“It repaired itself.”

“Wish that memory things were as easy as that.”

“Agreed,” Hyrule adds.

The silence after the conversation only grows. Wind can feel some strange sort of heaviness on him when he looks at the people around him and the monochrome of the city. Something is nagging at him constantly, whispering in his ear to remember, whispering at him to grab that elusive past he’s always wanted to see. Despite the momentary thrills of crossing ravines whose bridges have crumbled through riding the wind or being flung from one side of a cliff to another using glass vines fashioned by Hyrule, these momentary thrills only serve as an equally momentary distraction to the incompleteness eating at him. And yet…

“Over there!” Hyrule’s usually soft voice shouts. He runs over to stairs that lead to a cupola overlooking the port, something having caught his eye. Wild and Wind give chase, running past dilapidated street lamps and jumping over crumbling fences. The trio stop just before some sort of core surrounded by floating glass bits, glowing a gentle turquoise like Wind’s own tunic.

Wind reaches out to cup said core, but it flies into his body and disappears into a flurry of sparks. As soon as the sparks appear however, Wind can feel a strange weight lifted off his mind like a lock being undone. A trail of light soon follows, branching off through different parts of the city. As if on cue, the group gives chase to the nearest spark.

The spark flies straight forward then to the left, going over a ravine. A gale blasts the three over to the other side, the group immediately making chase for the spark as soon as their feet touch the ground. No matter how fast they try to run though, the spark begins to disappear from their sight, slipping from their fingertips.

However, a mighty gust from behind pushes them forward, their sprinting pace soon turning into pure, unbridled breakneck speed. The road soon forks into three and the group split up on sight. Wild heads for the middle path, Hyrule the one below and Wind above everyone else.

Hyrule navigates through fallen masonry while Wild traverses gaps in the path through energetic bounds and more creative solutions like hanging onto the upper level’s rail and traversing the chasm by slowly inching to the other side. Up top, Wind races through a straightforward road that soon bends and turns in different directions, him tripping once or twice due to the sudden direction change coupled with his speed.

Suddenly though, Wild sees the spark grow bigger in his view. He reaches out to grab it, but it flies away from his grasps. He then bends his legs, gathering strength in his lower body and leaps, grabbing the spark’s core and hugging it tightly. A large composite piece of glass soon flies to block off the road ahead as Wild wrestles with the wildly thrashing core. Wind soon jumps in from above and sticks the landing, running like his namesake forward to touch the core.

“Wind! Now!” Wild shouts as he raises up the core. Wind’s eyes narrow in concentration as he gets closer and closer, Wild’s raised arms increasingly shaking as the core struggles to break free. In the nick of time, Wind’s fingers brush against the core and he soon slides into a halt just before he hits the small barrier of glass. The core bursts into small sparks of light that enter Wind’s body once again, him able to feel a small warmth as the light disappears.

“One down,” he says with a miniscule smile. “Twenty nine more to go.”

Chapter Text

“There!” Wind shouts. A feeling of familiarity tugs at him, the source coming from within a building around the bend. He races towards the entrance, finding within the building what appears to be an empty home. The room branches to two others, a table with an innocuous glass shard at the center. Distracted by its sheen and his curiosity, he views the little moment contained within.

He sees a girl in a cardigan searching for something. Her search becomes more and more frantic as she looks everywhere from the couch, to the bookshelves and even under the rug. However, she plops down on the sofa, relenting. As soon as she sits down though, a keyring flies from behind a pillow, jangling as it is launched into the air. She cheers in joy, having found her keys just after giving up.

“Well that’s… not what I expected,” Wind remarks, leaving behind the shard to go to the bedroom. He absentmindedly grabs the core, his mind still fixated on the memory. The sight of an exploding statue flashes momentarily in his mind, and the sudden feeling of going wildly airborne overtakes him. He nearly turns back to run for Wild, but he stops right in place and takes a huge breath.

“Keep it together, Wind!” he says as he recovers from the experience of being a cannonball. The boy heads out from the building and prances through a cobblestone road, jumping into a narrow, dried up canal that feeds into the frozen lake beneath. It winds and winds on like a slide, him jumping from branch to branch to avoid sharp crystal formations. Zephyrs gather at his feet as he skates down the crystallized waterways, inclines launching him into the air.

With absolute precision, his landing is sound, just a few paces short of being skewered by an opalescent spike. He laughs as the waterway’s mouth opens into the lake, preparing to glide across and discover the cores lying beneath the city. Wind does a small jump and attempts to spin in the air, but loses balance and soon lands like a tossed, still flopping fish. Ungracefully, he slides across the lake, the momentum from the jump causing him to glide from the waterway’s mouth to the bubble barrier.

He is reflected back like running into a giant marshmallow, somehow sliding into a core like butter in a pan. The movement only stops when his back hits a column, the wind knocked from his lungs. Groaning, Wind gets up with a pout and turns to peek from behind the column in order to spy the area for more cores. As he begins to push himself across the frozen lake, a sudden weight topples him over. A second weight soon follows and Wind makes a loud, audible groan as he tries to get up.

“Wild! Why are you so heavy?! Why did you crash into me?!”

“I didn’t expect the ground to be slippery, okay?!” Wild replies, trying to get up as well. “Hyrule, can you get off?”

“I’m trying but it’s so slippery…”

“Wind, do something with your ability like launching us up or something. Heck, you can even blow us into that pillar! Wait I WAS JOKING—” Wild shouts as a burst of wind launches them directly into a column northeast of them.

“Protect your head!” Wild shouts as the column only enlarges in their view.

“Huh?!” Hyrule shouts.

“Head! Cover it!”

“What did you say?!”

“WATCH OUT—”

Poor Hyrule’s eyes widen as he only realizes the message a second too late. A crystal clear and resonant thunk resounds throughout the forgotten city, followed by a scream of frustration from Wind as the trio get up.

“Can we just stop getting into accidents?! It was funny the first time, but now it just hurts!” he complains, pointing straight at Wild.

“You were the one that blew us into the pillar!” Wild retorts, pointing back.

“Counterpoint!” Hyrule interrupts. “It’s everyone’s fault.”

Wild and Wind look toward each other with half-hearted frowns. Then, they promptly burst into laughter, Hyrule following suit. However, Hyrule’s laughter stops as soon as he notices a peculiar opening in the ground. He carefully inches over to it and can see a flooded pond carved in the frozen surface which he guesses he and the others can dive into. For some reason however, tiny fish are swimming inside, one leaping out to splash water on his face and fall back to the safety of the water.

“Over here!” he calls as he wipes the water from his face with his tunic, slightly wincing its bright green. As he turns to talk to the other two, a single misstep and suddenly, everything is watery. Wind and Wild’s faces become indistinct colors and bubbles float upwards from the force of his fall like uprooted, severed kelp. However, the colors that he deduces to be Wind’s suddenly get sharper and larger, a skin colored thing reaching out for his own outstretched hand. A large and windy bubble envelopes the two and the moment the skin of said bubbles closes, Hyrule takes a deep breath.

“Pretty sweet, right?” Wind says, a proud smile on his face. “Split second idea that I had! Make the wind blow in an orb shape under the water and you have yourself a bubble!”

“You’re becoming like Wild, but thanks for the help.”

“I heard that, Hyrule! Why is becoming like me a bad thing?!” Wild chimes in as soon as he joins the bubble.

“Because you give people heart attacks.”

As they descend, the walls of the hole gradually become uncrystallized like a melting coat of ice and the bottom is obscured by the darkness like liquid shadow poured into water. As the shaft gets darker, Wind and Hyrule draw a bit nearer to Wild. As Wind holds the latter’s arm while putting on a brave expression, Wild begins to think. Normally, both Wind and Hyrule wouldn’t even bat an eye at the dark, but these two haven’t gone on any sort of journey save for this one.

It makes sense why they’d latch on him. After all, he’s probably the oldest amongst them. For some reason, he feels responsible for their safety even though he knows they are more than perfectly capable of protecting themselves. Perhaps it is because he sees himself in them, their innocent, wide-eyed faces at the wondrous, untouched frontiers of this new world they woke up in.

When the bubble reaches the deepest part of the shaft, the tunnel opens into a wide chamber filled with frozen stalactites and stalagmites. Several different cores glimmer with gentle light, the bubble soon splitting up into three. A branching path of three also lies a ways from these cores, their radiance like a final torch before a long walk into the night.

“Let’s go separately and explore all possible paths. When you guys find cores, just keep them with you. When we get back, I’ll take them off your hands, okay?” Wind says, looking to Wild and Hyrule for confirmation. Hyrule nods back while Wild gives a small thumbs up, the trio heading towards the cores before each path.

A long plunge faces Wind, his heart beginning to race. However, he pushes forward and begins to descend. Wild’s path begins to wind like the crown of a tree, the twists and turns beginning to dizzy him. Take a left, go down, then right, ascend, descend again, the roundabout path is really testing his patience.

Meanwhile on Hyrule’s side, a small light like a firefly rests just in front of him. He tries to move forward and grasp it with his hand, but it glides away into the dark path beyond. Nervously, he inches forward and suddenly feels the current sucking him away like an underwater jetstream. It pulls him in like quicksand, an inescapable, dizzying vortex like Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole. Even within the protective bubble, he is tossed and turned like a bouncy ball being thrown about in a spherical chamber.

“When— will— this— end!” Hyrule shouts while flipped upside down. “I’ve seen memories of people going on things called ‘roller coasters’ for fun. Is this what it feels like to be on one?! Why would anyone enjoy motion sickness?!”

The dark path begins to open up as the core crashes through the bubble’s skin and right into Hyrule’s arms. He holds it tightly as his body continues to be tossed like a leaf in a salad spinner, on the verge of passing out. Then, sapphire light cuts through the darkness and the tunnel fully opens up, spitting Hyrule out onto dry ground. He doesn’t even get up, his whole world still spinning wildly.

“Hyrule! You okay?” a voice asks. He only groans in response, not even able to flash a thumbs up.

“Motion sick?” another voice inquires, sounding younger than the first one.

“Wild? Wind?” Hyrule croaks as he forces his head upwards.

“Feeling better?” the voice he now recognizes as Wild asks.

“Feeling horrible. Can we take a break?”

“Then can I go alone and explore while Wild takes care of you?” Wind asks. “I mean, my ride down wasn’t as bumpy as whatever you guys got into, so I’m in tip-top condition to explore.”

Wild nods his head, his own nausea beginning to take him out. Wind flashes a smile as he takes the core from Hyrule and runs off from a dark cavern filled with dim caustics. Heading through an ornate archway carved into the stone wall, he sees a vast, spacious chamber. Goosebumps suddenly run up his arm as the temperature drops a few degrees, the floor becoming carpeted.

A giant cylindrical tank filled with water lies in the center while smaller cylindrical tanks are scattered across the area. The whole space is lit by an azure radiance, the dim caustics from the cave much sharper in resolution within the chamber. Wind skips over to a smaller tank, seemingly entranced by the display of the miniature environment within.

A thick layer of sand and rocks lines the bottom, coral jutting upwards while a stone arch stretches from end to end of the tank. At the center is a small, teal and black fish swimming about, seemingly unnoticing of Wind’s wide and watching eyes. Said fish’s tail sweeps like a graceful fan, swishing perpendicular to the direction it is swimming. As Wind turns to the left to move onto the next display, he bumps into a vertical metal bar with a sign bolted to the top of it. He winces, but takes a peek at the words written as soon as he recovers.

The betta fish. Aggressive, and will fight if near another betta.

“What a sad fish,” he remarks, his arms crossed. “Why is it like that? You can’t just fight everyone you see.”

He moves onto the next display, a small circular tank on top of another metal bar. Little creatures with heads like mushroom caps drift about, their little tentacles gently propelling them. What he assumes to be the creatures’ head has a symbol like a clover on them, as if someone had drawn on their cap.

“Moon jellyfish…” he reads aloud. “I like this one! Tends to live alone, but the wind and tides can bring it to other moon jellyfish. Groups of moon jellies are called a bloom. Maybe because the marking on top of their head looks like a four leaf clover? For some reason, this is kinda like me, Wild and Hyrule. Maybe we’ll collect more moon jelly amnesiacs in the future!”

Wind continues to observe and peruse all the displays. He encounters anemones and eels in a large rectangular tank, a half moon tank filled with so much fish that he can’t even count, an open tank filled with starfish which he, of course, tried to pick up, and so much more. He finds a couple of cores tucked away in corners, hidden within nooks and just barely reachable on shelves.

As he finishes meandering through the chamber and looking at the smaller displays, his heart begins to race with excitement. The boy strolls to the giant central tank, filled with equally giant underwater creatures. The tank is vast, so vast that he can’t see its end. It is filled with different environments such as sunken masonry, a city of white stone, colorful coral plains and more, all bursting with vivacity from the life inhabiting it.

Now, to find a way to get in there.

Chapter Text

“So you’re telling me,” Wild begins, “You want to jump into that tank and find the memory?” He surveys the tank with squinted eyes, looking around the area for more doors.

“I mean, we can’t just force our way in. It’ll flood the place,” Wind says in response.

“Then I don’t see why not!” Wild declares with a grin.

“Over there.” Hyrule points towards a metal door with a valve. The trio gather in front of the valve, Wild twisting it open. The navy colored door swings open with a creak, leading into a passage drowned in shadows. Wind peers into the yawning darkness, taking a step at a time. The carpeted floor changes into a metal one, the dull clank of metal plates echoing through the passage. The sounds superpose when Wild and Hyrule follow behind him, the clanks from the underfoot plates turning into groaning from the trio’s weight.

The darkness opens up into a vertical corridor filled with water and azure light. Strangely, the water does not seem to spill out even though it stands like a column, a clean divide between the wet and dry area. Wind pokes the water with a finger, but soon gets sucked into the column, an air bubble forming around him.

The column of water flows upwards against all logic, leading him into a more spacious area filled with emerald waters and bright light. Countless imitations of natural life swish and zoom, creating the illusion of a realm filled with vitality. Tropical colors adorn the space, generously sprinkling vivacity across the vast blue.

For some reason, this sight is familiar. A little fish swims into his hand, mindlessly swirling around. Blithely, he cups his hands below it and a vision suddenly invades his mind. Everything is still, tranquil, unyielding. A rainbow has been rented asunder, the backdrop a crystalline compound of light red.

Blue butterflies have frozen in place as well as countless little pieces of glass, further a testimony to how time’s flow has stilled. A girl in white apathetically stares at a girl in black, the latter caged within glass. The girl in black glares back with an expression contorted in rage, her hand reaching out of her crystalline cage.

Without warning, everything is thrown back into motion. The earth moves and gives into the girl in black, clawing her way out of the ruins of a chapel. The girl in white plants her foot in refusal, in an unkillable desire to live. Between them, space bends and neither knows who asked for it. Despite that, the girl in white smiles a smile emptier than the vastness of the cosmos.

“I said… you don’t have to do this,” she utters too easily. The scene breaks apart, and Wind finds himself back underwater. However, her words do intrigue him, a desire to know more firmly building its foundation in him. In fact, the next part of this story so entices him that he begins to forget his original purpose.

Wind glides towards a reef, another fish with a similar presence hiding within an anemone. Reaching out for it, the world flashes white and—

This isn’t a ruined battleground.

A brief meeting. Bleak and bright, the girl in black and the girl in white, two diametrically opposed embodiments of concepts meeting within a dilapidated chapel. Glass that flock without bidding, a blinding road and a thorny path of gloom. A budding hope that is soon smothered to pieces. Within a piece of glass lies a memory of a future; of its viewer being run through by the very person before her.

The girl in black charges towards the girl in white. The girl in white steadies her resolve, but tries to find a way to end things peacefully. Impromptu blades crash. A plea for ceasefire is promptly ignored, and the two girls burst out of the cathedral that contained them. They fight, and fight, and fight, running across the lands of Arcaea like two storms.

From unrefined violence to a vicious clash of wills, both desiring survival in the very end, a glinting rainfall of razor sharp glass descends onto the once idyllic land. The girl in black called for the shards, but they had chosen to bow down to the girl in white. The girl in black retreats, seeing they have chosen her enemy. The girl in white is crouched, focused on her newfound power.

The battle ignites once again. The two evade and fire, dodging shards by mere millimeters and sending back their own volleys. The senseless clash of beauty and brutality begins to turn when the girl in black gains the upper hand, her artillery matching the girl in white’s in destruction of the gleaming frontiers of Arcaea.

However, the frenetic clash suddenly comes to a halt as a strange, grotesque glass nears towards the girl in black. Her eyes widen… and she laughs. A tempest turns the tide, the previously even storm returning to their original owner and the girl in black at its eye. She hangs above the earth with obsidian wings and watches as dazzling brutality rains down and rips the land apart. The girl in white takes twenty memories to defend herself, but a piece of glass hurtling to her chest delivers a message from the girl in black:

“No.”

A cruel message for the girl in white to lay down arms.

Once again, the tale is abruptly cut short. Wind desperately chases for the next part, abandoning all reason for the desire to know. With each little jigsaw of memory he pieces together like an archaeologist, the light in his eyes slowly grows dimmer, and dimmer, and dimmer, until it is no more than the reflection of the light of the oceanic realm.

Every single subsequent recollection only gets bleaker and bleaker. His eyes bear witness to the sky falling apart and the world coming to an end. Spite, fury and uncaring coldness only oppress him with their presence, the girl in white eventually tied down for execution. The ultimatum of Light and Conflict forever unable to reconcile their ideals and truths—

Is a bitter, bloody end.

Some part of Wind hoped that they could perhaps end things peacefully or one could capitulate, but it was violently snuffed out when the girl in white lifted a pillar of glass to run through the girl in black, just like in the memory. Just like the latter had done before.

His chest rising up and down as he looks at the innocuous pearly fish containing the terminus of the tragedy, a thought presents itself:

Wasn’t this entire thing caused by two people remaining obstinate?

As he steadies his heart to continue the search for the cores, the sentiment only echoes louder and louder. Even as he dives into a part and looks at the central chamber of the aquarium from the large tank, he can only think of what sparked the conflict.

Someone who wanted to live, and someone else who was sick of being thrown about.

It had ended with someone who didn’t want to live, and someone whose life was extinguished due to a flame.

Could they have simply talked? If the girl in black was more… considerate? If the two had thought ahead instead of looking so much to their past?

‘Give up’, a part of him says. ‘There’s nothing to see in this sad place.’

He doesn’t want to agree. By the time he collects the twenty ninth core however, he finds himself in wholehearted support of the statement.

Yes. There is nothing here except for tragedy.

Everything he had believed in, those rose colored lenses— they had been thrown to the ground and broken into pieces. Even if you do break out of your circumstances, who’s to say that this freedom will last forever? Perhaps one may have escaped the cage, just to find themselves in a bigger one.

Maybe in his past, he hadn’t understood that truth. Maybe in his past, he had never seen what gray was, how truly incomprehensible the boundaries of circumstance and morality could be. So there and then, he makes a decision:

“I’m out of here.”

Swift is his escape, abandoning the water. He rushes past an astonished Wild, the latter making haste for the youngest member of their mismatched group. Hyrule, noticing Wind’s peculiar behavior, also chases him down. Barging out of the dark corridor and into the central chamber, Wind takes a huge breath and runs back where they came.

As if on cue, the air suddenly seems to ripple before the divide of dry and land. A strange glass the color of his tunic comes into reality before him, singing a soothing melody of a flooded world. However, he pays it no mind and waits for the other two.

“Wind! What’s gotten into you?! What’s with that glass?!” Wild shouts, out of breath after chasing Wind.

“I think it’s better if we leave this place,” he replies, his voice downcast. “There’s nothing except sad, unimportant stuff here.”

“But—”

“Cut it out, Wild,” Hyrule interrupts. “He probably has his reasons.”

With a sigh, Wild relents. The trio begin to make their way through the flooded tunnel, but a mighty current refuses to let them pass. Suddenly though, the glass Wind had ignored suddenly flies before the current and causes the water to roil, reversing the direction of the current like a squall telling a river to flow backwards.

The three are engulfed by the inverse current, tossed through tunnels and launched into open air, high above the frozen lake and the city. From above, they can see a simply splendid view of the city. A less splendid prospect is being impaled by the crystals that have taken root everywhere, so Wild pulls out his paraglider, Hyrule quickly makes a glass platform and Wind calls for a continuous updraft.

Hyrule and Wind jump from platform to platform, updraft to updraft respoectively like dew from leaves while Wild descends back onto the pale port at the edge of the forgotten bubble city. The former’s heart thumps as he tries to avoid a slip, narrowly dodging an early end as he manages to stop just before the edge of a platform above a crystallized canal.

Arriving last, he sees Wind already approaching the barrier. Wild motions for Hyrule to move along, the latter jogging to keep up. When the trio are reunited at the edge, Wind takes the initiative and places his palm against the protective bubble.

“You’ve been trying to tell me something, right?” Wind starts, a smile on his face speaking acceptance. “I think I’ll take that advice. I’ve learned it’s not as simple as ‘keep at it and it’ll bend’, so bye, bubble city.”

He moves forward and presses against the barrier, the barrier stretching like a cloth being pushed against and forming a bubble that detaches itself from the rest. However, a little glimmer distracts him as he notices that all this time, the strange turquoise shard has been following him.

“Why do you like me so much?” he asks incredulously, squinting at the glass as if it were a lost puppy. “Go back already, I don’t need you.”

However, the glass draws closer and he can feel his very soul crying out to reunite with it. An orb of light emerges from his chest and merges with the glass, the latter shining like a miracle. The brilliance reflected in his eyes, he comes upon a realization; the glass is the thirtieth core. The fully formed spectacle gently drifts near him and without realizing it, Wind hugs it like an old friend.

A story begins to form, joining every broken trail in his mind. It sounds like a fairy tale, but it is no mere fiction. There exists a flooded world where people lived on islands that were once mountains. On an island, there lived a boy, his grandmother and his dear younger sister.

One day, his younger sister was kidnapped by a great avian that bowed down to evil. Out of anger, her older brother had chased down the bird from island to island, across a vast sea that separated these little fragments of life. He met people, made friends, and saw places he’d never imagined to see in his lifetime.

He became friends with a talking boat, a crew of pirates whose leader was actually a princess and the inhabitants of this worldwide archipelago. The princess and her crew saved his sister and a couple of others, but he and the former were easily overpowered by the mastermind behind it all.

So he, a mere child wearing clothes inspired by the savior who traveled through time, forced the gods to recognize him as the hero. He fell the mastermind, forcing a holy blade into the latter’s head for all eternity, returned to the surface and lived happily ever after when a smaller adventure after this had passed…

Not.

The boy was whisked away to another time and met eight others like him; heroes who did not ask to be one, but took up the mantle for there was no one else. The boy was even able to come face to face with his predecessor, that same hero who traversed the temporal. It was not all easy despite the immense power on their side as a shadow lurked across all eras, casting a looming shadow over reality.

However, it would be false to say there was no joy in this journey. The little boy who simply wanted to save his sister now found himself in the midst of legends… and was able to converse with them. Unfortunately, they did not consider him an equal for he was young, and he hated that. His more forceful, ‘see it through’ nature only bolstered the image of a young, immature hero who needed to be protected.

When the boy awoke with no memories in a completely alien realm, he wanted above all else to find his past. In doing so, he did not realize that his overly steadfast nature that refused to bend rendered him blind to the struggles of fellow amnesiacs.

Now, that boy understands. It’s time to be as strong as a tide, but shifting like water. The darkness of the ocean is cut through by a pale light, the view of the world above the waves illuminating the midnight depths. The bubble approaches the sand bank, yawning to release him as over two thirds of it emerges from the water.

Seeing the white sky reflected onto the water and his friends emerging from it, he can feel something in him has been completed. As if everything has been tied into a neat ribbon, something in him has taken root, grown, changed and blossomed.

“Wind? You okay?” Wild asks, walking towards him.

“I’m sorry too, Wild. I should’ve not shouted at you and only thought of my view back then.” Wild flinches and takes a step back, seemingly unnerved by the sudden change.

“What’s this all about? Look, that’s water under the bridge and—”

“I was in the wrong. Look, I’ve… realized a couple of stuff as I went back up. You’re right. Things aren’t as simple as they seem. If learning how to be flexible gives me back my memory, then that’s a lesson well learned!”

“Glad to know,” Wild responds, smiling with pride. However, the pieces of the puzzle suddenly snap into place and shock shows itself throughout his entire expression.

“Wait… you REGAINED YOUR MEMORY?!”

“Dead on!”

“Hyrule, over here! Wind’s got his memory back!” The aforementioned person comes running, his expression one of unfiltered surprise. It turns into delight at seeing Wind happy, a hope blossoming in Hyrule that someday, he can feel this joy too.

“Where to now, Wild?” Wind inquires, a grin on his face.

“To wherever Legend is. Let’s go, guys. We’ve got a veteran to chase down.”

Chapter Text

His first impression is that he’d awakened to a cloud of glass butterflies.

“How beautiful!” he says with a smile on his face.

“How are these moving on their own? Are there strings?”

He gets and begins to observe his surroundings. The sky above is bright. Blindingly so. If he looks carefully, he can see pastel shades of pink and blue spread within the white sky. At its highest point, he can even see a beautiful night sky of many shades of blue, dotted with stars. The clouds hanging high in the atmosphere are ethereal, fluffy and of many different colors, reflecting the land beneath them. The entire sky has a painting-like quality, like the work of a highly skilled artist.

“It’s amazing how the sky can be both day and night,” the boy says to himself.

He returns his attention to below and finds that glass shards surround him. They fly on their own and flutter like butterflies, graceful and beautiful.

“Delightful!” he feels and so he says it. The glass reflects other worlds than the one he is in. Peering in some, he can see the reflections of towns, forests, lakes, and mountains. Others are simply clear and had to be touched for the memories inside to be viewed. That didn’t matter — reliving memories is a wonderful experience. He flourishes his arm outwards and the shards scatter.

The glass has a name: Arcaea. Truthfully, he’s too enraptured by the beauty of the glass to even care. Simply entertaining himself with the glass by touching it, swirling it and making it fly around is enough, no?

There are six important questions to be asked: Who, what, where, when, why and how. Of all of these questions, he has no answers and desires none, content to simply bask in the light of the Arcaea.

These are his first moments in a new world.

Chapter Text

“Does your past hold something so terrifying that even someone without their memories would fear it? …Is that why you’re so scared of that shard?” Wind mutters aloud. Just a few minutes ago, he had split up with the other two to explore the ruins past the garden.

After getting back up the cliff courtesy of better controlled updrafts, they had walked in comfortable silence towards the leftmost path from the garden’s plaza. The path itself followed suit to the format of the garden’s other paths, but vines blocked where it was supposed to terminate.

When Hyrule had pushed the vines, it revealed a vast ruin split into three areas: a plaza high above a lake, a courtyard of proud arches and a huge spire that touched the sky. Wild and Hyrule had gone to the courtyard while Wind had followed the path to the lake, leading right where he is now.

He turns back to the hexagonal stone platform before him. It is littered with debris and stone pillars, vines creeping up its sides with snaking cracks running deep. The platform sits above the water's surface, supported by pillars of stone equally aged as its brethren above. Strangely, there is nothing here.

“But… why?” he muses aloud. “It’s just empty for some reason.”

He gives a short sigh and turns his back on the ruins above the water, taking the path back to update the others on the situation when suddenly, his path is blocked off by an invisible barrier. The boy touches it and feels it is out of… glass? What should he do? Should he go back or try to break the barrier?

He decides to go with the latter without a moment’s hesitation, balling his fists and punching the glass with a lot of his strength. Now, this world is a strange world and strange worlds do not operate on known logic, so the glass does not shatter when punched. Neither when kicked and harshly elbowed.

Having had enough of unfruitful effort, he decides to backtrack for more clues. Unknowingly though, said backtracking starts a game of cat and mouse.

Curled up behind a pillar is Legend, having moved around the entire area in the shadow of Wind’s blindspot. As Wind checks every pillar, Legend would run to another with footfalls more silent than a whisper. When Wind checks the last pillar however, a groan of disappointment escapes him as there is once again, nothing.

“Nothing again. How am I supposed to get out— are those footsteps?”

A clink, a step, a gasp.

“Ah!” a voice shouts, one that doesn’t belong to Wind. Wind’s head turns towards the source of the voice, and he sees Legend cornered. The boy’s face turns grim, ready to receive a strike from a creature of glass haphazardly pieced together.

Floating shards arrange themselves in a way that resembles a head, a tall pane of glass for its body and sharp legs of triangular glass. Its disconnected shards for arms and appendages seem to move in perfect unison and in a live demonstration, lifts its arm to strike Legend down for good and—

“NO!” Wind darts off, his legs bringing him to where Legend is. He points at the monster and calls for wind to blow it into a pillar, the creature shattering on impact in a shower of glass. Afterwards, he rushes over to Legend’s side upon the creature’s defeat, worried for his potentially injured friend.

“You okay?” Wind asks. A weak nod is all that Legend can respond with.

‘That boy is nice. Maybe you should go with him,’ Legend’s mind says. But what if Wind forces him to get near that accursed shard? He is one of the people in that trio after all.

Paranoia begins to fill him as he moves to the side and away from Wind. Conveniently however, a distraction in the form of a new enemy arrives. Legend quickly runs towards the main path with fleeting steps to escape the now chaotic scene. And yet, a condemning voice is quick to speak inside of his head.

What in the world is wrong with him?

Is he really going to leave a child to fend for himself? Just because he’s scared of glass?

That boy has only been concerned for him. Is he really that selfish to abandon Wind and run because of some stupid fear?

Ah, but it’s not like he can be useful. It’s not like he can help in any way.

*“Gah!” Wind’s voice escapes him as he dodges a strike from his new foe.

Concentrate. Call for a gale to smash the enemy to pieces.

The wind heeds his summons, blasting the creature away into a pillar. However, it does not shatter and simply gets back up. The monster sets its sights on him and within moments, Wind finds himself dodging left to avoid a piercing strike aimed for his stomach. It leaps backward and disappears, raising its arm to strike him down. He rolls to the side and attempts to deliver a sweeping kick to trip his foe, unfortunately missing.

His enemy obscures itself from sight once more, but this time, he can sense it. Every muscle in his body screams to dodge an incoming frontal slash, but he stays still. When the creature readies its swift, deadly strike, Wind counters with a kick to its body. It barrels to a pillar and crumples. Even though it looks weakened however, he can’t see even a single scratch.

Without a sword, what can he do? Add that to the fact that he has to protect Legend and he’s in a disadvantageous situation. If he had the control of either Wild or Hyrule, he could easily send volleys of glass to destroy the creature. The fight would’ve ended much quicker.

What can he do with just a bunch of fallen pillars and a lake? Blow the water and hope it causes damage? Hope that the water magically becomes glass? Well, if he recalls correctly, water means shards when splashed. That, and the ruins’ location…

He makes a break for the platform’s edge, extending his arm in the direction of the water. A gust comes, water is launched upwards and countless shards are formed from the strength of the gale. Wind calls for glass to come to him and sifts through them, trying to find a fragment that can work as a dagger. Unaware that the monster’s a hair’s width away, he keeps on searching. With a single headbutt, he is sent flying into the lake.

Panicked, he resurfaces and bites his lip. Land is not close and it would take too much time to swim there. By then, Legend might be badly hurt. However, a breeze blows past him and he grins.

“There’s only one way to find out!” He thrusts his arm and points in the direction of the ruin, calling for the strongest draft of wind he can summon. However, a squall doesn’t come like he hopes for but rather. Instead, a zephyr presents itself to him. How disappointing. He sighs and makes up his mind to swim onto dry land but pauses when the wind… picks up?

The breeze turns into the powerful gust he had called for, rapidly increasing in size and strength. It lifts Wind out of the water, launching him and a bunch of shards at breakneck speeds in the trajectory of the ruin. Up he goes and down he arrives. The launch tosses him onto his side, but Wind gets up quickly to observe the situation. The first thing he notices is that the monster is gone. The second thing he notices is that the summoned shards are still there. And if the monster is gone—

Wind runs the fastest he has ever run and finds himself summoning a gust of wind to knock the creature of glass into the water like it had done to him. He breathes a sigh of relief and heads over to Legend’s side.

“Are you okay? Sorry I couldn’t be there for you,” Wind asks, concern filling his expression. At this, an unwelcome feeling called guilt begins to settle in Legend.

…Sorry Wind couldn’t be there for him? No. Legend’s the one who should apologize. He’s the one who ran away

“You’ve saved me again even though I could do nothing to help…” Legend trails off, looking at the ground in shame. “I ran away instead of helping. Why would you save someone like me?”

“Because you’re— WATCH OUT!” Wind pushes Legend away and takes his place, a strike from the resurfaced beast hitting its mark.

It deeply cuts the flesh on his arm and Wind shouts in pain, clutching his arm now dyed red. It hurts. It hurts so much that he feels like crying. His breath turns to sharp and rushed gasps. He can feel his head pounding from the sheer force of his racing heartbeats. His stomach feels sick just looking at it. He can feel his throat choking up and streaming tears warming his cheek.

And even though he is in so much pain, his mind still reminds him that he has to protect the vulnerable Legend. How can he protect his friend in such a sorry state?

“Legend, just run!” Wind shouts through gritted teeth. Legend freezes up even though every part of him is telling him to make his escape, even as his heels turn back to dash away. But really, should he run? Wind even encouraged him to but… he’s the one who always needed saving.

Is he really going to leave a child to fend for himself?

“I won’t!” Legend answers, slinging Wind’s non-injured arm slung around his neck and sprinting towards the central platform. With his cap, Legend bandages the wound. It isn’t enough, but it’s all he can do.

The steady look on his face as he bandages that arm betrays his terror. He has seen much of that scarlet liquid within memories but right now, his hand is stained by it. His lips quiver and his hands start to tremble. Wind tries to force a smile, but Legend only grimaces.

“Thanks Legend—” the former groans and squeezes his eyelids shut. “I can take it from here.”

“No, you will NOT!” Legend shouts. “Can’t you see you’re injured?! You’ve saved me, so now’s my turn. Listen carefully: I refuse to let us die!”

Legend’s hand is cloaked with light and glows, bright and warm. Pale flames come to life, manifesting around his hand on the wound. It dances around and licks Wind’s wound, sealing it clean.

“I don’t know what you just did but you healed me with fire!” Wind rejoices, now standing straight. “I thought you could only cauterize wounds with that!”

“And as for you,” he says, his grin turning determined as he faces the monster, “Bring it on!”

The winds come to his beck and call, blasting his foe away. Quickly he sprints, heading towards the previously summoned shards to grab a suitable piece of glass. He agilely dodges a slash from behind and exchanges strikes with the creature, the sounds of blades locked in combat heard across the arena.

However swift he may be though, he never lands a single hit on it. It simply parries his slashes and outmaneuvers him, countering when it gets the chance. It seems that he can’t use brute force to win this fight, but in times of resource scarcity, he has to make the best of what he has.

With this in mind, he looks around the premises once more, seeing what could potentially help him gain the upper hand in this stalemate battle. Pillars, water and debris. That’s all there is. But maybe, he’ll have to take a page out of Wild’s book and think things differently. With this mentality, as he dodges and counters his opponent’s attacks, does he find a solution.

The broken stumps of a pillar provide a bit of height, equating to high ground and more coverage. He can try and pull off an aerial assault, seeing as it’s the only option he has left. Without wasting time, he scrambles up the remains of a nearby pillar, jumps and summons an updraft to blast him high above. Now airborne, he holds his chosen piece like a sword, aiming its jagged edge for the monster’s head.

The strike pierces through and its head cracks. It shatters and so does the body, falling apart in a chaos of glass and memories. With a satisfied smile, he turns back and heads back to Legend.

“Thanks for saving me again,” the boy in red says with a slight smile.

“Anything for you! Now let’s find Wild and Hyrule!”

His expression changes. It’s not joy. It’s fear.

“I’m not recovering my memory. I can feel terrible things in that cursed piece of glass.”

“Legend, we’re more similar than you think, y’know? You ran away but I ran towards it. In the end though, there’s this incompleteness that’s eating at your very soul when you see Wild and the others or stray memories with you in it.”

“How did you know?!”

“Because I felt that emptiness too. A feeling like your soul crying out—”

“—for the part of it that’s been torn away from it?”

“So you know too! Well, I’m not forcing you to recover your memory. I had to learn to let it go and give up before I got it back. But at least come with me. It’s not safe to just run off alone in this new world.”

“Then if you had to learn that lesson, why do you insist on getting me back?”

“Because you and I were friends before this whole memory loss thing.” Legend stiffens, his expression changing to one that can only mean rejection. He takes a few nervous steps backwards, and breaks into a sprint away from Wind.

“I’ve never seen such big ruins before. All I’ve seen during my travels were the remains of settlements and housing,” Wild comments. Columns, pillars, a myriad of glass and broken arches, the same monochrome in all of the remnants of the past they had discovered lie within the ruins. Little shrubs grow on the side, vines entangling fallen arches and columns.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit weird? It’s as if they were themed around something. Like a central focus given form and design,” Hyrule muses.

“Yep. That stuff. Now if you’ll excuse me,” Wild puts his hands on his hips, “I’ve got some pillar climbing and ruin hopping to do. Try to keep up, surface level dweller!”

Wild smirks and climbs up a pillar with ease like a squirrel to trees, surveying the land below with a watchful eye. Alas, all he sees is debris. Optimism still burning bright, he scampers from column to arch, gripping onto some tiny hope that something has to be here. That hope is cut short when the disappointed voice of Hyrule comes within earshot.

“Nothing here. Let's just head back and ask Wind for advice.” At that, Wild tries to stay enthusiastic, pushing up a smile visible to all.

“We don’t have to regroup. All we gotta do,” he jumps down from high above, landing with the grace of a swan, “is to use the Slate on my hip to contact him. How that works I don’t know. Don’t really care since it’s useful.”

With a few touches, the slate gives a chirp and projectes what seems to be Wind’s face. Hyrule does not have the mental strength to comprehend any more absurd happenings and things, so he simply taps Wild on the shoulder to ask for the slate. A familiar voice is then heard coming from it soon after.

“Howzit going? I found Legend but he ran away again! Can you guys search for him?”

“No signs of him here,” Hyrule answers. “Wild and I searched the place for anything, but nothing happened.”

“Maybe try going out? When I found nothing and tried to head back, an invisible glass barrier-thing just blocked my way. I then had to fight two glass monsters for the barrier to go away. Legend helped me with some weird fire that healed wounds.”

“Tell us more,” Hyrule’s encouraging voice says.

“What were those fires like? And how did you get hurt?” Wild asks.

“Got a nasty gash on the arm from the monster. Legend made some epic short speech about not letting us die and the flames just appeared. They kinda sealed the wound closed? Could feel some flesh knitting together. It’s like your healing but more powerful or something.”

“Speaking of which,” Hyrule asks, “where did Legend run off to?”

“Outside. Currently in the main area but can’t find ‘im anywhere. The spire is also blocked off by glass barriers so I’ll just head over to your place in a moment…” his voice trails off. Silence comes from the other end of the line but suddenly, a loud clang bursts from the speakers.

“OUCH!!” Wind shouts. “Not again… A glass barrier just formed and it rudely smacked into my face! Good luck, you now gotta fight a glass monster. Wish I could help you, but I’m stuck here. I’ll just cheer you on, I guess.”

Just like that, creatures of glass appear, haunting and threatening. They form piece by piece from the surrounding glass, held together by some psychic force that prevents them from clattering to the ground with a shower of shards.

“It’s been a while since I drew my sword!” Wild remarks, excitement exuding from him. Hyrule returns that grin with a smile, making his own remark in response.

“It’s my first battle, but I’ll try and help by fighting using glass. So,” that smile turns into a smirk, “Are you ready?”

Chapter Text

Curious glass surrounds the two boys like floating leaves blown by the wind. Observing the glass warily, they stand still, until Hyrule makes his first move.

He extends his right arm behind him and glass quickly follows. He swings that arm forwards and the glass strikes the monster like a storm of arrows. His foe’s body begins to crack from the impact and enraged, it dashes towards him with a glass arm out as retaliation. Instincts and maneuvers ingrained into muscle memory spring into action. In a split second, Hyrule rolls to the side and dodges the incoming hit. Wild, seeing an opportunity, comes in from above with his hands clenched tightly around the sword’s hilt. It strikes through the creature’s head and shatters it like porcelain.

“Wasn’t that a bit easy?” Hyrule asks.

“Yep. Bet ten that there’s gonna be round two.”

With its kin fallen, more fragments come together to form even more enemies of glass. Hyrule readies another volley of glass and Wild, in a surprising moment, sheaths his sword.

“I just wanted to spice things up a bit. I prefer showering enemies with arrows, but glass will work fine. In the meantime, I’ve got a couple of ideas that the Old Man will scold me for!”

By command, glass comes to Wild’s side and he instructs it to strike his foes. It covers them and injures the monsters quite badly but allows a slash aimed at his side to go unnoticed until Hyrule shouts. Wild quickly faces it and leaps backwards, sliding back from the force of the jump upon landing. Suddenly, he begins shouting.

“Get away Hyrule! I’m gonna do something mildly dangerous!”

“You know,” Hyrule shouts back, “this isn’t the first time you’ve tried to pull some ‘mildly’ dangerous stunts!”

Ignoring the cheeky comment, Hyrule runs to the side of the arena and focuses on the rest of the battlefield, sending glass at a monster that tried to ambush Wild, while the person in question is preparing for… something. Like he is charging up an attack. He looks to Wild and sees that slightly manic excitement is plastered on the latter’s face.

Wild raises his right hand up and glass comes swirling to him like a twister. It surrounds and revolves around him like a storm, the wind picking up. It was pandemonium. Glass flies everywhere and even Wild’s silhouette is barely visible from within the cyclone of glass. Hyrule, bracing himself for the aftermath, guards his face with his arms as the squall is sent outwards.

Wild’s grin turns wide and he snaps his fingers, dispersing the storm and the monsters along with it. Shards fall like rain, glass embedding themselves in the ground like scores of arrows that have hit their mark. Hyrule is thrown to the ground from the force of the impact, the dispersing gales having knocked him off-balance.

Aas he gets up, he can’t help but feel both awed and concerned; awed at the spectacle, but concerned for Wild’s sanity. However, a familiar voice cuts through the settled dust of the battlefield.

“Wild, that was awesome! We gotta tag team some time!” Wind shouts as he skips over to Wild.

“If you can keep up!” Wild replies.

“Guys,” Hyrule starts, “We’ve just got out of a fight, we don’t need to get ambushed again.”

“But wasn’t that amazing?” Wild retorts.

“...”

“Overly cautious killjoy. Let’s just get to that spire.”

Is he gone?

Legend peeks from behind the column and surveys the area. He sees no trace of the others.

“Good,” he mutters, giving a sigh of relief. However, something starts clawing at his conscience as soon as foreign words drift past his ears.

“I’m going to keep trying! For as long as it takes!”

Noticing his surroundings, he realizes that he’s not behind a column anymore but instead in a bedroom colored by the setting sun. A man lies on a bed before him and he, even to the inexperienced eye, looks deathly ill. Instinctively, he knows that this memory doesn’t belong to him. However, the despair behind it can be felt clear as day. His body moves on its own and his hands glow bright and warm, radiating a blue light. These hands place themselves directly above the man’s chest in an attempt to possibly heal him.

He focuses a bit and sorts through his own muddled thoughts, trying to separate the feelings and thoughts that belong to him from the ones that belong to the other person. A name appears: Twilight.

More names are present: Hyrule, Wind, Four… and Legend. This memory definitely belongs to one of those names, but exactly whose he isn't sure. With this in mind, he looks at ‘his’ clothes to find out. A green tunic on top of a brown shirt.

Hyrule. Suddenly, something in his head clicks and the scene jumps from the inn bathed by the sunset to a forest. Soon however, a foreign feeling creeps up his cheeks and burns his ears as he’s picked up by an unfamiliar figure wearing a billowing white cape held together by a blue diamond brooch.

“Are we sure we don’t prefer him like this?” the figure with the cape asks.

“Yeah, laugh! Laugh all you want!” Legend shouts with vexed embarrassment, soon realizing he’s now a pink bunny at the mercy of the figure and one other person nearby. Said person has a wolf pelt wrapped around his neck and laughs along with the caped figure. However, his face immediately goes blank as he processes the words said. It feels all too natural, as if he’s truly known these people.

“Legend?” the caped figure asks with sincere concern. “Are you okay?”

Nausea overcomes Legend as he hears his name being called. This is the very thing he’s been running from; his past. That concern in the figure’s eyes— Sky, his mind remembers. These people truly care. However, he’s still rejecting them.

‘When will you understand?’ his heart says, but his mind refuses to accept it.

It can’t be. These memories must belong to someone whose name is coincidentally also Legend. Maybe they could be fake as well. However, white soon creeps along the edges of his vision and completely covers his line of sight.

Now back in the world, his conviction of not wanting to dig deeper is further rooted in him. He doesn’t want to remember. And since they’re gone, he can get away from this place. He silently jogs to the branching path leading back to the garden, but finds out that barriers had appeared to block the other paths.

Seeing no other option he hastily skips to the spire’s steps, swiftly climbing them and standing before double doors of glass. He pushes the doors and they creak open, leading the way into the vast and maze-like interior of the spire.

A spire towers over the trio, the shadows cast by it looming around the side like darkness waiting to sneak up on them. Unknowing of the heart-reflecting memories that reside within, the group head to the base of the stairs and tread on the steps one by one. As they make it onto the platform hosting the doors to the spire, a curious sight greets them.

“The doors,” Hyrule starts. “Why are they open?”

“Probably Legend,” Wind replies. “With all the funny magic stuff he has on hand, it doesn't shock me that he likely has good control over glass. You wielded magic without items. Wild dealt with amnesia. Could be linked to experience with both magic and memories.”

Light floods the surprisingly empty reception area as soon as Wild takes the lead and pushes the door wide open. The area branches to three separate hallways, leading three different destinations. Glass floats everywhere and is scattered across the premises, glinting with the sudden appearance of more people as if beckoning to touch it.

An odd shard catches Wild’s eye, singing a melody of the part of his past that he’s been stripped of. He jogs to the glass, peering into it to see… himself in a suit of armor. Standing poised and silent, a sword gleaming with sacred light strapped to his back, Wild is suddenly in an ethereal sanctum filled with sunlight.

Instinctively, he lifts his hood up to protect his eyes from the sun. However, shadows soon surround him as he stands behind a pillar supporting a series of balconies, hidden from the line of sight of whoever’s currently also present in the room.

He peeks from behind to see the other ‘Wild’ kneeling down and gazing at his princess Flora, expression blank and unreadable. However, if Wild squints, he can see that the other’s eyes have lost the shine of life, dull and more dead than alive. Empty, even.

His mirror image soon gets up and leaves silently and without complaint, a small bow before exiting the sanctum. He walks directly in front of the princess, his stance ready to immediately shift into one of protection and combat. A perfect picture of a hero of light. Protective. Loyal. Obedient. Without emotion.

And yet, those dead eyes strike a strange sort of chord within Wild. He tries to get a closer look, being as stealthy as possible, but his counterpart draws his sword almost immediately, running in front of the princess. Wild draws his sword and drops it on the ground, lifting his hands up.

“I won’t hurt anyone,” he says, walking from behind the pillar.

“Who are you?” Flora asks with caution, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Wild lifts his hood with a serious expression, and his memory self’s stoicness is immediately broken. Wild slowly approaches the knight and princess, a hundred repressed and forgotten sentiments flooding his head as he takes in their faces.

How much has he lost? How many other people also wearing this suit of armor have fallen? How many names has he forgotten? How many swords have rusted like his counterpart’s own sacred sword? Those comrades that he might’ve once had… Dying with such grief and regrets, a sense of everlasting failure…

Perhaps he could’ve done something to save them. But he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

In the end, ‘he’ was nothing more than a machine that fueled the destruction of the world. Even before that, was he not a subservient knight who crumbled under everyone’s judgemental eyes? Emotions were walled up and left to degrade. Voice untouched and hoarse, he silenced it so that he may never break his image. So that his true feelings and burden of carrying the world may not be known to anyone.

He did everything for others. Had anyone done anything for him? Had he done anything for himself? Perhaps it was selflessness coming from his own emptiness. The occasional spark of feeling might chance by however, and he may let slip his true thoughts.

That, however, would make no difference in his situation.

Nothing would’ve made a difference; it was ultimately hopeless— a burden he would carry until the day he’d die.

And didn’t he die.

He’d suppressed so much of his emotion that even he started to lose feeling. He was so powerful and courageous, using his strength for the sake of others. But for such power, it cost him. It cost him a price too steep. He was forced to sacrifice everything. His innocence. His emotions. His thoughts. His sanity. Even his life.

Where did the happiness he once had before pulling that damned sword go?

His own words ring inside his head: “You know, I get these memories and… I can see how unlike him I am.”

His face turns troubled. His breathing quickens. The world spins, not because the memory is ending, but because of panic. Of grim realization.

“Sir, are you doing fine?”

Even a mirage of her makes his heart wince in pain. What has he been thinking? That things would be better? Everything’s just been a game of give and take; torn from those he cares about as soon as he reunited with them or another.

It’s always been a trait of his. Like a curse.

“No. I’m not fine,” he admits.

“Could you at least tell me what’s wrong?” she inquires.

“You wouldn’t even believe it for a second. Everyone dies except for you and me, and it’s all my fault.”

“How?! And— why do you look like Link?!”

“You see these scars?” he says as he grasps the burnt side of his face. “Look at the knight in front of you, and look at me. My name… is Link. Although, I go by Wild these days.” His face turns deeply conflicted, voice quieting and brow furrowing.

“How is this even possible?! I mean, how can two of you exist at the same time?”

“...”

“Well princess, you and your knight are just memories. You’re just saying what she would say… But memories,” he sighs, “are still figments of people and their personalities.”

And with that, the memory ends. A chirpy voice snaps his senses to the present and its owner grabs his arm.

“...ello? Can you hear me? We were just about to leave you behind to explore the place.” Wild sharply inhales and his eyes dart around frantically, searching for the source of the voice.

“It’s me, Wind. Are you finally back in the present?” Wild gives a small sigh of slight relief.

“Yeah. Just saw a strange memory.”

“Can relate. This glass stuff is weird. Anyways, let’s find Legend. I don’t think he’s too far away.” Wild walks over to the path on the right and ventures through there, Hyrule to the left and Wind to the middle.

“Glass… It’s just glass. And they’re mostly dark. Monsters, battles, sadness…” the boy in green sighs. “But these memories feel familiar. At least, some. Mine? Are they mine?”

He stops walking when he reaches what looks like a giant checkerboard room with two towers, surrounded by roses. A giant ring of some sort hangs from the ceiling, numeric symbols elegantly inscribed on it. The walls have been replaced by a sky, a clear dichotomy between night and day that divides the area in twain.

Bright glass floats in the daytime while the Arcaea holding conflict and darkness reside in the shade of the night. Shadows lurk all around the board, creeping up to a single spot as if responding to his presence. These concentrated shadows rise up and meld together to form a strange copy… of him. Striking the resemblance however, it lacks a face.

“Me?!” he says with alarm, immediately shifting into a combat ready stance. “A dark copy of some sort? Hmm… Looks hostile, is summoning pointed shards that seem to aim at me and has that signature aggressive aura.”

“Well then,” he breathes out, “time to get a bit creative, Wild style.”

Glass comes around to form a sharp, isosceles-like triangle hovering over the entirety of his left forearm, bound by the boy’s innate magic like psychic glue. He takes one glance at the shadow, and a strike comes in an instant. He now finds himself bending backwards to dodge a sharp piece of glass a hair’s width away from his neck.

His eyes widen and his pupils shrink. His throat feels constricted and it is getting difficult to breathe. In a split second, he raises his left arm to swipe at the shadow, but it leaps back a great distance. As if in mockery of his ingenuity, the shadow creates the very same weapon he had. An idea forming in his head, Hyrule takes a step to the right. The shadow steps right. He jumps back. It jumps back.

It’s mimicking him, but doesn’t exactly follow his gestures to the smallest movement. It’s, quite frustratingly, an unfamiliar familiarity.

He dashes forward with his sword arm extended behind him. It does so too. He swipes at the shadow, it blocks and counters with a kick that sends him flying. He gets up, clutching his bruised stomach with a free hand.

To counter a mimic, one must do something out of the box, he thinks. Maybe a new move? A strategy involving the manipulation of glass? He stands still and grits its teeth. The shadow doesn’t move. He looks around and sees that there is still glass floating around.

In an attempt to throw it off, he runs in a disorderly fashion towards and around his dark copy. It blindly slashes and swipes around in response to this, unable to land even a single hit. Still running around it, he gets closer and thrusts his left arm forwards. The shadow bends back to dodge and a smirk creeps up the boy’s face. He agilely retracts his arm and a composite piece of glass much like the one he currently wields pierces through and impales the shadow, pinning it to the ground.

He raises an arm and with a clean slash, slices off the shadow’s head.
The sky grays and fades away, turning into a regular wall reminiscent of a ballroom. At the same time, the shadow itself begins to crumble, bits and pieces of glass falling like sand.

What catches his eye though is a single shard intact, dark and nearly buried in the glass. He kneels down to pick it up, and the world starts to obscure. The sight of an obsidian sword in his stomach greets him, and his breaths turn to wheezes and gasps. This is, without a doubt, his. He grimaces and pockets it, afterwards dispelling the force that binds the shards which form his sword.

Now, onto the next challenge that awaits.

Chapter Text

The hall before him is shaped like a left-facing vertical crescent. Although mostly gray and white, it has splotches of color like the seemingly organic flowers in a vase atop the nearby table. Windows aligned on the outer crescent let sunlight from other windows across them filter through, bathing the hall in a delicate warmth. The inner bend of the hall has a single double door that perhaps leads to somewhere, but the rest of the hallway is what one would put next to the dictionary entry of the word ‘unremarkable’.

Wind walks over to the door and unthinkingly fiddles with the door knob. Though quite unfortunately locked, he can hear the sound of clashing glass from the other side. Hyrule did take the path to the left which can only mean that he’s the one fighting. From all of Wind’s previous experiences, a boss door would only unlock under one circumstance: that the monster was defeated.

Sighing, he leans against the door and observes the room out of boredom. The sunlight makes what could have been an eerie, unnerving hall into a warm and beautiful one. It’s quite fascinating, he thinks, that all of this is actually made of glass. No one had told him— he simply instinctively knew that everything in this world was made of glass, both ordinary and containing memories. That was the first piece of knowledge that was in his head the moment he woke up.

But if everything was really made of glass, then might his body be made of glass too? Well, he can feel tired. He can also still bleed and cry.

He shrugs that thought away and waits in silence until the clashing dies down, the ringing of glass now a mere twinkle. The boy swings open the door in an instant, rushing inside to what looks like a cylindrical ballroom filled with the brilliance of glass mimicking sunlight. Standing in the middle of the scene was a familiar figure.

“Rule! Are you okay? Heard some fighting goin’ on in there.”

Hyrule smiles a bit, grateful for the concern.

“I’m fine. It’s not too surprising that we met, considering that our paths were adjacent. Find anything in your path?”

“Nope.”

“That’s a shame…” Hyrule sighs.

“So, what were you fighting against?”

“Some dark glass copy of me. This place used to look like a chess board floating in the sky, mist all around— hold on.” Hyrule’s eyes dart around frantically. They widen in surprise and he wordlessly grabs Wind’s wrist, sprinting up the stairs.

“What’s happening?!” a caught-off-guard Wind asks.

“Stairs. They’re cracking.” Wind looks down and sees fractures are beginning to run across the flight of stairs beneath them.

“We gotta run faster than this!”

“I can’t! Not when you’re here!”

“Just let go, I’ll be fine!” Hyrule lets go of Wind’s wrist, both now able to run up faster to escape the breaking steps.

“Alright, what’s the plan?” Hyrule asks.

“Just give me a moment… got it!”

“What is it?”

“I can summon an updraft to lift us up. We gotta stay still for this though.”

“We can’t stand still! We’ll fall!”

Wind’s face scrunches up. As his eyes dart around, an idea makes its way into his head. The stairs aren’t exactly complete; they quickly formed step by step in front of them. Wind grabs and tightly grips Hyrule’s wrist, preparing for what he was about to do.

“Hold on!”

He extends his arm forward aimed at steps a small distance from them and raises it up in an arc motion. As they run to that spot, the wind begins to pick up and they run even faster. An updraft forms there, carrying the pair high above, into the air. They safely land on newly formed steps, outpacing the crumbling stairs.

Wind, still running, looks above. They’re a good distance from a stone balcony in front of a door that leads deeper into the spire, new steps forming near it. He can’t really try the updraft method since new stairs have already formed above them.

Two choices remain: Try to run from the breaking stairs or launch the two of them to the balcony. However, the first option is quickly invalidating itself as the stairs were crumbling at an even faster pace than before.

He grits his teeth and calls for a gale of magnificent proportions, shaped like an arc, to blast them in the direction of the balcony. Once again, he positions it a good distance in front of them to let it charge up. When the two run straight into the heart of the updraft, they are propelled to even greater heights than before, the ballroom floor looking miniscule in appearance.

The glowing dome of bright glass that illuminated the room looked just within reach, light bouncing across the room with the steps of glass. It was both beautiful and scary; beautiful in the ethereal reflections of light in a splendid room and scary in the sense that their fate is in his gales. His heart races for the impending descent. He finds himself holding his breath. His partner looks similarly fearful, breathing quickening.

For a moment, time slows. Soon they come falling back down.

Wind shouts and so does Hyrule, but for a different reason.

“We’re not gonna make it!” the latter shouts. “The wind’s trajectory was a bit off and the blast itself wasn’t strong enough!”

“You got any solutions?!”

“Not exactly, unless you wanna get a bit hurt!”

“Better a cut than going splat on the floor!” Hyrule reaches his arm out, fallen glass from broken steps quickly gathering in one place to form a platform. The two land on their sides, rolling off the platform and onto the balcony just as the stairs finish crumbling. Wind gets up and dusts himself, Hyrule following suit.

“I think I’ve had enough action for one day,” Hyrule says with a sigh of relief.

“Me too. I thought launching myself back to the main platform was the only launching I’d get done today.”

“What main platform?”

“Fell off the platform while in the water ruins. Blasted myself back up and killed the monster that did this.”

“...You know what? I’m not going to question that. Let’s just move on.” Hyrule pushes open the door that reveals a small room with another set of stairs, this time lesser in size and not disappearing. Groans can be heard echoing around the empty ballroom.

A ramp that spirals around the inner premises of the tower, wrapping around the ballroom and the hall. The two rooms form a circular shape which resembles a cylinder when viewed from the side, like a snake wrapping around a tree. Wild looks around for a moment before he begins his ascent, presumably to check for any hidden things, and walks along the wall dotted with windows once he deems nothing sensational hiding itself from him.

As he ascends the tower, he starts to lose track of time. The walls are mostly uniform except for the occasional ornament and even then does he still feel like little progress is made. He stops for a momentary break, leaning against the wall, and is about to walk on until a glint of red catches his eye.

“Legend?” he says, just barely above a whisper. He gets up, makes a break for the source of color and stops just in time to grab the shoulder of a boy in a red tunic. Said person lets out a slight gasp and quickly turns back to look at the other person. His face turns into a scowl.

“What?! Wild? Why are you here?!” Legend shouts, the anger evident in his voice.

“We were searching for you!”

“I don’t want to be with you and that cursed piece of glass! I don’t want to remember!” Wild’s face turns troubled. He might know how to resolve this, but this involves him telling his past. It might burden Legend in the future but he’ll probably forget it soon… hopefully. With this in mind, Wild reveals his past.

“I was the exact opposite of you back then. I woke up without a memory to my name, and even that I forgot. As I regained scraps of my past, I came to realize my mistakes and had to bear it alone. Even then, I don’t truly have a full set of memories. And I won’t let that happen to you. I won’t force you to regain your memories. We’ll bear through it together. So please, join us.”

However, Legend’s expression remains clouded with acrimony.

“...No. I don’t want to get involved with the likes of you.”

“I was sort of like that, but joining them has helped me so much!”

“What good will it do me if I join you people who track down a specific person to force them to recover their memories?!”

“Because we were brothers.” Silence. They stand still, both distraught, until Legend speaks up again.

“...I knew that. I saw Hyrule trying to heal Twilight in a memory. I was in his place.”

“How— how’s that possible?!”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Leave me alone or else…” Legend raises his hand and pointed glass comes to him, aimed at that person whom he hates. That voice he hates. That sentiment he hates. That desire and will he hates.

Wild freezes up, and finds himself holding his breath. Once a brother, now a stranger who is threatening him. How… How could he have changed so much?

He lets go of that breath and takes a single step forward, hoping to convince Legend, and a shard filled with light pins him and his cloak to the wall. He looks at it with eyes wide and staring, so close to his neck. The boy’s shoulder’s tense up. His teeth grit. His heart starts to race.

Legend his chin, as if looking down on him, and his eyes sharpen into a glare. Another shard comes to him and is pointed at the champion’s right arm. He utters with a sharp and venom-laced voice:

“Get away, or I’ll end you myself.” Wild makes no movement, and Legend swiftly walks away. Unbeknownst to the former however, Legend’s heart wavers with these actions.

Is this really the right thing to do? Is resorting to threats really necessary?

From a distance, his ears catch the barest hint of a whisper coming from the other person.

“Why… Legend, why?” His face tilts down, expression changing to that of guilt. His fist clenches and he drowns in his thoughts.

He isn’t a good person.

Wild can only watch as Legend walks away. He frowns and gives a deep sigh. Why did it have to end in conflict? He messed up, didn’t he?

He must have done something wrong for Legend to give such an adverse reaction.

Wild waits until the boy in red is out of sight, and silently pulls out the offending shard pinning him. He throws the piece of glass away and reaches for his slate, tapping its deactivated screen. It lights up with a chirp, showing a familiar eye insignia before flashing to a determined pair of faces.

“What’s up Wild?” Wind says from behind the screen. The champion’s frown turns into a small smile, but quickly changes back to a more neutral expression.

“Legend. He pinned my cloak to a wall so that I couldn't chase after him. We’ll have to corner him on the highest floor. He said that he didn’t want to recover his memories though…”

“Even if he doesn’t want to, he still has to. If he willingly keeps on running from his memories, that feeling of emptiness is going to consume him and make him go crazy. I should know.”

“Guess that’s the plan. We’ll corner him at the top and confront him. Gotta go, need to catch up with him.”

“See ya. Me and ‘Rule will meetcha at the top. Just gotta quickly run through this place.” As Wind goes silent, so does the slate. Wild hangs it back on his hip and sighs, continuing his journey upwards.

On the other side of the spire, Hyrule and Wind find themselves faced with another circular room. Its walls are covered with streaming waterfalls and bright glass freely floats around the premises. A lock made of glass with a diamond shaped keyhole hovers in front of the door leading to the next room, effectively sealing it off.

Whenever either one of them tries to touch them, it rebounds them with a resounding chime. Hyrule tries to break apart the glass to no avail and Wind attempts to blast the lock away, but a staggering gust of wind heads straight back at him.

Left with nothing, they search the floating shards for some kind of clue. Glass, glass and more glass, nothing useful at all. However, Hyrule chances upon a fragment containing a memory. Within it, a girl with purple hair and her satellite in the middle of the very chamber he is in, looking around anxiously as the memory abruptly cuts off. Strangely, the distant and dulled sound of a heartbeat thumps in the background, accompanied by incomprehensible talking.

It’s like… a fragment of a song. The glass itself is a peculiar shape, a perfect right-angled triangle unlike all the other shards. Realizing this, Hyrule raises his voice so Wind can hear him.

“Look what I found! This shard actually contains a memory! It also has something like a song fragment in here, like that one strange shard that appeared while we were exploring the treetops. Thing is that, the memory doesn’t really feel complete and so does the song.” Wind quickly turns to face his companion, face lighting up at the discovery.

“I found a shard like that too! It had some weird song in it, like talking and heartbeats and whatnot.”

“You too?” Hyrule says, surprise evident in his voice.

“Yep. Since we’ve already got two of these things, why not try to make ‘em stick together with your weird glass power?”

The boy in green shrugs, “Worth a shot.”

Hyrule comes up and grabs the other shard from Wind’s hand, willing the two shards resting on his palms to come together. They fit like a puzzle, sticking without a hitch. With shared understanding and nods of confirmation, they search around the room for other fragments. The tell-tale sounds of indistinct muttering and dulled heartbeats help the two find the remaining shards, one concealed behind a waterfall and the other lying on the ground.

The pair reunite in the center of the room, holding one shard each. They bring their fragments together, the two memories once again binding into a single triangle. The second half of the memory immediately flies to the first and the gap between them seals, forming a complete recollection.

The memory is projected onto the world around them, but the previously incomprehensible talking sharpens into a clear voice. The purple-haired girl and her satellite look panicked and tired, dress ripped and out of breath.

“Charon,” she says, “that was too close of a call. No matter how skilled I am in manipulating glass, I am no fighter. If someone else like me stumbled upon this room, they would’ve been dead within a few minutes. It was only by luck that I managed to find this other entrance. I’ll have to seal this one off so that no one will have to get injured, assuming anyone is still alive… Assuming anyone still hasn’t frozen themselves…”

The girl reaches for a violet shard within her coat and throws it at the space before her. She charges up what seems to be magic and sends it towards the shard, enlarging it.

“We have to go back and review what I’ve discovered. Come along Charon,” she says as she walks through the shard. The girl disappears without a trace, heading to wherever that bizzare shard reflects, and the memory ends. Immediately, Hyrule vocalizes a question.

“Who was that?”

“I have no clue either,” Wind quickly replies

“And that Charon…”

“Might be that purple floaty thing beside her. Had ears and all.”

“Nice catch. Anyways, let’s get rid of the lock and meet up with Wild.” Hyrule, whole memory in hand, walks over to the lock and places the diamond of glass within its keyhole. The lock dissipates and reveals a broken door, splinters of wood lying around.

“That’s strange,” Hyrule remarks.

“Maybe the girl and Charon were in a hurry to escape whatever was behind the door?”

“Could be.” The two walk on in, ready to face whatever lies beyond the remains of a door. A circular platform of glass presents itself before them and Wind steps on it out of curiosity. It lifts him upwards, leaving the Hyrule behind.

Not wanting to be left behind, Hyrule magically yanks the platform down once Wind gets off it. He forces it to quickly go upwards and the pair walk through another broken door that leads to a room grand in both size and appearance.

However, their attention is captured by a familiar blue tunic and the scarlet of an amnesiac veteran. Loud and shouting voices ring across the room, echoing across the walls. Neither are not able to discern anything from the shouting match, save for one sentence from the boy in red:

“You think I’ll simply accept that?!”

Chapter Text

[4-4]

Don’t drown in your past, Legend. Keep moving forward.

The echoes of their shouting reverberate across the room.

“You think I’ll simply accept that?! You think I will simply go along with your request and quietly relive the horrors of the past?!” Legend growls.

“I was forced to do that as well! I didn’t have a choice!” Wild fires back.

“You could’ve just wandered off and left that piece of glass behind!”

“You think I’ll simply accept that?” Wild asks in sardonic questioning. “Accept not remembering anyone from my past, not remembering what made me who I was, not knowing who I was? You think I can just walk off the floating island I woke up on?”

Legend scowls even more at that.

“Using my own words against me…” he mutters. “How would I have known that you woke up on a floating island?!”

“Then don’t make assumptions!” Wild yells, anger pouring over the edge like foam from a pitcher of fizzy water. Unable to say anything, Legend balls his fists and stays put. However, new footsteps make him turn back. The expected figures coming into view, he dismissively scoffs and then resumes pouring oil into his and Wild’s miniscule, insignificant inferno.

“Look at your little friends. Must’ve heard our little fight. Do I really only have one choice? Do I only have one option to make myself clear? I don’t want to do this but…” Three jagged shards fly to the three persons surrounding him, pointed at what he assumes to be their dominant hands.

This is not simply a wordless threat; it is a message. A message to stop. However, stopping isn’t in a Link’s vocabulary. It never was, and never will be.

That applies especially to now, when a quick-thinking Hyrule sends his shard hurtling to the side. Wild hears the telltale clattering of thrown glass and follows suit, sending his and Wind’s ones away. At this, Legend becomes frustrated. Nothing, absolutely, totally nothing would get through them.

He tried running. That didn’t work.

He tried ‘reasoning’ with them. That was useless.

They didn’t falter in face of threats that he’d make true on. The only option left…

A fragment comes to his hand and he goes silent. Just as he is about to make his first move, he suddenly stops. His eyes widen and his pupils shrink to dots. Legend falls forward on his hands, his irises now murky and breathing labored.

“Legend?!” Wild shouts, but promptly drops to the ground as well. A distant crash grabs his attention, and he sees Hyrule is out like a lightbulb. Legend’s voice wrests back Wild’s attention, but the latter cannot even look at the other person.

“Magic draining current. The–,” Legend sharply inhales, “higher your magic reserves, the more affected you are. Haha… seems like Hyrule and I have the highest reserves… What a joke…”

“Magical… exhaustion?” Wild guesses.

“Bingo. I think… that our glass powers… are dependent on our… magic reserves…” A haze obscures Legend’s mind, a thick white fog blocking his cognitive functions. Suddenly, an unfamiliar voice interrupts them. The newcomer jumps down from a loft nearing the ceiling of the room, completely unharmed from the leap. Wind, not too affected by the current, agilely hops sidewards to make way for the person.

Her long, cherry blossom colored hair flows as she descends like a stream of pink petals, the ribbons attached on her clothing swirling alongside her as she lands and walks towards them. Her curious yet caring green eyes shimmer at the prospect of meeting someone new, and she begins speaking.

“Are you okay?” she asks. Wild tenses up and he takes a step back.

“You… you heard everything, didn’t you?” he asks.

“I did. I’m really sorry, it’s just this strange… effect I bring with me.”

“What’s his name?” the girl asks, pointing to the fallen two.

“The one in green is Hyrule and the one in red is Legend.”

“I’m Kou. Hold on for a moment. Let me just do this trick I learned a while ago from a lady in purple.” She gets closer to an unconscious Hyrule and a wheezing Legend. Then, she holds them tightly by the shoulders as a gentle pink light flows from her to them. Almost instantaneously, a spark in Legend’s eyes revitalizes and he gets up like a sprout suddenly experiencing growth.

“What— what did you do?” he nervously asks, looking around as if trying to find an escape. Kou, noticing this, uses a softer tone.

“It’s alright. I just transferred some of my energy to you.”

“That wasn’t just energy,” Legend interjects. “That was magic.”

“Magic?” Kou questions. “I don’t think so. In all of the other worlds I’ve seen, magic doesn’t quite fit the description of the strange energy here.” A white and pink stuffed bear gently floats down, the crimson ribbon tied around its neck fluttering like the wings of a butterfly. It gently lands in Kou’s hands and she gives it a tight squeeze before speaking again.

“See? It’s like telekinesis, but I don’t feel anything. It’s like… calling an inanimate object to you with an invisible string. Anyways, how did you get here? I thought that lady had locked the door, as we agreed on.”

“About that, we unlocked the door,” Hyrule answers.

“That’s not a good idea!” she interjects, her sudden outburst shocking everyone. Kou suddenly shrinks back, a bit surprised at her own raised voice.

“Sorry. Whenever I get near people, a sudden violent urge begins to bubble in me and I go crazy,” she admits. “It’s like… It’s like some darkness is controlling me, and I think it all started when I viewed a strange memory.”

“Tell us more,” Wild inquires.

“Hmm… I used to explore this world. There’s a gap in my memory, but suddenly, I felt incomplete one day. I didn’t pay attention and continued on with my wandering, but stumbled upon a peculiar piece of glass. When I saw it, I felt the worst I ever had, like something in my heart was trying to rip everything to shreds. Something had made itself at home in me, and I don’t know what.

“When I explored this tower, I met with a lady in purple. We had a discussion about this world and what we had found, but I felt myself being taken control of by this dark, evil thing and attacked her. I begged her to find some way to stop it or lock me up, and since then, I’ve been here so that I won’t hurt others.”

“Like that?” Wind asks. “You could always come with us. We’re expert possession fighters, after all. Before I even came here, I beat a demon out of someone!”

“You don’t even look fifteen,” she remarks, her smile even fonder.

“Watch it! Call me a kid one more time—”

“Not very mannerful, are you?”

“Oh, I’m going to—” Wind fumes, on the verge of exploding. However, a single flick on the forehead from Wild sends the former stumbling. Kou barely holds an unmalicious snicker, walking towards Wind to help him regain his balance.

“Alright, alright, I won’t call you a child. I do have a question though: are you a newcomer to this world?” she inquires, taking note of the boy’s unusual clothing. “The clothing of everyone here, it’s abstract, almost like it’s based on a concept. You and your friends though… it’s strange that they almost seem practical.”

“You answer us first and I will tell you,” Wild offers, distrust dripping from his voice.

“Alright. I… don’t exactly know how I ended up here. I woke up without memories in this world, and that's all I know.”

“Strange. My story started like yours, but I recovered my memory somehow and remembered that we came here through some glass shard.”

“You— recovered your memory? I thought that wasn’t possible.”

“I don’t know how that happened either, but let’s get back on topic: Wind’s offer. We can help,” he says, extending a hand. Kou looks at that hand and her own, something like hope blossoming within her. However, her eye twitches as she reaches out and her arm begins moving erratically.

“Run!” she shouts, realizing what is happening. A school of glass points directly towards Wild and rushes towards him. In a split second, he redirects some and parries the rest. As he looks towards the girl, he sees an empty smile that makes something in him curdle.

“Kou! What’s happening?!” he frantically queries while going into a fighting stance. She doesn’t answer, her face relaxing into a blank expression as if the vivacity she exuded before was killed in an instant. A line of glass hurtles in his direction and he clenches his teeth as he comes to an epiphany.

“We have to fight her and…” Wild says, his voice grave and almost wavering. Wind, realizing the intent behind those words, feels a blaze inside him exploding.

“We can’t do that!” the latter yells back. “That’s just WRONG! We— we can leave! Find an escape, maybe we don’t have to hurt anyone!”

“Try it yourself, then!” Without hesitation, Wind runs towards the entrance of the frenetic arena. A glass barrier stops his mad rush, but he slams his fist on it, even grabbing a shard of glass to try and pierce through it. No matter how much he tries though, not even a single imperfection can be found in the glass. His heart begins to be weighed down with despair like swathes of baneful feathers drifting down onto his shoulders, but he pushes those thoughts away as he shouts to Wild.

“There’s a glass barrier, but we can find another way! It doesn’t have to end with violence!” A lone fragment slices his cheek however, and that despair he had banished returns with an army.

“Think, Wind! This isn’t a matter of right or wrong, it’s one of life and death! Do you want Hyrule and Legend to get fatally injured because we pointlessly tried to find another way?!” Wild screams, the force of his next swing of the sword multiplied by two. “It’s do or DIE!”

For a moment, Wind stands in place. A storm of glass flies around the area as a thought begins to form in his head, one that he particularly despises. His face darkens as he clenches his fist, his answer filled with growing anguish.

“...Fine. But that doesn’t mean I’ll like it.” Wind raises his arm up and squalls swirl around the two, violent and constant. In what seems to be his take on Wild’s latest stunt, the twister sucks up and swallows the shower of glass their way. With a single snap, Wind redirects the storm of gales and glass towards Kou.

She bounds high up into the clear dome shaped roof, dodging every single last shard sent her way. The girl almost noiselessly lands back down, not even a single scratch present. She makes eye contact with a glaring Wild, eyes locked onto each other and unflinching. It only breaks as the latter backflips into a charge, a tailwind summoned by the sailor increasing his momentum. At this, Kou calls a bunch of shards to act as a sword, controlling it from behind. Wild jumps to dodge her first slash and retaliates by sending forth a few of his own shards.

Behind, Wind summons an updraft beneath Wild. Understanding his companion’s actions, the latter swiftly sheaths his sword and pulls out a paraglider from his slate. Soon blasted upwards, he lets go of his paraglider to point at the girl. At that single action, glass begins to rain down on the battlefield, aimed at Kou. Now falling, Wild unsheathes his sword and transitions into a plunge that accelerates his already rapid descent. He plummets into the ground, a crater in the floor forming from the impact.

It serves no role in injuring her, but a major player in distraction. In fact, Kou doesn’t notice a figure sneaking behind her. Wind leaps behind to land the blow, a tailwind strengthening his incoming strike. However, a shard comes hurtling and stabs Wind in the palm. He screams in pain, clutching the back of his hand so tightly that it turns white.

He can only stand still and watch on in pain as Kou redirects her attention to Wild. When she throws a crew of glass at the latter, he can throw back a riptide. When she summons a rain shower like he did, he can redirect the needle-glass to her.

From behind, Legend watches the mesmerizing ordeal like a silent sentinel. Their graceful and wild movements are delightful yet filled with precision, dodging and attacking with such agility like flowing banners. Despite that, a nagging thought nudges him to crawl away. His legs begin to try and move in an attempt to escape, but they freeze when a question in his head poses itself.

Isn’t this the same old thing again?

Always running, but it never works. That pain in his heart whenever he sees them won’t go away. They call out to him, they search for him, they help him, they protect him…

And yet, he is still so selfish. Always abandoning them. Always so stubborn and hateful.

This tug that he feels towards the shard won’t disappear. That shard he so hates. That past he so despises. His fractured soul screams for those memories, screams to finally be whole again. Legend reaches out for the missing piece of himself, that piece of glass he has been trying to outrun from the moment he knew of its existence.

He crawls towards the fragment that had slipped out of Hyrule’s pocket, occasionally stumbling and getting hurt by stray glass. Even so, he doesn’t slow down one bit, a new fire burning in his heart. Legend continues his trudge through the tempest until that accursed crimson glass is just within his arm’s distance. He goes into a kneel and extends his arm to grasp it, the fragment filled with reflections of everything he has seen.

In those memories, a certain radiance shines when it reflects memories of Legend and the other eight who share the same spirit as him. Every form of hostility he has shown, he regrets. Every threat he has made, he regrets. Those extreme actions he would’ve taken, he regrets even thinking about them. Those hurtful things he said to the three people that unconditionally cared for him, he hates himself for.

However, he’s decided to move on. He’s made a decision, and it’s final.

He can’t go back, and he won’t.

Legend grabs the shard with such strength that it cuts his hand. Even as blood trickles down his arm, he still holds it with such tightness so that he’ll never lose it again. His very recollections begin to play before his eyes, and suddenly, his mind is overwhelmed by the luminescence of a million missing memories.

Stranger than mythos yet the truth nonetheless, his story is a path marked with despair dappling a moonlit road.

Once upon a time, a thunderstorm’s roar cracked throughout the whole of the kingdom. There was a child whose only relative had left for the castle in chase of a telepathic cry. The child laid in his bed, tucked away under the covers, but considered getting out for he too had heard that cry.

Without a sword and just his courage, the child stepped into the pouring rain and the crackling land of lightning, marking the beginning of a thorny road. The child was a ‘hero’, the fated one who would save the day. So innocent and wide-eyed, he traversed through a realm of nightmares and the world of brilliance on the flipside to fell an evil.

The strings behind his radiant errant were nudged just a bit, so insignificantly when he encountered an island with an egg resting atop a mountain. Without much thinking, he ventured every crevice, befriended the people and uncovered stories long lost. When he reached the peak containing the egg however, his very being was weighed down by a thousand mixed emotions like a slosh of sludge. The burden of dozens of lives rested on him, but that child pressed on and dispelled the dream.

Yes, that island was one expansive dream, a fabrication, a lie. As he sat upon the driftwood and looked to where the island once was however, his heart was suddenly seized with an indescribable agony. The weight of his actions began piling on him little by little like droplets of water coalescing into clear, caustic masses like flowing crystals, all raining down on him.

They were real. They were alive. They were happy.

He took that from them, that selfish, horrible person.
To get back to his dear homeland, the one he saved, he killed them all.

Torment ripped his insides apart and the child held his face in his hands. Something repressed from him for a long time used the flesh of his throat as holds to climb on, and he let loose a shriek as everything came crashing down on him.

When he dared to look at his reflection, he saw instead of a green tunic, a red one. That child… was no longer a child. Legend sits atop the bobbing plank and begins to remember, the smell of saltwater filling his nose and a giant pale cloud pointing skyward amidst an azure backdrop enveloping him. The tranquil of the scene is torn in two as he releases all those emotions he has hidden away.

“Isn’t this funny?!” he screams. “Isn’t this the definition of a joke?! ANSWER ME!”

His voice rings across the bright, ultramarine sea, so loud yet unheard. Knowing this, he continues to cry out.

“It’s so funny! It’s too funny not to laugh! Laugh, LAUGH! First I experience this, then I lose my memories, then I attack my own brothers and now THIS?!”

“...Why?” he asks, voice broken. He looks back up to the azure sky above him. Something so beautiful yet meaningless in the end…

A smile unconsciously crosses his lips.

“How delightful…” Knowing that this was where he lost every fragment of his past self, his innocence, his happiness, his sanity, it’s bizzare to smile. It’s bizzare to laugh… so he laughs.

This pain will never go away.

The water breaks his reflection again, and the child is back. When he returned to the land, he had to save it again. Everything was just a repeat of the motions. Numbness built within him and he stopped feeling all that much. Even when he was sucked away from his time through a portal, he could not bring himself to expect much to gain.

On the other side however, he met someone who shared his journey. He found more and more of them, totalling up to nine including him. The child was no longer a child once again; his name is Legend now, taken from a title bestowed upon him.

Similarly, everyone else derived their names from said titles. Despite that, they do not treat each other with formality. No, they treat each other like ordinary people, like family. As he journeyed with them, fought alongside, suffered and rejoiced, those little fragments of him he had abandoned after those rose colored glasses were shattered into irreparable pieces began to reform.

He will melt these jade glasses and mix them with those clear crimson fragments. Maybe not today, maybe not next year, maybe not even until the very end, but he’s chosen to move forward no matter how long and painful it will be. The wound will sting, the scar will bring phantom pain, each movement may bite at his nerves, but nothing can ever blot out this new fire that begins to burn.

A familiar exhausting feeling soon weighs itself down on him like waking up from a long dream. However, that warmth he felt in his memories still glows within him. It overflows within him, the chains of magical exhaustion melting away. He gets up without any sign of fatigue and his hands begin to glow.

“Enough. Wild, Wind, I’m taking it from here.”

He throws his left arm to the side and his hand begins to glow. An incandescent ember bursts to life, growing and covering his hand in its entirety. Legend begins to walk in his enemy’s direction, consumed with cold fury. With every step he takes, the flames only grow, pale wisps wrapping around his arm like vines.

He swings his fiery arm forward, releasing a blast of flames in her path. And despite her ability to jump out of harm’s way, the flames do not relent. The fires track and burn her, enveloping her in a blaze. She shrieks in pain and exhaustion weighs down on her. Knowing she is vulnerable at the moment, she leaps into the air and summons a rain of glass.

Fire consumes the shower of glass like an inferno, like an unstoppable wildfire. All the glass disappears without a trace, everyone save for Kou unharmed. She extends a leg forward and bends back the other one, plunging down like Wild had done. Another crater in the floor forms and the resulting force slightly staggers Legend, but his guard is still as high as ever.

He throws a storm of glass her way and she replies by sending it back at him. He simply lights them all on fire and comes out unharmed. The girl in red lines up shards like needle spears and sends them in Legend’s way. He jumps on one to gain height and unleashes glass like crescent shockwaves to her, a single fragment striking her in the leg. Glass suddenly begins to swirl around her like a frenzied cyclone, unpredictable and uncontrollable.

Fragments like little satellites fly too dangerously close for comfort, Wind trying to blast some away without much success. Wild tries to pick apart and destroy the tempest of glass but the girl’s grip on these fragments are too strong. Legend clenches his fist and begins to think. To defeat her, he would have to summon a fire of epic proportions, one like an inferno that consumes all.

But for them, he’ll do it.

He brings his hands in front of his heart and clenches them tightly. They begin to glow as he prepares to summon a blaze. He calmly stands still amidst the storm as he gathers his strength and magic.

“What are you doing?!” Wild frantically asks amidst the chaos, voice filled with fear and surprise. His cry is drowned by the tempest, the sounds of glass and gales muffling every other sound.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” he shouts this time. “You’re going to get yourself injured!”

“Just cover for me! I have a plan!”

“Alright then. Wind! just stand still and defend both yourself and Hyrule. I have to protect Legend.” Wind’s frown shows an obvious displeasure at being sidelined, but he relents and begins to play his role as the sentinel amidst the storm.

Glass clatters everywhere and the sounds of combat reverberate across the room. As Wild and Legend fight against the frenetic twister, it only gets stronger. More and more glass gets sucked in, even taking parts of the room in and making holes. Skylight pours from above as the roof begins to crumble, but even the heavens above are obscured by the storm.

“Legend! Are you gonna be finished soon?!” Wind asks, using his arm to take the slice of a fragment in place of his eyes.

“Glad you asked! Right,” Legend throws his arms to the side, “NOW!!”

“TAKE THIS!!”

Pale fire erupts around him and covers the trio, wisps like twisting vines. It grows and devours the glass, raging like the flames of a volcano whose fires have been fed with the very essence of disorder. It twists and turns, consuming all glass in its path, scorching even the walls and floors. The fury of the storm dies down to the flames, assimilated into the heat and disappearing.

The scene has almost been leveled, walls jutting upwards like ancient ruins. Bits of debris and fallen ledges lay strewn across the room while massive fractures run through the floor. In the middle of it all, a girl ungracefully drops to the now-fragmented and crumbled floor. Her magic has run dry and her strength has left her, an intense weakness chaining her to the floor. Legend summons a fragment to his hand and sprints in her direction.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “but you tried to hurt them. I’m not letting this go so easily.”

He lights that fragment on fire, bends his arm, lifts it upwards and—

“WAIT!” she shouts, fear and consciousness shimmering in her eyes. “I’m awake again!”

Legend’s face pales whiter than snow when he can’t retract his arm nor slow it down—

—and the glass falls like an executioner’s blade.

His chosen fragment, hands and clothes are now covered in blood, soon burned away by embers. She crumples to the ground on a knee with her hands supporting her, blood dripping and trickling from her mouth. Legend watches as her body falls to the ground with a peaceless, terrified expression.

Then, his knees give out on him and he also falls to the ground, staring at his dirtied hands and to the blood splatters on the floor. His horrified face stares him from the puddles of crimson, and he finds that he can’t suppress a gag. He crawls over to her, the memory of her panicked voice playing over and over again in his head as he crawls over to understand what he’s done.

“Sorry…” a voice weakly chokes out. Legend covers his mouth with the back of his hand, and pales even further when he realizes that it belongs to a dying Kou.

“No, no, no, no, NO!” he yells, grabbing a fistful of his hair and pulling it. “It’s like last time! NOTHING EVER CHANGES!!”

“Stop,” Kou starts. His words die down at the tip of his tongue as she begins to speak. “You did nothing wrong. I started all of this, it’s my fault alone.”

“YOU STOP! You weren’t even in control of yourself, even begging for me to not kill you, but I still did it! I do everything wrong! I took so many lives because I was selfish, and I did it again!” However, Kou’s distressed face calms down into a serene expression, despite the crimson coloring and blotting parts of her face.

“You had to. I’m a sensible girl, you know?” she says. “It’s not ‘I killed an innocent who did nothing wrong,’ it’s ‘I had to defend myself and my friends from someone who was afflicted with some corruption and attacked us.’”

“...In the end, I’m still the one who killed you. Your blood’s still on my hands.”

“I know. But I believe we have to live in the present and move towards the future. This ‘now’ won’t be forever. Besides, I’ve finally met people other than me and the memories— well, I can’t exactly say that. The real Kou has been gone for a long time, and I’m just her memory.”

“It doesn’t matter, you’re still here, you’re still alive—”

“Can I ask you for a favor?” Legend goes quiet and silently nods.

“Thanks. There’s a nice beach house that I— Kou lived in a long time ago somewhere in the far reaches of Arcaea, on some island at a beach without an ocean. Deeper inland, there’s some unmistakable white wood poles and houses scattered around the shores. If you ever encounter that place, I’d like you and your friends to have an adventure there, maybe make something beautiful out of the bits and bobs you find. It doesn’t matter what it is, but just make something that proves that you’ve been there.”

“Why— why are you asking me of all people to have an adventure?”

“Because I don’t hold anything against you. Everything eventually ends, so we live our lives to the fullest in the present. Kou’s life went on and on, so she eventually became numb to everything and went catatonic. So despite the strangeness of this sentiment, I think dying is a privilege that Arcaea’s inhabitants don’t have. Would I have suffered the same fate as her if I could live past this day?” she says with a weak smile.

“There’s no answer to that, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll say this before I’m gone: I’ve lived my life to the fullest, and I hope you can too!” she tries to beam, but her body trembles and she spits out more scarlet. She still tries to smile regardless as her eyes dull, as she stops breathing, as her chest stops rising, falling and staying down for good. So with a smile filled with solace and well wishes, the girl dies before her murderer.

Terror beginning to roil in him, Legend sputters, “Wait, Kou! Say something!”

He tries to rouse her into consciousness by shaking her, but not a single twitch comes from her. He tries shouting at her, begging for her to get up, but she doesn’t even make a single vocalization. Legend tries to talk to her, tries to say everything he can think of, but she remains silent. In the middle of his attempts, Wild solemnly interrupts.

“Legend, we have to go. There’s nothing we can do.” However, Legend immediately runs to Wild and violently grabs the latter’s tunic.

“SHUT UP!” Legend screams back. Wind quickly tackles him, the latter stumbling and falling backwards with a glare. However, his shoulders slump and his face falls.

“What have I done…” he mumbles, his eyelids pressed tightly together. “It’s like I haven’t changed at all… Why am I this way? Why am I so… messed up?”

Warm beads begin to cloud his vision and he tries to bite down on his tongue in hopes that the lump in his throat will go away. He just has to hold himself together, get back up, pretend like nothing happened. He just has to—

“It’s okay,” Wild says, kneeling in front of him. Legend’s jaw quivers and distress launches itself into his next words at full speed.

“It ISN’T! I’m not crying!” he shouts, hiding his eyes with his arm. “Let’s just move on, and pretend this never happened, okay?!”

“Pretending isn’t going to help! You’re just going to let it fester inside you and it’ll rot your very core from the inside out.”

“Nobody has to know that I’m this broken mess who uses sarcasm to hide it all! Forget about what you’ve seen today and just go back to how we used to interact!” However, Wild raises a hand and strikes Legend in the face.

“YOU shut up!” Wild yells. “I know! I know how it feels to hate yourself because you were the cause of lost lives! But you need to snap out of that nonsense thinking that you have to hide it all!”

As much as Legend hates to acknowledge that past, when he sees Wild’s face filled with a distress he’s never seen before, he begins to realize he’s just slipping back into old habits. Promising to move on from the past and then immediately relapsing, quite paradoxical of him, isn’t it? Well then, what should—

“I’m sorry,” Wild says, guilt filling his eyes. “I… shouldn’t have shouted at you like that. I’ll give you space.”

As the former gets up to walk away however, Legend finds that three words he’d never imagine saying escape him.

“Wait! Hold on!” Wild pauses in place, and the courage to say a few more words bursts in Legend.

“Thanks, you crazy son of a gun,” he enunciates with a smile. Though slightly taken aback, Wild smiles back.

“Any day, sarcasm central.”

Chapter Text

Blank and hazy, a daze like a blanket of a white fog. Breaking through the thick rolls of mist, Hyrule forces his eyelids open.

“What… what happened?” he asks. The voice that answers is the one he least expects, however.

“Many things,” Legend replies. “But I hope you know that I’m back for good.”

“That’s great!” Hyrule says with a smile, but something in him tells him that there’s something wrong. He really does mean it, but doesn’t it feel weird being the only amnesiac? The others are getting things done and recovering their memories while he just stumbles around and helps out.

What is he doing? Why can’t his past come back?

If a single shard can solve all of his problems and benefit everyone, why hasn’t he gotten his earlier? Some trick of fate perhaps? Does he lack something that they all have?

He lets out a sigh. He honestly doesn’t know how to feel about this. He’s supposed to be happy, but why is he troubled?

Well, he’ll just leave the questions for another day. Just like last time. Hyrule takes to observing his surroundings, noting the still devastation that reigns supreme. However, a remark from Legend snaps him out of his little state of observation.

“I have one question though,” he starts. “Is it my exhaustion or is the ground shaking?”

“The ground really is shaking!” Wild shouts back. “We gotta get out of here!”

“But how?!” Wind asks, frantically looking for some sort of refuge. “We can’t go back— the path we took can’t be taken again!”

“How about the ramp?” Wild asks.

“Not an option,” Legend answers. A spark of idea flickers in Hyrule’s head, and his statement puts him in the spotlight.

“Everyone, get your anomaly shards. I’ll explain later.” Wild summons his pane of glass. Wind takes it out from his pocket. Legend, however, can't find his own.

“I can’t find it!” he panics. Hyrule’s face scrunches up.

“Try summoning your shard like Wild did!”

“But how?!” Legend replies.

“I don’t know, just try summoning your fire or something! I guess you can also try willing your shard into your hand while you’re at it.” Legend focuses and summons a pale fire into his hand. He wills for a scarlet shard to appear in his palm as the flames burn and soon enough, a warm fragment graces his hand.

“Alright, now let me see your shards. Just hold them out,” Hyrule shakily instructs. They hold out their shards and as expected, they reflect places which have been traversed. To everyone’s surprise, Hyrule snatches the shard from Legend’s hand and throws it before them. As it flies through the air, it suddenly freezes in place. The fragment enlarges itself into the size of a portal, a certain familiar courtyard reflected in the glass. Nodding in unison, everyone runs towards the shard and disappears as if they have been swallowed by it.

On the other side, they find themselves faced with a bright sky and an imposing castle.

“We did it…” Hyrule mutters, releasing a forceful exhale of relief.

“I’m so glad that I’m alive. It’s not like I just had a near-death experience and went on a dangerous power trip,” Legend sarcastically remarks.

“The one constant in this entire world has to be your quips,” Wild comments.

“What can I say? Sarcasm is part of my personality.”

“You’ve been so nice that it’s suspicious,” Wind comments.

“Give me a break! Can’t I be nice once in a while? I literally threatened you multiple times and was acting like an absolute jerk.”

“True. I like you better when you’re not busy quipping at us.” Legend gives a small huff at the implied message.

“Anyways,” he says to switch the topic, “Look at where we’re at.”

“We’re in the place I woke up,” Hyrule comments, a smile on his face. “I remember being so confused when Wild held his hand out to me. I know it hasn’t been too long since I’ve been here, but I’m feeling quite nostalgic…”

In knowing silence between Hyrule and Wild, they lead the way towards the magnificent, labyrinthine castle. Legend looks around, taking in the sight of the ancient spires and structures untouched by time. His wistfulness distracting him, he doesn’t notice when the others stop walking. He doesn’t notice them calling for him to stop walking and only realizes too late that he is inevitably going to—

“What the hell is wrong with this world?!” and “Legend, are you okay?!” can be heard echoing across the courtyard and its many buildings.

“Curse you…” Legend mutters, gritting his teeth. “Might as well burn it all up!”

In moments, a blaze engulfs the blockade of glass. A snap of the finger halts the flames in its entirety and nothing is left of the barrier.

“Guess that’s one way to get the job done,” Hyrule remarks.

“We tried warning him,” Wild replies. The four strangely dressed travelers walk towards a grand and imposing double door. Wild nears it and wills for the structure to swing open, what appears to be an archive of some sort enclosed within. The place is filled with bookshelves and ‘books’, glass stacked haphazardly like books or sorted out by the memories and information they contain. Dim and bright like a chiaroscuro focused artwork, windows let luminous light shine on the shadowy hall.

Paper is strewn about, strange diagrams of mechanisms and writings of observations on it. A large loft that holds even more bookshelves juts from the rectangular walls, fragments slipping and drifting down from its railings. The place feels— no, is magical.

“A library… I’d never expected one within the castle, much less one overflowing with magic,” Hyrule comments.

“Me neither. I assumed that this place would be another regular castle,” Wild replies.

“But then again, has this world ever been ordinary?”

“True.”

“But you know what I find to be the least ordinary of all? The fact that,” Hyrule points to a splash of color slumped on a desk, “someone is fast asleep there.”

Wild’s head swiftly turns to where Hyrule points and before he is able to form a thought, his legs begin to sprint in that direction. Soon enough, a boy with shoulder length hair in a red tunic is before him. A peaceful and sound expression is on his face, completely unaware of Wild’s visible and audible panic.

Isn’t— Isn’t Four supposed to be one person? Where are the other three?!

He freezes in place. His eyes widen. His breath trembles.

“F-Four?” he whispers in pure, uncontained shock like a brook of astonishment held back by a dam. At the mention of the person’s name, everyone else freezes up save for Hyrule, simply tilting his head in confusion. The corner of his lip tugs downwards, near unnoticeable to all, as he realizes why that name has made the other three react in a stupefied way: It’s just another brother.

Another person that’ll get things done while Hyrule stumbles around. Just someone else who will encounter a major problem and eventually solve it with the others’ help.

He knows this is such selfish thinking, so bitter and envious, yet he can’t help but be a little frustrated at his predicament. Then again, has he ever helped them at all?

He’s always the one doing the least. He’ll just try and push through this with a smile. He’ll just try and be useful.

Nobody has to know how he really feels.

Chapter Text

“F-Four?” A voice? Who could that be? Is Blue back?

The boy in crimson unfolds his arms and pushes himself upwards into a sitting position. He sleepily rubs his eyes and turns to face the figure in blue standing in front of him.

“Blue… Five more minutes…” he murmurs.

“Blue— I’m not Blue! I— Four?! Why are you in red?”

“Is Four my name?” he asks. “I thought it was Red. Besides, you do look like hi—”

Then it hits him. This boy is in blue, but not the azure shade that his short-tempered companion is. He has long blonde hair and a scarred face, too long to be Blue’s and unlike his friend's clear skin.

“Red… He really did split himself into four back then…” mutters the boy in blue. Said boy goes completely still, as if in a daze. Red, wanting to know what is going on, taps him on the shoulder. The boy turns back to face him, his face hidden with traces of sadness and confusion.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asks. The scarred boy puts on a smile that looks genuine, feels genuine, but is not. The boy’s trembling fist is quite the giveaway.

“I know you’re not fine,” Red continues. “You don’t have to fake it.”

“...!”

“I’ve always been able to read people’s emotions quite well. If anything’s troubling you, just tell me okay?”

“I’m… no. You don’t have to bother. It’ll be alright soon. Where is this Blue you spoke about?”

“He’s off exploring this place. A library, I believe.”

“Then we’re heading there. My name is Wild and the people back there are Legend, Hyrule and Wind.”

“Alright! I was getting a bit worried. Do you see that staircase over there?” Red points in front of him, “Blue climbed it and started exploring the upper level. I don’t know what happened to him, but I’m getting a feeling that things aren’t going too well for him.”

Behind, Legend trails along the two other boys, eyes downcast. His melancholy goes unnoticed by all, so slight and discreet.

Four… I didn’t know you were hiding a secret this big. I just hope that mine will never be known. What would they think?

“Here we are! The upper level of this library.” Wild looks around, eyeing every corner of the loft. Books and glass are scattered around, dust is still falling and furniture seems to be displaced, a dustless chair in front of a bookcase. All point to the sign that someone has been here and that they have done something.

It might be Blue, but if he recalls correctly, there are other Colors and inhabitants of this world. He breaks away from the line and begins to walk around, bending down and tiptoeing to look through every nook and cranny. The four other boys followed suit and flipped the place upside down. To an ordinary person, they looked like lunatics.

To the Links however, this is simply an ordinary day.

“Anything?” asks the boy in crimson. Four heads shake sideways in unison.

“Maybe check behind the bookcases?” he suggests. Wind lifts a hand up and smacks it into his forehead. Why hadn’t he thought of it? He walks over to a nearby bookcase, bends his leg and kicks it.

“ACKK!!”

“And that is why you don’t kick random bookcases,” Hyrule quips.

“Can’t you be a bit nicer?” Red replies.

“Hyrule… What have I done?! You—You were never this rude! Did I corrupt you— I—” Legend sputters in shock.

“Can’t help it,” Hyrule replies.

“It’s actually kinda funny seeing him this shocked,” Wild silently says to himself.

Wind pouts, “Yeah, yeah, Hyrule is snarky but what about me? Are you making fun of my pain or something?”

“Yes,” Legend and Hyrule say in unison.

“Come on! S’not funny!”

“It was funny seeing you baffled after kicking a bookcase. It’s not out of ordinary glass, you know?” Legend shoots back.

“You’re back to normal! Didn’t you say you wanted to be nicer before?”

“If this were in the past, I would’ve laughed myself silly!”

“Meanie!”

“Alright, let’s get back to searching. Red, have you found anything?” Hyrule asks.

“Glad you asked!” Red replies. “I can feel a strange presence behind this bookcase. We gotta move it somehow—”

“Done and dusted,” Legend says smugly as fire burns the obstacle away. Red shouts and jumps, caught off guard by the spontaneous combustion of the bookshelf. A fit of laughter promptly tears through the library.

“You’re gonna have to get used to that!” Wind humorously comments, a grin lacking pity on his face.

“Can’t you give me a warning?” Red complains in return.

“From personal experiences, no one will give you warnings before they do something unexpected,” Wind replies, eyeing his other three companions.

“I had to take you up the staircase so that we could explore the place.”

“I jumped in front of you so that you could recover,” asserts Legend.

“And he,” Wind points to Wild, “has no excuse for gliding off the forest canopy with me and Hyrule hugging his sides!”

“Faster… transportation?” he says while smiling. Two pairs of eyes shot to Wild, both sharp and exasperated.

“C’mon! It was fun! Anyways, let’s just continue exploring.” They all nod and enter the room beyond the entrance. The room before them is circular and wide, the ceiling coming together into an intricate dome that lets in sunlight. Fragments and bits of glass come into a spiral above the room, the bizarre wonder slowly revolving. Two blobs of color stand in the center of the room, below the helix of glass. One is clothed in purples and yellows while the other wears a tunic like the azure sea, a few shades deeper than Wild’s tunic.

“Blue? Is that you?” Red asks.

“B–Blue?!” sputters out Wild. The five head over to the two figures, Red and Wild in the lead.

“Blue, I’m glad you’re safe! I was worried!” Red half-wails.

“Geez, I’ve been gone only a few minutes. Don’t have to be so mushy.”

“But— But I tried searching for you! I waited and waited but you didn’t come back! These kind people helped me find you and Wild here,” Red points to the champion, “seems to know you!”

Blue’s face morphs into one of shock, and then of inevitable suspicion.

“Know me? You, Green and Vio didn’t even know me! I don’t even know myself! How does this make any sense?!”

“I don’t know either…”

“Well then,” he walks up to Wild and jabs a finger into his chest, “how do you know me? Explain things.”

The champion freezes up and his thought process starts to become frantic. This— this was no illusion! It’s not even possible for Four’s body to contain separate souls! That’s not even mentioning how these split versions are so reminiscent of Four’s personality!

Green feels so similar to Four’s normal self. Red is like his emotional part, the one that comes out while he’s chatting to them. Blue feels like his anger and all those witty remarks he makes from time to time. And that Vio boy sounds like the smart one, like his logic. Like Four’s calculating side.

If this really is what he thinks it is— Wild’s eyes widen and his jaw drops. Four really was sitting on secrets this entire time;

He can split himself into the four aspects of his personality. In response to this revelation, only one word comes out from him:

“What?”

The boy in sapphire steps back, slightly caught off guard by Wild’s adverse reaction.

“What’s gotten you so riled up? Like I’m some sort of secret?” he says while putting his hands on his hips.

“No— even I don’t know. It’s— I can’t explain it.”

“What’s so hard about explaining it huh?”

“I just can’t—”

“Really? Why then?”

“I don’t know!”

“By your reaction, you do!”

“How many times have I said I don’t know?!”

“I don’t care, just tell me why you were so shocked!”

“Because I don’t know what’s really going on as well!” the boy in blue shouts in uncharacteristic anger.

Five heads turn in Wild’s direction, the latter sighing after a few moments.

“I seem to be good at starting arguments…” he says with noticeable glumness. An awkward silence blankets the seven people in the room. All look at each other with darting eyes, waiting for someone to break the silence. In fact, a butter knife would be just enough to cut the tension.

Another sigh can be heard, this time from the figure in purple. She walks over to Wild and Blue, gently pushes them away from each other, turns to face everyone and begins to talk.

“Greetings. I know these aren’t the most ideal circumstances we’ve met under, but it’s always a pleasure to meet someone in this world.”

“The pleasure’s mine,” Hyrule says, a small smile of relief on his face. “My name is Hyrule and the boy beside me is Wind.”

“Well then, are you simply wandering this world?”

“Not exactly. I’m trying to help Wild,” he points to said person, “and Wind find their brothers scattered across the world.”

“Brothers… The last time I’ve heard of a sibling pair was with two young girls. And the fact that you have already regained your memories is… unusual.”

“But what about Alice and Tenniel?” asks Wild.

“Who?”

“A woman in a blue dress and a gentleman in black. I saw them in a memory.”

“The girl in the blue dress… She is long gone.”

“What about Kou?” Legend asks, his entire face suddenly dull. “I took her life as she tried to take ours. The one with pink hair and green eyes.”

“So you really did defeat her... All I can say is that she was an imprint.”

“Imprint?”

“By the way,” Wind chimes in, “Hyrule and I saw you in a memory at a tower! You’re the one who sealed the door right? That was a nice puzzle!”

The girl in purple nods. She turns her back against them and a hand reaches into a pocket of her dress, a lavender shard swiftly pulled out. Wind, knowing her next move, agilely grabs her by the wrist.

“You haven’t even told us your name!” he says.

“My name? It’s Lagrange. This… being by my shoulder is Charon. I created it.”

“Lagrange… will we ever see you again?”

“I know we will cross paths again. For now, I will try and help you from afar. You all make me have faith that this world can finally change.” She throws the fragment in her palm before her and it enlarges. Before Wind could stop her from leaving again, she had already stepped through the shard.

“Lagrange…” Legend mutters. He knows she’s hiding something huge. He can see it by how much she tried avoiding certain topics. He has to know. If she was that tight lipped about it, she must know something important concerning this world. Maybe next time—

“DUCK!”

Before Legend can make his next move, a strong hand immediately pushes him down to the ground. A shard of glass zips past where his neck would’ve been if he wasn’t pushed.

“What?!”

“Monster!” Hyrule shouts in response. As Legend lifts his head above, he could see a feral, twisting creature of glass, body disjointed and glinting.

The veteran gets up and grits his teeth, glowing embers manifesting in his palms. The surrounding winds begin to grow and so do the aura of magic, both steadily increasing.

Hyrule makes the first move. He quickly creates a floating platform, leaps on it, bounds off it and summons a flurry of shards in his foe’s direction. With a simple swing of the monster’s sharp arm however, all these shards are either deflected or shattered.

“No good…”

As he stands still to wait for his opponent’s next move, a blast of flame comes hurtling from his right. Glass begins to burn away and disappear, a terrible and grinding scream accompanying it.

The veteran shouts, his voice ringing across the chamber, “Quick! Attack it no—”

He suddenly falls down on his knees, sucking in and forcing air out of his lungs. He wheezes and promptly leans on his arm as support.

“LEGEND!” shouts Wind, worry evident in his eyes. Hyrule bites his lip. He knows what’s happening; the magical exhaustion from the fight with Kou has finally impacted him in full-force. As he realizes the implications behind this, his breath grows shaky. The six of them are starting to be backed into a corner as one of their strongest is out of commission.

Meanwhile, Hyrule crafts a makeshift sword for himself like in the tower and springs into action once more. He swings, leaps back, slashes, takes a step to the side and strikes again. The champion unsheathes his sword and follows suit, opting to force his way. Both read each other's movements and coordinate their attacks like a dance despite their wildly different styles of fighting.

As Hyrule calls for a ‘spear’ to pierce its body, Wild assists by unleashing a controlled flurry of shards that repeatedly slice it. The shards fly around everywhere like a whip and the ‘spear’ manages to pierce a part of its body, staggering it slightly. Wild unleashes another volley of glass as gusts of wind propel shards and throw things out of order.

Engaging in the attack as well, Hyrule sends orderly flocks of glass reminiscent of drifting and slicing rose petals. More makeshift swords and spearheads rain down on it, stabbing the monster as if it were a pincushion. Fragments are thrown about as even more gales rip through the room and flurry are sent. Glass flies and scatters throughout the room like a whirlwind, uncontrolled and wild.

This is, undoubtedly, their most coordinated, perhaps even most powerful attack. Frenzied, frantic, absolute chaos and madness. However, though weakened, it still stands, a stark contrast to the radiating exhaustion of the fighting three.

Clenching his fist Hyrule shouts, “I don’t like what I’m about to say but Wind, take the Colors and Legend to safety!”

“But what about you?! I can’t just leave you!” Red protests.

“Hyrule’s right! I don’t like retreating, but half of us can’t fight right now!” Wild shouts back. As soon as he says that, a squall rips through the room and straight into the monster. It crashes against the wall and crumples to the ground, unmoving. Despite that, everyone knows it has only been momentarily weakened. This was simply a diversion.

The sailor runs to Legend and slings the veteran’s arm over his shoulder. He then helps the boy in red get up and sprints towards the Colors, silently apologizing to his out of commission brother. Blue takes the signal and grabs Red by the wrist, running towards the entrance of the room. Red however suddenly freezes in place just in front of the entrance.

“Red, you idiot!” Blue shouts. “You’re going to get killed if you stay here!”

“But— But it’s not right! I can’t just leave them here!” Red replies.

“I don’t want to run either, but we’re not exactly in the best position guys!” interrupts Wind. Blue grabs on Red’s wrist even tighter and runs outside, the boy in crimson struggling the entire time. Wind follows behind, equally distraught at the situation as Red.

This isn’t fair. This isn’t right. But does Wind have a choice? Who would protect them if he tried to help the others?

“RED!” shouts Blue’s voice. Shifting his center of gravity to throw off Blue, Red breaks free from his companion’s grip and runs back into the dangerous chaos.

“Red, no, what are you doing?!” Blue shouts once again, reaching a hand out for said person.

“Red, please! You can’t fight!” Wind cries as well. Red freezes in place. He turns back with a resolute and determined expression.

“I can’t!” is Red’s answer. “It’s just— It’s wrong! I can’t stand seeing them fighting while we simply wait for them! They’re struggling and we aren’t even doing anything! I can’t stop! I won’t stop! Even if it’s just a bit I’ll help them!”

“Then I’m coming with you!” Wind affirms, shifting into a more battle-ready stance. “Blue, stay behind and look out for Legend.”

Blue looks away, face defeated with traces of frustration.

“Fine. Don’t you dare die on us,” he says, fuming with silent resignation. Wind and Red run side by side back into the chamber, the place having been destroyed. Everything has turned to rubble from the combat within, even some of the walls falling apart.

In the center of it all, a behemoth of glass towers over two struggling figures. Anyone could see that these two figures were tired, postures slumped and legs shaky. At the sound of approaching footsteps, the figure in blue quickly turns back, and his face turns shocked.

“Wind! Red! What are you doing here?! It’s not safe!”

“I came here because I wanted to. I can’t just let you two fight alone. Me and Wind will help you.”

“Then we’ll do it together,” Wild says with a nod. Red straightens his back, takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He’s scared. His hands are trembling. He can’t even fight, yet he’s here. He can’t control glass like them, but he’s here. He doesn’t even have a weapon, but he chose to fight.

Red can feel his legs start to shake, but he can’t simply accept being useless. He rummages through the archive of his mind for anything that can help, any sort of information, any sort of hint or feeling that can turn the tide.

And a little spark comes. A little glimmer of memory.

The word ‘weapon’.

In a sudden, he feels much more attuned to the glass around him. The memories around him.

He can feel a connection.

Without effort, he calls for the glass to come to him. They heed his summons and come in front of him. They twist, turn, bend, merge; the glass changes form and function according to his will, every action controlled by him. It all is strange, surreal and stuttering, yet all too smooth and familiar, as if he’d done it before. When he opens his eyes, a sharp and shining pair of blades float before him, practically glowing under the light.

His eyes sparkle at the weapon. He made this. He made this so that he can protect the people who had protected him. It didn’t even matter that they had just met, but they were all too willing to risk their lives for him, a stranger. Red grabs the handle of the blades, gripping it with such tightness and conviction.

The handle’s warmth pours a stream of comfort into his heart, almost as if saying that everything will be okay. Red brandishes his newly forged blades and charges straight ahead, unthinking of all consequence and risk. Despite hearing the worried shouting of his friends, he won’t back down. As if ingrained into muscle memory, he skillfully slashes and slices apart at his towering enemy, parts of its disjointed body hacked into bits.

Red runs back and rolls to dodge a sweeping attack, a tailwind boosting his momentum and barely saving him from an unseen slashing attack. He runs in a swerving path, evading debris and projectiles of glass along the way. The occasional flurry of glass aimed at him are intercepted by shields of glass, are sent right back, or blasted away, courtesy of the other three.

But as a huge piece of composite glass nearly strikes just too close for comfort, the telltale crack of a whip rings out and snakes around it. The glass is then hurled away, pointed straight to the monster’s already pincushioned body. It screeches again and freezes in place, heavily weakened by the retaliatory attack.

Red turns back in surprise and sees none other than a furious figure in sapphire holding a whip.

“You think I’d just let you kill the first person I’ve met in this world?! HUH?! You think I’d just let you kill the people who protected Red with their lives?! Try it again, I DARE YOU!”

Blue rushes forward in a frenzy, his whip wrapping around the behemoth’s ‘arm’. He then tries to pull it off, greatly struggling until a magical signature appears to pull on the arm as well. It comes off and clatters to the ground, shattering into a thousand little pieces. From afar, Wild smirks at this little victory.

“Blue, again!” he blurts, sprinting for the center of the commotion. “Pull off another arm!”

Blue nods and pulls on another arm, the same magical signature working together with his whip. The arm gets tossed away and another deafening shriek resounds, as if the sharp edges of a piece of glass was forcefully and repeatedly dragged against another shard’s edges.

“Now! All together! Wild, take its head! Wind, take its body! Red and Blue, damage its legs as much as possible! I’ll stay behind and attack from afar!” Hyrule shouts.

A mighty updraft blasts the boy in blue above the creature’s head, his sword gripped with both hands. As the champion plunges down, the sailor is launched by a gust of wind straight to the monster’s body, a sharp glass shard in hand. He bends his shard elbow just below his shoulders and prepares to strike through its clear figure.

A whip sweeps across the battlefield, tearing away and chipping at the monster’s legs while a swift pair of swords make large fractures on its target’s body of glass. Projectiles aimed at the boys were quickly dispatched of and turned against with even chunks of debris being hurled back at it. As a sword of steel shatters its head, so does a shard of glass pierce through its frame. A whip splits one leg in half while another leg shatters from the sustained damage dealt by a pair of blades.

Glass falls like a dangerous downpour of rain as the battle ends. Wind blasts some away while others are redirected by Wild, Hyrule forming a protective covering above them. As the last of the fragments fall, the covering is dispelled and the winds stop blowing. The five share a look with each other and smile, including the normally irritated Blue who wears a hint of a grin at his lips.

“That was tiring,” Blue mutters, trying to pretend that he’s frustrated at everyone’s recklessness.

“But we did it!” Red beams, directly blowing Blue’s cover with his sheer exuberance and making the latter outwardly scoff.

“Yeah! Lighten up a bit!” Wind chimes in.

“We did make a huge mess though,” Hyrule remarks.

“Who cares? It’s not like this place belongs to anyone,” Wild returns.

“You know,” a tired yet snarky voice says, “have you forgotten about me? Seriously, I was waiting alone the entire time outside. I thought we were supposed to be brothers.”

“Legend! Sorry for leaving you behind, but Red didn’t know how to fight before!” Wind apologizes. “By the way, I keep forgetting to give your cap back.”

Legend, his sarcastic facade let down for a moment, smiles.

“You can keep it. Think of it as a lucky charm. Besides, how am I supposed to get those blood stains off?” he jokes with a chuckle at the end.

“Thanks guys,” Wind says. “Couldn’t have done it without you guys. Now, how about we take a nice long break? I’m too tired to even go down the stairs.”

“Definitely not here though. How about where we found Red?” Hyrule asks.

“Then you’re going to have to carry me— I was joking!” Wind exclaims as Wild slings him over his shoulder.

“It thought it would be funny if someone actually carried you, so I did,” Wild comments, holding back a tide of howling laughter.

“It’s embarrassing! I’m not that tired!”

“But you just said you were too tired to go down the stairs.”

“You know what? Fine. I’m too lazy to get down and I won’t say no to a free ride.” As they walk out the ruins of what was a chamber, Legend and Hyrule can be heard stifling laughter. Even the normally moody Blue seems to lighten up.

Chapter Text

At the bottom floor, the six sit around a table filled with scattered books. Now that the situation is calmer, the ever-curious Wind starts asking questions.

“So, what happened when you woke up?” he asks. Red turns to Wind with a smile, practically ready to spill every single detail of his experiences since he woke up.

“Don’t,” comes Blue’s sharp voice.

“I don’t see any harm in that. They quite literally just saved our lives. Why would they save our lives just to harm us later on?” counters Red.

“To gain our trust,” Blue shoots back.

“You’re just being paranoid!”

“I’m watching out for you!”

“Well you’re… You’re being a mother hen!” Tears spill from Legend’s eyes as he cups his mouth to prevent a dam of laughter from bursting. Wind’s reaction is similar, but he promptly combusts in ten seconds, pointing at a not-so-pleased Blue and howling. Hyrule tries with every fiber of his being to not burst, his face a bit stoic, but clearly strained.

“Did you just burn him?” Wild voices with utter astonishment. Red simply smiles in response, and Blue can feel a very special type of anger bubble in him.

“You LITTLE—” Luckily, Wind arrives with a very snarky comment.

“Are you guys finished bickering?” he jabs.

“Fine. Go tell them or whatever,” Blue grumbles with a sulk. Red playfully pouts and Blue sends a pointed glare his way. At this, the boy in turquoise simply gives a smug grin.

“Now then, details please?” Wind queries. Red’s pout turns into another smile.

“Sure!” he proclaims, his enthusiasm like the sun. “At first, it wasn’t only me and Blue who woke up. There were actually two more of us, Vio and Green. Did you guys wake up in a group too?”

Wind’s face tilts to the side out of confusion.

“We didn’t. I think Wild woke up first and found Hyrule, who found me at the nearby beach. We discovered Legend hiding in the garden—”

“And we took him back! We had to use just a little coaxing though,” Wild chimes in.

“Coaxing? Excuse me? We had multiple shouting matches and disagreements. That was not coaxing,” Legend contends.

“At least I didn’t threaten you multiple times!” snaps Wild.

“I thought we silently agreed to not bring that up!”

“How can we forget that?” Hyrule pops in the conversation.

“Fine! You win!” Legend hisses, a vexed look on him.

“You know,” Red whispers to Blue, “They’re not so different from us.”

“Tch. At least they got things done.”

“But we also got things done!”

“That was from sheer luck or whatever!” Blue retorts, voice still hushed.

“No, we were determined to make things change!” Red counters with a half-shout.

“I just didn’t want you to die!”

“I wasn’t going to die either way!”

“You know what? I quit. This is getting us nowhere.”

“Told you,” Red says with what appears to be a smirk. Blue simply folds his arms and sulks yet again. As the bickering dies down, so does the energy. Blue plops down on a chair, unpleasantly exhausted from the battle. Hyrule and Wind sit down on the floor, Red soon following suit.

Legend takes a chair across the boy in crimson and violently falls into his chair, his face purposely slamming the desk. He groans not of pain, but of sheer exhaustion and lets out a sigh of relief. A much needed, long overdue break. But with hilariously convenient timing, a scream sounding like Four echoes across the library hall. Twenty seconds. Legend had counted it from the moment he sat down.

“Can’t even catch a break…” he mutters as he gets up, Red and Blue jumping out of their seats at the shout. They look at each other and nod, each of them grabbing the wrists of two other Links. They run like lightning, their partners stumbling behind. Having had enough of being dragged around however, Legend yanks his wrist away from Blue’s grip.

“What’s the hurry?! Why are you so scared?!” he startledly asks.

Blue turns back, face plastered with frustration, “Oh I don’t know— Couldn’t you hear the screaming?! That sounds like Green! I can’t just leave Green!”

“Who the hell is Green?!”

“This guy I woke up with!” Blue shouts back.

“Why the hell would you trust someone you just woke up with?!”

“He looks exactly like me!” The veteran flinches. So there was Red, Blue and now Green? Moreover, they correspond to the color of Four’s tunic, so his best bet is that there’s a Purple, Indigo, Violet or whatever.

A wild assumption, but could they be… Could they be the fragments of Four?

If so, then he has to quickly get to this Green.

Red rushes off, speeding ahead of everyone. As he slows down, he immediately burns the two bookshelves in front of him, revealing a dark passage.

“Green’s in here!” he shouts.

As the six quickly run into and through the passage, Red asks himself, ‘How did we go from pushing bookshelves to burning them?’

The boy’s train of thoughts are interrupted when he spots a malicious creature of glass in front of him. He also spots one more thing: a boy in an emerald colored tunic pinned to the ground by its glass arms. In an instant a blade of glass zips like a dart into a glass ‘head’, a strong gust of wind behind it and multiple shards of glass following. They all impale into the thankfully weak monster, making it crumble from the impact alone. Even as the hazard of falling and broken glass is present, Red does not care and rushes to Green’s side.

“Green!” he shouts, panic and worry filling his voice. “Are you okay?! Are you hurt?!”

Green gives a slightly weak smile, “I’m fine, just ran quite a bit. Where’s Blue? Who are those behind you?”

“Blue? He’s behind me. As for the people in the back, they found me waiting for you in the library’s hall so they took me to find the others. The one with the long hair is Wild, the one with the fluffy hair is Wind, the one wearing green is Hyrule and the one wearing red is Legend. They saved me and Blue’s lives when we were ambushed by a glass monster.”

From behind, Red can feel a slight nudge from Blue, as if he were saying “You should’ve let me take it.”

“Well, greetings to you four back there,” Green begins. “I suppose I can trust you all if you saved those two. I guess you all know me already, but I’m Green. Notably though, our resident logical thinker Vio is gone. I finished exploring other chambers and rooms in this library, but found no trace of him. That was when I found that I could push a certain bookshelf and found this maze,” he recalls.

“So his name was Vio…” Wild mutters, unheard by everyone.

“Well hey! I never knew there were four of you. The name’s Wind!” Wind declares, excitedly giving introductions.

“Hello. My name is Hyrule,” said person expresses in a quieter voice.

“Enough with all the introductions, are we going to find Vio or what?” Blue cuts in.

“Bit rude, but yeah, let’s find him,” Wind replies. Before they can enter the maze however, Green stops them.

“How are we supposed to find Vio without some sort of strategy? Are we just going to get lost and pray that we get lucky?” he says.

Ten pairs of eyes nervously look away at that statement. Green sighs.

“At least we have to try and make contact with him. Someone shout or something.” Not even a second later does Wind pop up beside the boy in emerald, a huge grin plastered on his face as an idea begins to take form in his head.

“Cover your ears. It’s going to be real loud,” Hyrule advises everyone else, sensing Wind’s intentions. Without question, they all cover their ears as Wind prepares to shout.

“VIOOOO!! WHERE ARE YOU?!”

The shout echoes across the entire maze, the ringing even worse than the amplified voice. Despite all the excess noise however, another scream belonging to a foreign voice can be heard from the maze.

“Over here! I’m somewhere deep in this maze!”

Red, Blue and Green immediately perk up at the sound of the voice.

“That’s Vio!” Red exclaims. “We have to go— He’s shouting again! Hold on everyone!” The group suddenly pauses and indeed, another shout comes from within.

“Is Red, Green and Blue safe?” Vio yells from afar.

“They’re all a-okay!” Wind answers.

“If they’re safe then perhaps I can trust you all! I’ll stay in place and you guys try to find me! If the path branches, split into groups! Whoever is shouting right now, stay where you are to be an anchor for all of us!”

“You heard him!” Wind says to everyone. “Let’s—”

“Question!” Wild interrupts. “Why can’t we just break down the place and find Vio?”

“Really? You’re really asking this?” Legend says with not-so-slight disbelief. “If we break this place down, who knows what would happen to Vio? Poor guy might get injured badly because someone isn’t patient.”

“Then can’t you just burn this place away?”

“Don’t you remember the tower? Don’t you remember what happened after Lagrange left? Not only that, who knows what sort of disaster might happen if I accidentally burn the entire building instead of only the maze? I can’t use my fire magic for combat and large scale things since I’ve used it at Kou’s like no tomorrow. Point is, there’s no way I’m doing that.”

“I guess manually it is,” Wild says with disappointment.

“Sucks, but it’s for the sake of everyone who doesn’t want to be a glass-cushion.” Before the five boys head into the maze, Wind taps the champion’s shoulder.

“If you’re lost, just use your slate thingy okay? We’ll try to uh, salvage that situation,” he says. Wild nods in response, and follows everyone inside. After a while of walking and navigating, the road branched into two. The group splits, Blue, Legend and Hyrule on the left while Wild, Wind and Red on the right.

Thankfully, the maze is nowhere as near disorienting as the Lost Woods or Misery Mire, but slightly confusing nonetheless. Some paths branch into two, inevitably splitting up the group into little lost pieces. Not only that, the mirror-like glass was dizzying to some, in particular the two colors who had not seen the sun. Through twists, turns, and branches they navigate, braving through incidents of scaring themselves from their own reflections and bumping face first into walls. Eventually, Legend chances on a boy in violet leaning on the maze wall with a bored expression.

“Well, took you long enough,” the boy in violet says.

“Give me a break. Mazes are confusing,” Legend lightly snaps in response. “Your name?”

“Vio. Where are your friends?”

“Split up.”

“Have you thought of a way back without getting lost or hurt?”

“...I did not think of that.” Vio simply pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. He’s going to have to get everyone out of this, isn’t he? Thankfully, the boy he talked to previously is most likely stationed at the entrance.

“Who’s the person at the entrance?” he asks.

“That’s Wind.”

“Do you have any way to reach him?”

“No, but Wild does.”

“Our top priority is to find Wild. Along the way, we’ll just pick up the others if we find them. By the way, thanks for taking care of those three for me. They’re tiring.”

“No problem. It was funny watching Red and Blue argue.” The two begin to try and make their way back, retracing the veteran’s steps. At a fork, Vio takes Legend to explore both paths, one a dead end and the other a continual road. They go down the second road and reach another branch, the one where Legend and Blue split up. The pair head down that path but Blue is nowhere to be found, another split path greeting them.

“Well that’s a shame,” Legend comments.

“I can help with that.”

The boy in violet takes a deep breath and shouts, “I ate glass to see if was a form of sustenance in this world!”

A nearby shout of disbelief and frustration comes back, “What did you say?! When I find you, WHEN I FIND YOU—”

“He’s on the right!” Vio exclaims.

“Yeah, that’s cool and all, but why the heck did you eat glass?”

“We’ll talk about that later.” They run to the right, meeting up with a soon-to-explode Blue. Said boy quiets down when Vio explains the situation, opting to silently grumble instead. The three quickly take the path back, ignoring the place where Hyrule left in favor of returning the boy in sapphire to the entrance. Now, to find the boy in green. And unexpectedly, going down the path Hyrule had taken instead nets them Wild. A very, very confused and lost Wild.

“Unexpected, but okay,” Legend comments as the trio hurry off to find Red and Hyrule. Some quick backtracking let them find Red, a bit scared but mostly fine. But for whatever reason, Hyrule is nowhere to be found. Again. Wild mock-sighs in disappointment.

“By Hylia, Hyrule!” he says, giving his best impression of Twilight, the group’s currently missing responsible older brother figure. “Can you stop getting lost? It’s getting harder and harder to manage you.” This earns a brief chuckle from Legend, the two sharing a laugh before Vio interrupts them with further directions.

“This time, we don’t split into teams. Legend, you go back to the entrance. Me and Wild will find Hyrule,” he instructs. With quick footsteps they return to the entrance, Legend staying behind.

“It would be a shame if you two got lost like Hyrule!” Red says as Wild and Vio re-enter the maze.

“It’s not like you were any better during the ruins!” Wild jokingly retorts.

“At least I don’t get lost every Tuesday!”

“Tch.” Back into the maze, everything seems twisting and turning, the maze almost like the branches of the Great Deku Tree. And now, it seems like it only gets more and more confusing as they enter, navigate and exit, like the maze has twisted itself to trick them.

In truth, exhaustion is a powerful warper of perception and it’s only a matter of time before Wild crashes into his own reflection again. Finally though, through convoluted and meandering paths, the boy of logic and the champion find a curious Hyrule looking at a seemingly innocuous lever of glass. But as Vio dashes and reaches out to stop him, the lever is pulled.

The boy in violet stares in disbelief while the boy in green has a clueless and innocent expression on his face.

“Please don’t randomly pull levers next time,” Vio says with exasperation as he pinches the bridge of his nose for the second time in the day. The ground suddenly shakes and the walls begin to tremble as well. The floor starts to crack and dust begins to fall on them.

“Hyrule what have you done?!” Vio shouts in panic.

“Sorry!” The three brace for impact and Wild changes into a battle-ready position, but the rumbling suddenly comes to an abrupt halt.

Nothing happened afterwards. The shaking did not resume. No monster appeared. No walls came falling down. Understandably, confusion begins to arise from them.

“Nothing? Nothing… happened,” Hyrule remarks.

“That’s strange. I thought it was a trap. Did we activate something?” Wild replies. Vio nods in response.

“That’s my guess. I think we activated a big mechanism, so much so that it caused the place to shake.”

“Anyways, how will we get back? We’re so deep in that— I’ll ask Wind for help,” Wild says. He taps on his slate, Hyrule and Vio curiously watching as Wind’s voice begins to come from the now activated device.

“Wild here. We’re kinda deep in the maze and uh, got very lost.”

“I didn’t believe it would actually come true—” says Legend in the background.

“You need my help or whatever?” Wind asks.

“Kinda. We’re… very deep in the maze and we don’t know what we’re doing.”

“There’s no one else lost right?”

“Yeah?”

“Just break the walls down.” Silence. A moment passes until Wild and Hyrule grin uncontrollably. In a flash, Wild roundhouse kicks the wall in front of him, forming a wide hole in it. A composite piece of glass pierces through the other wall in front of it, shattering once its job is done. The pair walk through the holes smugly as Vio trails behind dumbfounded.

It all snowballs into increasingly silly ways of breaking the walls, going from slashing it with a sword to throwing punches. Wild and Hyrule even worked together to directly dissect the components of the wall, pulling on the binding force of the glass until they overcame it. It doesn’t stop there, even Vio joining in on the fun with a knee kick.

The crowning glory of this madness is when the trio team up to deliver a combination slap to the wall blocking them from the entrance, all their exhaustion and annoyance delivered into the sheet of glass with one single slap.

To them, it’s cathartic. To the others behind the wall, it’s an absolute fright, Legend and the others jumping when the maze wall near the entrance bursts into pieces, three boys standing behind the hole formed.

“WHAT THE ACTUAL—” Blue shouts, jumping at the sudden intrusion. Red takes a step back in surprise, letting a gasp escape him. Meanwhile, Legend and Wind scream like schoolchildren. Utterly hilarious is the sight of two heroes of courage shrieking like little boys.

“Guys, can you not? I’ve had enough heart attacks from this journey alone,” Wind tiredly asks after recovering from the shock.

“Sorry,” the three chorus.

“Anyways, how about we head outside?” he asks.

“Sure. Be careful though, we may have activated a trap,” warns Vio. The six head out from the dark passage and see a circular platform of glass with intricate engravings on it located at the center of the room, a magical signature emitting from it.

“Three glass shards that it’s an elevator,” Hyrule comments.

“Definitely an elevator,” Wind replies.

“What makes you say so?” Legend asks with incredulity.

“We’ve seen one like this at the tower. It took us up to the entrance of the room where we found Kou.”

“Seems like it’ll lead us to some sort of hidden chamber,” Green remarks.

“Could there be some hidden treasure?” Red muses in return.

“Probably, if it were guarded like this,” Wild replies.

“Enough of the dallying, let’s just get on it,” Blue interrupts. “I’m tired of waiting for you all.”

They step onto the platform and it begins to rise up, ascending through the levels of the library and into what seems to be a tall spire. The elevator stops when it reaches a peculiar and medium sized chamber with a pedestal in the middle. A glass shard seems to be hovering right above it, strangely multicolored. Recognizing it, Wild, Wind and Legend run toward it. The trio observe the gently revolving shard with sparked curiosity but none dare to touch it.

“It looks like a memory shard…” Wild mutters.

“It is,” replies Legend, having caught Wild's muttering.

“Definitely, absolutely positive that this is a memory shard. Not only that, it’s multicolored just like— just like the Four look-alikes!” Wind exclaims, eyes widened like saucers.

“Colors, come here!” he shouts in his excitement. “You gotta see this! It’s your memory!”

“Memory?!” Green exclaims.

“We’re amnesiacs?!” Blue shouts in astonishment.

“I… I didn’t know this was possible,” Vio murmurs.

“Let me see!” Red says. The four Colors rush towards the odd fragment, perfectly diamond shaped and split into four different triangles of differing colors, each corresponding to each boy’s tunic. Red grabs it and closes his eyes, expecting a rush of memories to enter his head but… nothing happens, save for a brief memory that he can’t exactly make out.

“Nothing…” he says.

“Let me try,” Vio says. Red passes the shard to the boy in violet, the latter experiencing the same.

“He’s right. Nothing happens save for a single memory being shown.”

Wild tilts his head in confusion before speaking, “Maybe you four should hold it all at once. It might work that way.”

The four boys hold the shard at the same time and suddenly, they experience a collective memory. A forge. Strong but controlled fire. A blonde girl in royal garb. An old man. They can hear talking. They can hear guidance coming from the old man. They can hear encouragement coming from the girl. The memory soon fades out, leaving all four confused.

Why didn’t their ‘memories’ come back?

“Nothing happened…” Green says in disappointment. As the boys are about to try and experiment with the shard, a blur suddenly pins the boy in emerald against the wall. A sharp piece of composite glass like an arm lifts above his neck, about to plunge into it. Green’s throat constricts. He attempts to squirm but his limbs have gone limp from fear. His head feels like it’s pounding and his heart feels like it’s about to burst from his body.

His vision goes blurry. Time feels like it slowed. He prepares to feel glass against skin.

“Help…” he whispers out. As time begins to flow normally for him, the monster’s arm raises up. It comes down. A whip catches that arm and yanks it with rage, breaking a portion off. A gust blasts it to the side as needle glass strikes it. Fire burns that arm away and finishes the job, the creature now weakened.

The monster gets up and disappears. Soon however, Blue finds himself in the same position Green was. He grits his teeth. He can’t use his whip as he had let go of it while being pinned. His shoulders strain and he looks at his enemy dead on, as if in defiance. A blade soars past and destroys the glass pinning him. Blue ungracefully drops down and sees Red with a terrified and concerned expression on his face.

“Blue! Green!” Red shouts. “Are you alright?! I was so scared!”

“I’m fine for the most part,” answers Green. “We have to focus though—” he says as he ducks to avoid a kick from his foe. After a continuous cycle of dodging and attacking, the monster eventually slows down to a halt. Taking this opportunity. the boy in red launches a fireball towards it, burning the glass away. Soon, a gale blasts it to the wall and destroys it for good.

Despite that, everyone is still shaken, especially the Colors. The four boys nervously exchange glances until Blue begins speaking his mind.

“You— YOU LIARS! I almost died! Green almost died! Remember what I said Red?! They gained your trust and now THEY BETRAYED IT!”

“Blue. Calm down. They didn’t intend for this to happen,” Vio says in an attempt to quell Blue’s anger.

“Vio’s right! They saved us before and— and now you’re so mad at them…” Red says.

As for Green… he can’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say. He knows there’s a problem, he can feel it, but he can’t pinpoint it. It feels too much like conflict in himself rather than other people. Something is wrong. Something is missing.

“Not only that, these people are hiding something from us! Wild knows something and HE DIDN’T TELL ANY OF US! He knows why we look so similar!”

“... I know? I know?! I don’t. I’ve already told you,” Wild replies, his voice laced with anger.

“Blue’s not wrong. You seem to know something that all of us don’t,” the boy in violet says.

“Can we just— Can we please talk it out calmly?” Green asks pleadingly.

“That won’t happen if he,” Legend points at Blue, “won’t stop making accusations.”

“Accusations?! Me?! I’m only trying to find the truth!”

“Well that ‘truth’ you’re searching for is harming all of us in the process!”

“I DON’T CARE! All I want is for me and the Colors to live! You nearly took that from me!”

“We never did anything!”

“Please… Can we just stop already? I’m… I’m scared and I really don’t like that we’re fighting…” Red says.

“RED YOU IDIOT! This is for your sake! Why can we trust these strangers?!”

“Because they’ve been so kind to us!”

“And now they’ve led us into a trap multiple times!”

“Please just stop…” Red breathes, tears beginning to form.

“I think we should all just calm down and sort our thoughts,” Vio interrupts.

“I don’t know if I can…” Red answers.

“I won’t!” Blue retorts.

“I… I don’t even know how to help…” Green murmurs.

“Who is this ‘Four’ person you’re muttering about anyways?!” Blue angrily asks Wild.

“He… I can’t— I don’t know if I can tell you.”

“Why?! Why can’t you tell me?!”

“Look, everyone has their own secrets and stuff that they have to keep. Stop prying,” Legend cuts in.

“I bet you’re also sitting on a pile of secrets as well! Trying to get us killed again?!”

“We’ll never try to get you killed!” Wind worriedly exclaims.

“I’m not so sure about that!” Before Wild sends out a retort, Wind taps him on the shoulder.

“Maybe— Maybe we can solve this peacefully? Can’t you calm down or something?” Wind suggests.

“No, I CAN’T!” Wild immediately recoils and sees Wind’s hurt expression. Immediately though, the latter also gets riled up.

“Then do something about that!” Wind yells.

“How can I just ‘calm down’?!”

Arguments are thrown. Accusations and less-than-friendly comments are made. And standing in the back frozen with fear is Hyrule. He doesn’t know what to do. This is a different type of fear. It’s like their group is breaking apart at the seams. Just a few minutes ago everything was fine. How? How did this happen?

He clenches his fist. He shakily breathes in and out. He tries to walk forward, to try and make things better but his mind blanks. Everything he wants to say is gone, replaced with blankness. Replaced with something akin to fear.

The fight continues until—

“I can’t believe I’m saying this but EVERYONE SHUT UP!” screams Legend. The room goes silent. Seven people stare at him with varying reactions, some out of fear and some out of silent frustration.

“I’ve had enough of this! Get yourselves together!”

“...Vio. We’re going,” Blue mutters, tightly grabbing the boy in violet by the wrist and heading onto the glass elevator before anyone else can catch up to them. Vio gives them an apologetic and regretful look as the platform descends back to the ground floor.

Wind runs over and looks through the hole where the platform used to be, watching as the two dots on it become indistinguishable. How did everything go so wrong? He… He made things worse… Just before they were like family. They’re so fragmented now.

Meanwhile in the back, the five other boys are silent, save for Red and Green.

“I’m so tired…” Green murmurs.

“Me too…” Red replies. As for Legend, he looks away, conflict brewing in him. He did what he had to, but it hurt. He ended the argument, but he ended it with anger. Thinking about it, could there have been another way? Could he have ended this less antagonistically? He even shut down Vio’s attempts to end the argument.

…Now it feels like he just made a terrible decision.

In the corner of the room, Wild simply stares ahead, drowning in his thoughts. He just escalated everything. This started because of him. If only— if only he had thought of a better way!

He hurt Wind. He hurt Red. He scared Green. He terrified Hyrule. He made Blue even angrier. He messed up badly.

Horribly.

Now everyone is uncomfortable with each other. He had messed up that delicate balance. Their group is fragmented because of him.

And knowing this, feeling such intense emotions of regret and sadness, pearls of despair make his dull eyes shine.

Chapter Text

Wild had thought of himself and the others as a team, a group of brothers intent on exploring the world and reclaiming their pasts. Three boys, seeking their missing and wandering kin, searching for the world’s truth and missing chronicles at the same time. Exploring ruins, going on journeys, meeting new people and traversing a lost world of white…

Is that not like a fairytale? Like a grand story of friendship and triumph?

A legend?

He hoped for minimal violence and disagreements. But he was too idealistic. Perhaps too hopeful, expecting for things to go well and conflict to not happen.

That fool, that dreamer— His idealism and excessive self-criticism is almost laughable and tragic. Had he known this, had he done or said something to prevent this—

He could’ve set things right, not added fuel to the fire… But look at what happened. And isn’t it his fault?

Again?

How many rifts has he caused in this journey alone? Wasn’t it him who indirectly caused Four’s split into four amnesiacs?

Wasn’t it him who started this in the first place?

He has hurt Wind multiple times. He has terrified Hyrule with his anger. He has scared Red to the point of tears. He hasn’t done anything except to make the fights worse. It’s painful. It’s painful that he’s the cause of all this.

Knowing how many times he's made these mistakes… Over and over, again and again— He can’t just take it anymore. His tears are silent. His vision is blurry. His throat has the biggest lump it’s had in a while. Now, it feels like he’s truly alone.

The sole person at fault.

Trying to think rationally in such a situation; something he can only dream of. His rationality tells him that it isn’t completely his fault…

…but he can’t help but blame himself like the liability and burden he is. And he knows that. He knows that he’s only been weighing them down…

…but he also knows he can’t just keep wallowing in his despair. He’s become like their leader. Maybe, or maybe not. He knows that he can’t lead, but he was thrust into this role. He’s never thought himself a leader, but he is now. And now, he has to get up. He has to help everyone up.

He’ll have to do everything in his power to overcome this. He’ll do whatever it takes to resolve this. Wild straightens his back, and suppresses his inner conflict. He approaches the others with a glint of determination reflected in his eyes.

“We can’t just stay here. We have to find them, and resolve this. We’ll have to do this together.”

“But… but I don’t know how… They’re already out of sight and might be actively trying to avoid us…” Red replies after some silence, a slight sob in his voice.

“Don’t worry. We have experience with that,” Wild affirms. A sigh comes out from Legend, one filled with defeated admittance.

“I guess we do. Take that memory shard and let’s go after them.” The multicolored fragment now in Green’s hand, they step onto the platform and it begins its descent. The air is still heavy and no one speaks as the platform goes down. Everybody’s eyes are off somewhere else, staring at the glass, the environment, anything that isn’t someone else. That is, except for Wind. His eyes dart around to the others, trying to find something that he can take advantage of to help ease this tension.

However, his words get stuck in his throat whenever he tries to voice his thoughts, as if all his courage had just melted away in an instant. He’s been in an argument before, multiple, but not to this scale. Everyone used to get along so well, to the point that he hasn’t seen any true fights like this. No, that quarrel between Wild and Legend was the worst he’d experienced in a long time.

To get suddenly hit with a fight this scale? He doesn’t know how to handle it. Well, matured or not, he’s still a fourteen year old boy. If only he were as experienced as everyone else…

Well, no matter. He’s just gonna have to try and make things work. Stay optimistic, and they’ll cheer up. He believes that might work.

“Guys? You know, being all this dejected while searching won’t work. If we’re this mopey and sad and we suddenly get ambushed, how will we fare in a fight?”

“He’s… got a point,” the boy in emerald comments after a long period of silence.

“If we are this demotivated, we won’t be as aware as we should of our surroundings. Legend, you said you’ll take the lead, right?” Legend looks away from the floor, grateful for the broken silence.

“Yeah. I will. We’ll retrace our steps and check the place thoroughly. Wild and Green, go to where we met Lagrange. Hyrule and Red, head to the maze. Me and Wind will search around in the general area.” When the platform touches the ground, they soon split up into their designated pairs and quickly head towards their destination, save Legend and Wind staying behind.

Wind climbs up the stairs to search the upper levels while Legend remains below on the ground floor. Once again, Wind checks every bookshelf he finds, either scouring through them or just summoning a gust of wind to do the work for him. Meanwhile, Legend is busy filtering and sorting through the countless ‘books’ stacked within, above and around the shelves. Upon seeing a ‘book’ containing no important information, he lets it be taken by the crackle of wispy white flames.

Legend is this close to simply burning every ‘book’ in sight until one catches his eye. It seems to be an ordinary memory of conflict, but there is a certain feeling to it. A certain… recentness to it. He makes the shard float gently onto his palm, and closes his eyes. Upon opening them, he sees a familiar boy in violet. Said boy looks silently distraught, face a shade paler than he’d last seen him.

All he can feel is some sort of anger, like having been betrayed and lied to. The anger is almost familiar, yet wildly different. He grimaces, and tries to separate his emotions from the person’s. He manages to take hold of his wild emotions and turns to look at his surroundings. From what he can gather, it looks like the two are in the library’s main hall.

However, he can feel something ominous in the passageway behind Vio. It is situated at the center of the library’s furthest wall, located on its first floor. He squints, and realizes that the passage wasn’t there previously. He walks ahead, approaching the passageway with increased caution.

Without warning, something like a disconnected glass chain wraps around his right ankle, pulling on it with such strength that Legend falls to the floor on his side. The wind is forced out of his lungs and he shouts in surprise, trying to burn the chain away.

But this is a memory which is not his. The fire never comes.

He shrieks as he is dragged and pulled into the dark, the last thing he sees being a similar chain seizing Vio by the waist and yanking him inside. As a muffled scream resounds, his vision goes black and his eyes snap open. A drop of sweat rolls down his temple as his face becomes several shades paler, completely disoriented and in fright of the experience. He takes quick and heaving breaths, his heart hammering the entire time.

He has to find Wind.

Now.

“WIND!” he shouts with urgency in his voice. Immediately, a flash of turquoise jumps down the stairs, is saved from the fall by a small updraft and boosted by a tailwind after landing on the ground. The boy in turquoise skids to a halt just inches before Legend, nearly tripping.

“Did you find something?!” the sailor asks with surprise and alarm.

“That door,” the veteran points to the passage a few meters ahead, “wasn’t there before, right?”

Wind squints and nods. Legend grits his teeth. “I know where Blue and Vio went,” he says. Wind, catching the message, begins to walk towards the entrance of it, with Legend following behind. However, Legend can feel a dark presence zooming towards Wind and pushes him out of the way. Glass chains wrap around his waist and ankle, once again forcing him to the floor.

“Get out of here!” Legend shouts. “Find the others!”

He is met with a blast of wind coming from behind, making the chains release their hold on him.

With a hint of newfound anger in his voice he exclaims, “I can do things myself! Just trust me for once! I know—” before remembering what happened when he let his frustration get the better of him. His shoulders droop slightly and his sentence is left unfinished.

Three more chains appear from the dark passage, taking the two by surprise. Both jump out of the way as fire engulfs it and winds blast them. When the pair land, a chain moves in a sweeping motion on ankle level. Unfortunately for Wind, he doesn’t see this coming and trips.

The chain wraps around his calf and left hand, dragging him into the passage. In a last ditch attempt, Wind struggles and reaches out his right hand to Legend, but the veteran misses it by mere centimeters. A shout from the sailor echoes as he is pulled into the darkness.

In what seems to be a show of mockery, the same happens to Legend. However, he manages to rapidly call a nearby shard to his hand and stabs it into the wooden floor. He tries to summon those pale flames that have saved him time and time again, but chains wrap around his arms and restrict his movement further.

The force of the chains pulling him within increases so much that his anchor shard begins to cut his hand and make it bleed. In shock and pain, he lets go of the shard and screams. Now anchorless, the chains drag him in. A haze overcomes his mind and he passes out, taken to somewhere deeper and darker.

A scream. One very faint, but present. A moment passes, and then another one, much louder.

Hyrule harshly gasps and turns back. He can feel something is wrong. No, very wrong is more correct. Without thought, he rushes towards the source of the voice, navigating through halls and twisting paths. In what feels like seconds, he arrives at where he assumes the voice is from and stops dead still.

In front of him is a trail of blood smeared on the wooden floor, like someone’s bleeding hand was being dragged along the floor and straight into the murky black of the passage before him. A bloodied glass shard is planted into the ground, as if to mark where the trail starts. He winces as nausea begins to make itself known to him, a disturbing feeling within his heart making it thump much faster than it should be.

He takes a few steps backwards and gulps. What should he do? Should he call Red with him? And speaking of red… where is the boy in red and his turquoise covered companion?

Hyrule looks around and checks the ground floor, before proceeding to the upper levels. The worry that was previously within him, coupled with the shock of the blood stains, has changed completely into fear and dread. There is only one place where they could’ve gone, and he doesn’t like it. Now, a rock and a hard place is where he is stuck between.

Finding Red and the others would be a good idea, but the longer he takes, the longer the danger Wind and Legend might be in. Not only Wind and Legend, but he also assumes that Blue and Vio are inside there as well.

Whatever is happening in there, he knows it’s not good.

Not one to leave others behind so easily, he goes back to the entrance of the corridor, grabs the glass on the floor after a moment’s hesitation, wipes the blood on his tunic and carves a note into the floor.

There’s something terrible beyond this passage. If you’re reading this and I’m not here, I’m inside there along with Wind, Legend, Vio and Blue. This is Hyrule.

He gulps, and enters the place. After some length of time, he notices that the sound his boots make when walking is different. He looks down and sees wide diamond-shaped tiles, all colored black and white in alternating patterns like a chessboard.

He walks on ahead and the hall expands into a vast room. Black and translucent banners draped from the ceiling and towards the rectangular, framed windows. Blue butterflies, some unburdened and some carrying lamps as blue as their wings, flit around gently.

On the edge of the room, the boy sees a figure in black. More appropriately, a girl in black. Around her, multiple familiar bodies are sprawled on the floor, shackles on them. He sharply gasps as his fear turns into pure terror.

Suddenly, darkness covers his vision and his consciousness slips, but not before hearing a girl’s voice:

“Consider me having done a favor for you.”

Red can’t rid this strange feeling of dread from him. Just a few seconds ago, he had shouted for Hyrule, but no response came back. He shouted again, and still no response. Then, he heard two screams, seconds spaced apart.

Red quickly navigates back to the main entrance, now knowing that Hyrule isn’t in the maze. At the same time, he notices a lack of people in the hall. Sensing trouble, he swiftly skips to where Wild and Green are, shouting to them upon his arrival.

“Wild! Green! Hyrule and the others are missing! I can’t find them at all!” he blurts with worry.

“Red, calm down. Maybe we’ll find them somewhere in the hall. Maybe they’ve found a new location and went off without us,” Green replies.

“I don’t know. It’s not like them to just run off to a new location without telling us first. Wind and Legend would definitely inform us,” Wild remarks.

“Let’s just check the perimeter,” Hyrule says. The other two nod, and they head off. But as soon as they reach the upper level’s railings, Red’s worst fears are confirmed. Not a single person aside from them. No sound of talking or searching. No movement of color, save for the entrance of a corridor that he is sure wasn’t previously there.

Wild taps on his slate to reach the sailor… but nothing happens. No voice. Not even background ones. Cautiously, the three approach the entrance of the corridor and freeze upon seeing the message and the blood.

“There’s something terrible beyond this passage. If you’re reading this and I’m not here, I’m inside there along with Wind, Legend, Vio and Blue. This is Hyrule…” Wild trails off.

“I think that we have to prepare for some sort of fight. I know we can fight, but the thought of bringing Green into the fray scares me,” Red says. He hands over the peculiar diamond-shaped shard in his pocket to the boy in emerald.

“If you’re in big danger, run. Just run without thinking. We’ll be fine, I promise.”

“But that isn’t right!” Green argues back. “I can’t just leave you all behind!”

“I can’t just leave you all behind… Well, I did say that before, but I’m scared for you. You can’t fight at all.”

“Red’s right. Just stay behind for now. If we need help, we’ll run to you,” Wild says.

Green relents, understanding that he would only burden them. However, a nagging feeling in his heart tells him to go after them in secret. This is countered by his mind reaffirming his companions’ fears and restating the facts about his weakness.

As his two companions walk off into the passage, he silently mutters,

“If only I could fight like all of you.”

Butterflies flutter around the two, as if watching the newcomers with piqued curiosity. Bright and blue, they fly around carrying gleaming lamps shining the color of morpho butterflies. Their ethereal azure both clashes and complements the darkness around them. Soon, the place reveals a hall. An elegant one filled with a disturbing air, as if something horrifying had just happened.

“More of you…” a girl’s voice says. Wild and Red immediately prepare for combat, the former unsheathing his sword and the latter calling for his dual blades.

“You all just keep coming like those shards of misery. What is up with all of you and heading into dark places? Well, that doesn't matter. I’ll just cut the speech you might be expecting. I’ve shackled all of your friends and knocked them unconscious. Now, they can’t fight with you. Either you put me out of my misery, or I will take the life of everyone in the room. However,” she twistedly smiles,

“I won’t make this easy.”

Flocks of glass like rose petals are sent towards the two. Wild redirects them back to the girl, and Red parries them.

“Unusual… I’ve only heard of one other person who could also do that,” she quietly notes. Glass dives from straight above in short and rapid bursts, forcing Red and Wild to go on the defensive. They even occasionally come in from the side, Red usually rolling out of the way while Wild takes to multitasking.

Having had enough of the stalemate, Wild uses much of his power to stop all of the glass shards in the chamber from moving. He redirects it all back to her, hoping that the sheer quantity of them would damage her, even slightly. The girl makes the glass stop in place and scatters them, all the shards aligning themselves with Light. Shards of Conflict zoom toward the two. Wild, thinking that he can send them back again, stays still and tries to control them.

However, these are fragments she will not give back. Her attunement with these shards of darkness is so strong that they would not bow to anyone other than her, now that she exerts her power over them. It pins the boy in blue to the wall by the sleeve and tunic, rendering him helpless. A stray shard manages to stab his thigh and draws a strangled groan from him. Another piece of glass finds its way onto his torso, shallowly embedding itself into his flesh.

The girl almost laughs and now gives her attention to Red, eyes so uncharacteristically fierce that even Blue would be proud. He dodges and parries incoming fragments, all the while destroying the many fake walls of glass that aim to trap and confuse him. However, he doesn’t notice a snaking chain that slowly approaches him.

It stealthily wraps around his left ankle, waiting for the right moment to act and make him lose his balance. When the boy jumps to avoid a tide of glass aimed at his heel, the chain yanks him down. His eyes widen and in a second, he goes crashing to the floor. Now vulnerable, four chains bind all his limbs and prevent him from getting up. He tries to take his sword, so close yet out of reach, to slash away at his bindings.

However, it is futile.

Silence.

Is this really how it’s going to end? Really?

Vio, Blue, Green… Wild, Wind, Hyrule, Legend…

Is there really no better resolution?

As his attacker slowly approaches, a dark shard of glass within her gloved hand, his eyes water. He begins crying. Crying silently, but like never before. He cries his heart out, in true terror of his impending death.

In his heart, he wishes for someone to save him. For something to stop that piece of glass about to plunge into his back—

But it comes down without resistance, into his flesh. He shrieks and cries even harder. He cries at how weak he is, how sensitive and soft he is, at the pain, at the fact that he’s going to die soon.

And the fact that he’s going to watch the others die as well.

Despite all the overwhelming pain, the agonizing fear, the pronounced regrets and the immense sadness that viciously attacks him like a rainstorm, he murmurs in a broken voice:

“Sorr—”

“NO ONE'S APOLOGIZING TODAY!”

A hand holds the black shard so close to taking his life. Another hand joins it, both struggling and trying so hard to overpower the fragment’s owner. With one final push filled with strength and precision, the shard goes flying and clatters to the ground. A kick to the stomach is delivered to the girl in black, and standing in her place is a boy whose clothes are colored a green like emerald forests.

He stands with something different in his eyes.

Not fear, not anger, something completely new.

The boy withdraws a diamond shaped piece of glass from his pocket with the intent to use it as a blade. His grip tightens around the shard and his other hand clenched into a fist, prepared to fight even if it’s his last stand. He knows he’s vulnerable, incapable of defending himself, reckless even, but he’ll fight for their sake. The shard flies out of his hand and in front of him, beginning to glow. The four colored sections of glass grow vibrant and even shines with light—

An aura from the shard grows bright and amazing, bathing the room in an ethereal aura, like a miracle.

The shard is not supposed to exist. This situation was never supposed to happen, but now, it is real.

He made it real.

And as the warmth and glow of the shard reaches his eyes, they dazzle with the sparkling radiance of the fragment. He grabs the shard and it resonates with him, something previously forgotten now rediscovered and flourishing.

The glass slowly changes and reforms, a gleaming sword now in his hand. This sword is proof that he won’t back down.

He will not stay behind anymore.

He will fight by their side with his newfound power.

Chapter Text

“Red’s right. Just stay behind for now. If we need help, we’ll run to you,” Wild says. As Green watches the two boys disappear into the corridor, into the darkness, an unsettling feeling begins to grip him. His stomach gets that terrible feeling of a certain nausea and hammering heart beats make themselves known to him.

Wild and Red’s footsteps keep echoing into the darkness… until he can’t hear it anymore. As the seconds and minutes trail by without their footsteps, his fingers get twitchy and his legs pace around. Sweat begins to drip from his temples as the sound of quick footsteps and clashing glass reaches his ears.

“They’ll be fine… They’ll be fine…” he recites to himself like a mantra, over and over again.

“It’s nothing for them, they won’t get that badly hurt… I’ve seen it. I know they’re good at fighting.” Despite these words however, the imminent fear in him refuses to go away.

“I’m just here to stay and wait in case they need help.” His dread will not stop gnawing at him.

“I can’t fight, that’s why I’m here.” His pacing only gets more frantic.

“Everything will be fine. No one will get hurt.” His legs go weak as he hears a blood curdling scream from within the black of the corridor. He covers his mouth with a hand and stares into the darkness, hoping to see something. Anything that would indicate Wild and Red’s well-being.

“They’re just slightly injured… They’ll be…”

He goes silent. His words escape him. His fists curl.

“This— this is wrong! I can’t just leave them there!” he exclaims, bringing his fists up and throwing them down. “I couldn’t prevent the argument… I couldn’t even do anything during the fight! I was too weak …Too weak to land even a feeble hit on that glass monster. I’m tired of staying behind and watching everyone suffer! I’m not going to let them do all the work, to shoulder all of this for my sake!”

His fear recedes, replaced with an ember of determination and anger. The boy in emerald begins to walk forward, something within him having changed.

“I know I’m not strong, frail and defenseless, but I don’t care. I’m not letting this go on!”

Green reaches his left arm forward and shouts,

“NO ONE’S APOLOGIZING TODAY!”

His entire body fills with warmth and otherworldly magic flows through his finger tips, calling and shaping glass into a weapon. The glass almost melts, morphing into a formless substance that can be molded to his will. Bright light suddenly shines in front of him as a sword is forged before him. He did this. He created this.

His eyes dazzle from the serene light of the gleaming weapon before him.

Grabbing its hilt, a sense of comfort washes over him. And yet, his heart is still terrified, seeing all his friends chained up and bleeding. The splotches of crimson on the floor which reflect his fearful expression and juxtapose the white-black tiles almost makes him sick.

He gulps and sharply inhales, trying to soothe his racing heart. But having just gained a sword with little to no experience in wielding one, what sort of change can he bring? What can he achieve with his meager amounts of skill?

Green's shoulders squeeze into him and he looks down. He ran into the battle, fully knowing what could happen, so it’s his job to finish what he started. Even if he gets injured. Even if he loses his life. Somewhere within however, a sliver of hope remains that he will be fine. A will to survive, and make sure they live.

Despite barely knowing them, despite having no prior recollection of these people, Green can feel such an intense and deep connection run between them.

An unexplainable, undeniable, unbreakable one.

As he is now, he’s essentially a newborn: inexperienced, naive, and weak. However, the kindness and care shown to him by these total strangers had left a profound impact. They taught him much about this world, even though they knew very little of it themselves.

Of course he would risk his life for these seven people.

Of course he would throw himself into battle for them without a second thought.

He waits for her next move. She also stands still, observing him like a predator to prey. Then, the first strike comes.

The girl charges towards him, dark shard in hand and pure aggression in her eerily blue eyes. He bends back, leaps to the left, side steps and twirls to his right. One wide slash from her barely misses his face, him having dodged to the right in the nick of time. This time, he is on the offense. His fear melts away as a strange familiarity overcomes his sword arm.

He delivers a sweeping strike to counter, managing to graze part of her clothing. The girl in black, seeing the situation, leaps back and begins an assault from afar, deadly and precise flocks of glass hurtling straight towards him.

He tries to parry the shards to the best of his ability, but one cuts his calf, drawing blood. He flinches and groans as a sudden and sharp pain hits his injured leg. The boy bends down and tightly clutches his calf to mitigate the pain, expression turning grim at the implications of his injury.

“I can’t do this alone… But how do I even get help from unconscious people?”

Green releases his grip from the wound and continues the cycle of parrying and dodging, but the pain begins to disturb him. His movements get just a tad slower and sloppier, allowing for a stray fragment to cut his cheek. Wincing, he soon holds his hand to the cut, looking around for some form of help.

When he turns his head behind, he can see an unconscious Red and a pinned Wild. However, he reasons that Wild perhaps hasn’t been knocked out… That, he can only hope. And that is his only hope. This is a gambit. A dangerous one.

He quickly rushes over to Wild, all the while dodging skipping glass. Though he would never admit it, he is very thankful for his short stature.

With a strong pull, Wild drops to the ground and on his knees. With a quick flick of the champion’s wrist, a swiftly approaching crew of glass is tossed aside like falling shrapnel. The boy in blue takes one deep breath and gets up, grateful for his mobility restored.

“Thanks, but what now?” the champion asks, weary from his previous bout with her.

“I honestly don’t know your skill sets so I can’t judge, except for Red. I know he wields a sword or maybe two, but he’s not exactly…” the boy casts a glance to his unconscious and bleeding brother, “doing well.”

“I can see that just fine. Let’s get Legend back into the fray as his abilities relate to the destruction of glass.”

In zig-zagging motions, the two run over to where Legend lies, bloody and unconscious. In particular, a bloodstain seems to be beneath his hand.

“So that’s where the blood came from…” muses Green.

“Thankfully, it’s no stab wound. I was a bit scared at the stained wood and the amount of blood.”

They pull on his shackles, but the glass refuses to give in. Not relenting, Wild tries to use the chain’s shards against them, but the attraction between the bits of glass forming the chain is too strong.

“Green, cover for me!” the champion shouts. “I’ll attack the chains!”

Wordlessly, Green shifts into a more defensive stance as Wild holds his sword in front and prepares to slice their bindings. The former’s sword now in a more flexible position, he begins to parry away at the onslaught of glass. Despite his small frame, he is more than capable of trading strong and accurate blows with the shards, the glass tossed aside to the floor like the remains of a broken window.

In the back, his companion withdraws his sword and prepares to strike at Legend’s bindings. A rapid slash meets the chain, and it quickly shatters into pieces. However, it reforms as quickly as it breaks. In frustration, Wild hacks at them over and over again to no avail.

On the verge of exploding and straight up attacking their enemy out of frustration, he turns around with sword in hand when Green cuts in. The trembling blade in Wild’s hand immediately stills when a hand not belonging to him taps him by the shoulder.

“Your sword is out of metal, I assume, but mine is out of glass,” Green says. “Following the logic of this world, I think my strikes would be more effective. This time, you cover for me!”

The two agilely swap places, both not letting their guard down all the while. With one clean slice from the boy in emerald, the chains shatter without a hint of recovery. His eyes light up with a spark of determination and he breaks all of Hyrule’s bindings with ease.

“That should do it!” he exclaims. “Can you keep covering for me?”

“You think I can’t?” the boy in blue responds with a hint of humor in his voice.

“Classic Wild. I’ll try and free everyone else.”

With a shared look and a nod in unison, the boy in blue does a backflip, narrowly dodging the glass and destroys them all in one fell swoop. Like a drizzle, they shower in shining, tiny bits. As the next volley of fragments hurtle towards them, the boy in emerald makes his move. He immediately runs towards the others, holding his sword out, but his body can’t keep up with the speed of the glass despite Wild’s covering.

His calf is struck deep by a lone piece of glass. He winces and shouts, the pain making it difficult to move. His breath turns shaky when seeing the shard lodged in his flesh.

The pain grows worse every second, his calf as if on fire. He can only limp, but even the pain from limping is too much to bear. He falls into a crawl, too weak to continue. With white and trembling hands, he attempts to pull out the bloodstained shard from his leg. Every sort of force applied to it hurts immensely, but the boy grits his teeth and pulls it out. He shouts and tightly clutches his tunic, the pain almost making him tear up.

Footsteps approach. His vision goes blurry as a shard comes nearer to his body, so close to finishing the job. He squeezes his eyelids shut, expecting to lose consciousness, but not before extreme pain unlike any he’s felt.

It never comes.

He looks down and no shard is there. He looks forward and sees a blue tunic.

He can hear groaning and even whimpering as the onslaught suddenly halts. As he realizes what happened, he can only utter:

“What?”

“ACK— Aghh!”

The boy in front of him wobbles and groans in pain as drops of blood begin to drop to the floor from the wound.

“I couldn’t redirect that specific shard. Her grip is too strong. Use your sword to cut the banners and swing on them. Your leg’s very injured.”

From afar, the girl in black is almost surprised by this display of… selflessness. What this world had taught her, what it had forced into her, is that everyone only cares for themselves.

Her own fate’s final verdict had taught her that.

The girl in black didn’t want to die, but she also didn’t want to live. At that point, she was already sick of it all.

And now, she sees these two strangers willingly risk everything for the other people in the room? Those others that they barely even know? Now the world decides to show her some semblance of goodness?

What, was she brought back as a form of mockery? What can this fragmented soul do? What can this unstable soul with an unstable body do? Can’t she just disappear already? Can’t she finally be given some sort of rest? Is hurting others her only way of lashing out?

…Damn it all.

It’s always been the same.
This world never changes.
It’s all a joke.

“Just end me already,” she says in a dead, pleading voice. “Just let me rest. I thought I harbored no hate for her, but seeing what she did to the others… I hate her even more than I did previously. I’m not even alive… I’m just a fragment of the original soul.”

Wild approaches her with sword in hand, albeit slower.

“Original soul?” he asks.

“On that day, about a thousand years ago, my soul was fractured into pieces when my battle with her came to an end. I… I guess you could say I’m dead.”

“But you’re standing here right now.”

“I don’t know how I came back,” she starts, “and I don’t want to be here any longer. Just end things quickly for me, and things won’t escalate.”

Wild’s face scrunches up for a moment, and then changes into one of slight solemness.

“That’s fine by me.”

“Thank you. You know, you’re much brighter than she is.” The girl gives a meager smile, a self-pitying and partially grateful one.

“But may I ask one more question?”

“Fine by me. It’s not like I have any reason to live anymore.”

“Who is she?” There is silence for a moment, her brow twitching. Her teeth grind together as that bitterness that she has always heralded bursts once more. And yet, that name she has always hated escapes her. She can’t even remember its vowels, nonetheless its syllables. Her expression turns sullen, before she speaks again.

“...I can’t remember her name. I think it means Light.”

“Light… If she’s light, then what are you?”

“I could ask you the same.”

“Well, I’m a wanderer. My name is Wild, and I’m searching for other boys like me in this world.”

“Strange name, but who am I to say that when my name is Tairitsu? And as far as I can remember, there were no boys in this world. Not even a single one. And now, we have about eight or more of you here…”

“Our arrival changed a lot of things.”

“It sure did. But the one thing that hasn’t changed… it’s the fact that this place is horrible. However, I think I’m talking too much. Let’s end things.”

“I see. Goodbye, Tairitsu.”

“Thank you. I’ll be watching you from beyond.” As the incomplete soul prepares to return to black beyond the world of white, her hand suddenly shoots up without her volition. It stops the falling blade and she opens her eyes in terror.

“What?!” Wild exclaims, bewilderment clear in his eyes.

“My body is moving on its own! Quick, just use your sword and…”

‘Tairitsu’ goes quiet. Her eyes become dull and empty as her consciousness fades. Now, she is no more than a puppet. Wild sheaths his sword and exerts his control over the numerous shards lying across the battlefield, sending his own flock at the ones directly headed for him. The shards fly in a frenzy, aimed at feet to cut off mobility, aimed at vital parts like the head and heart to snuff the other’s life. Glass soars uncontrolled, unrestricted, unstoppable.

A storm for a storm.
A battle of endurance and accuracy.

Thus, a struggle begins.
A beautiful and violent one.

The fear and pain cloaks his mind in a haze of white. Fear as to what would happen next and fear for his own life. Wild is out there, putting his all into a stalemate for Green’s sake. Because of that, he can’t waste this chance that is given to him. Despite being stabbed and bleeding, Wild still fights. And for that, he’ll follow suit.

As quickly as he can manage, Green gets up and observes the room. Wild previously said that he could use the banners to traverse the room quicker, but he doesn’t have the impressive degree of control that Wild has. Maybe however, he can just throw his sword like a chakram or boomerang to cut the banners in one fell swoop. If he misses however, he’ll be forced to go on foot, effectively giving him only one chance.

He changes his stance, aims for a higher part of the banners, and throws the sword like a boomerang. It spins wildly in a straight line, cleanly cutting the cloth before roughly tossed onto the ground. Without wasting time, he rushes ahead and leaps to grab the banner. He swings his body back and forth to gain momentum, only releasing when his acceleration is the highest.

He steels himself and releases just as the banner descends from its backwards maximum point, his fingers scrambling to grab ahold of whatever object is there to stop his fall.

“That was too close…” he mutters, his fear and exhilaration apparent in his voice.

Green lets go of the banner and lands just beside Hyrule’s unconscious body. He raises his sword, and it falls down with a clean cut. Proud at himself, he smirks slightly and grabs onto the next banner. Now, for Blue—

His head begins pounding. His vision begins to blur and haze. The continual and increasing blood loss from his leg takes him by sudden force, shoving him into a state of delirium. He soon crashes onto Hyrule’s body, weak from his wound opening even more.

Is this it? Was his attempt to save everyone destined to fail? Why is he so weak?

He tries to force his eyelids open, yet they keep burdening him like weights. If this is really the end… He’d hate to end so undignified like this. But he’ll cling onto life for as long as he can. He chose this.

He…
will…
fight…

His thought process gets chopped off as all of his combined exhaustion and pain crashes onto him like a waterfall. He collapses and lands on something soft but slightly cold, that which begins to stir. Green desperately clings onto his last shreds of consciousness, before a knitting feeling within his wounds begins to manifest.

The pain begins to subside. His vision clears. That feeling of fading is no more. Only now does he realize that he’s on the floor, no longer on the cool thing cushioning him. Said cool thing is now directly above him, wearing an expression of immense concern and thinly veiled fear.

“Green. You’re hurt quite badly, so I won’t let you fight. Let me do the fighting,” the figure above him says.

With his mind now unclouded, he identifies the figure above him as Hyrule. Green’s heart fills with relief at the thought of not having to pass out in such a crucial moment. However, he just recently swore to never stay behind, and he’s getting his way this time.

“I’m not going to be a sitting duck anymore. You come with me and free the others.”

Hyrule crosses his arms and frowns, “You just got stabbed in the leg! I’m not going to let you off so easily!”

As Green is about to give a sharp retort, another voice loudly cuts in.

“You realize I can hear the two of you from here, don’t you?! Just free me already, damn it, and we can sort things out! Teamwork, we can’t have anymore infighting! If not, we’re all as good as dead!”

“Ironic for the one who started this entire ordeal!” Green ripostes, that withheld sharp retort from before finally able to come out. But out of the blue, with such extreme precision and volume, Hyrule shouts,

“Forgive me for this in advance, but will you two kindly save this for later?! I won’t forgive you if this dumb argument lets a single shard land even a scrape on you!”

Three stunned faces turn to him instantaneously, no one expecting the usually quiet and meek Hyrule to even say that. A fragment almost gets a lucky hit on Wild before he sends it and its friends away with a few gestures. Relenting, Green goes silent and agilely zig-zags his way to Blue.

As a strong strike from above completely fractures and shatters Blue’s chains, Green quips, “You owe me for this one!”

“Fine, thank you! I get it!” Blue responds, half-irritated. As Blue gets up, a whip of glass immediately appears in his hand. That hand grips its hilt even tighter as Blue’s frustration begins to erupt.

“Payback!” he shouts, as a sweeping strike from the whip snags multiple fragments and slams them into the ground.

The whip slams with such force that even the floor fractures from the impact. Almost smirking at the destruction, he reels the weapon back and proceeds to snag Vio’s unconscious form at the trio’s feet.

Riddled with confusion, Hyrule asks, “Why did you snag Vio instead of anyone else who can fight?”

“You idiot, he’s literally my brother!” Blue responds with annoyance in his voice.

“I can’t argue against that.” With a wordless nod, Green cleanly cuts through the unconscious boy’s shackles and tries to rouse him awake with borderline violent shakes.

“Come on, get up! Just get up already! Get up and run to somewhere safer! All you need to do is to wake up! Please! Wild’s out there covering for us even though he’s just been stabbed!” Green panics, his worry getting worse every second.

“That guy’s been covering for us this whole time?!” Blue says, the shock apparent in his voice. “I’m not going to let him outdo me! You and Hyrule work together to free the rest of them while I give our attacker a piece of my mind!”

The boy in sapphire quickly sprints to Wild’s location, all while snatching and flinging away any shards headed in his direction. It swings with the grace of a ribbon and force of a madman, essentially acting as a wide range parry. The utterly noticeable footsteps from Blue makes Wild turn his head with surprise.

“Miss me yet? You can’t get rid of me that easily,” Blue says, some sort of pride in his voice.

“One minute ago we— aghh— were arguing and now we’re teaming up,” Wild quips.

“That was half an hour ago!”

“Yeah right, who cares?! Arguments sure do love us.”

“That is the one thing I can agree with you on. That, and the fact we’re going to be stupidly skewered if I don't do this!”

A glass whip soars through the air, the sweeping force and the weapon itself knocking much glass to the side. As the two team up to try and claw their way to victory, the stalemate doesn’t budge even a centimeter. No ground is gained, but neither is it lost.

Even with assistance from Blue, nothing changes.

Wild’s strength only fades as the pain and blood loss begins to wear him down.

“Hyrule, we have to go! If we can’t wake up Vio, we have to get to Red immediately!”

“But I can’t just leave him here! He’s helpless and can’t even fight!”

“Would you rather Red bleed out?!”

Without warning, a blur of green zips in front of Green so fast that his hair whips in his face, the blur intently tracking the familiar figure in crimson sprawled out on the floor.

However, Hyrule freezes to a fearfully shocked halt at seeing the heavily wounded figure before him. Even though his clothes are already crimson, the red coming from within is still vibrant and noticeable. Trails of blood snake across his clothing like tree branches as even more blood continues to spill from his open wound and pool on the floor, so much so that even Hyrule can see his own horrified expression reflected on it. And yet, it only gets worse. A large and dark fragment of glass sticks out from behind Red’s back, the weapon that had caused all this. Not only that, the boy is restrained by four chains of black binding his limbs.

He almost feels sick just looking at the poor boy in front of him. The smell of iron is so heavy that it’s nauseating, that it’s terrifying. Just how much blood has this boy lost? Just how long has he remained in this condition? It’s almost as if he’s ten steps away from death’s door, too close to bleeding out.

Not to mention that strange way his left leg looks… It must be either twisted, broken, or both. Hyrule covers his mouth with his hand and gulps, his cold and trembling hand getting nearer and nearer to the terrifying sight. The boy forces his hand away from his mouth and plucks that shard out, blood spilling out even more. In utter panic and terror, he wills that familiar feeling of magic to come out, to vanish that terrifying sight before him.

It flows from deep within, a pale green light emerging from his hands. No matter how much he wants to close his eyes and look away however, he pushes on. Even if he has to see that much gore and blood, he’ll keep looking and healing. Red will be fine, he assures himself.

Wounds stitch themselves and bleeding stops. Cuts don’t even clot as flesh has already repaired itself. As the last of the wounds seal, Hyrule gives an exhausted sigh. That had taken a lot out of him, too much. But what else should he expect when healing someone in such a sorry state?

Now, to wake his patient.

“Red,” he whispers.

No response.

“Red! I’ve healed you!” he half-yells.

Red’s fingers begin to twitch.

“RED! WAKE UP!”

Red’s eyes snap open. He whips his head here and there, before looking at where his wounds used to be and sighing in relief.

“Thanks a lot. I might’ve bled out if you weren’t here,” says Red with a smile.

“What can I say? Admittedly though, I did it partially to not see your insides.”

The boy in crimson gives a slight chuckle, but nothing more, clearly still recovering from his unconscious state.

“And that leaves us with Vio…” Hyrule absently remarks.

“Vio…” Red trails off, before his alertness spikes. “Where are the others?! Are they okay?!” he panickedly yells.

“Wild and Blue are on the frontlines and Green is coming here to get rid of your pesky chains. Legend, Wind and Vio are all passed out on the floor.” As soon as Hyrule finishes his sentence, four slashes destroy Red’s chains.

“We’ve got no time to waste! We have to wake Vio up and move him to safety. I’m sure that Wind or Legend can take a hit or two, but Vio’s as fragile as a glass cup,” Green says, urgency clear in his tone. With haste, Red gets up and sprints towards the still-unconscious Vio, Green and Hyrule quickly going after the former as well.

Red skids to a halt mere millimeters in front of Vio’s unconscious body, quickly getting down and trying to rouse him awake. Green kneels down with a pleading look, desperate even, and can only watch as worry and fear seizes Red.

“Vio!” Red half-shouts, his tone almost like a warble.

“It won’t work!” Green replies. “Just get him to safety and I’ll do the rest!”

“We’re here! We’re all here and we need you!” Red yells again, refusing to listen.

“If you’re really that determined, then I’ll help Wild and Blue! Even with Blue, the two are still in a stalemate and I won’t let them get hurt by staying behind and being deadweight!” Green declares, soon running off to help the other two.

“Vio, listen to me. You’ll get really hurt if you don’t wake up. We can’t just carry you to safety as nowhere is safe,” Hyrule pleads.

“If you’re unconscious, you can’t run or dodge the incoming glass,” Red exclaims.

“We need you more than ever, Vio!”

“WAKE UP!!”

Chapter Text

Dark. Shadowy. A drifting feeling with no sense of time nor place. A state of suspension like limbo with all senses dulled near to nil. Exactly like the first time he woke up with three people nearly identical to him.

Only now does a familiar voice reach Vio, rousing his mind from unconsciousness. The voice is like a guiding light, an anchor back to reality.

He can hear a plea, a cry, a shout of pure and unfiltered desperation.

Instinctively, his entire being reaches out for that guiding star, to return to the world of white and help them. His left hand reaches forward to grasp that comforting ‘radiance’ for its warmth, like a lifeline from beyond the shadows of unconsciousness.

He can feel that the others also feel it. He can feel Red, Blue and Green’s presence within the light. They too are reaching for this ray of harmonious light, as evidenced by the magical signatures emitted from it.

The light grows and glows, encompassing his entire body and the surrounding black. His mind feels as if melting into a sea, yet also feeling as if it is reunifying with something long lost and personal. Only now does he realize it.

This connection that he shares with the other three is not only of blood, but also spirit and even soul. He had suspected something from the start, but never thought that it would come to this.

Amidst the dissolution of his consciousness, everything falls perfectly into place. Amidst the gentle numbness that seeps into his body, a certain harmonious feeling makes itself known to him. He smiles, knowing that the other three are also feeling this. As the last scraps of his consciousness fade, the light overwhelms him.

Then, it settles down.

The past and the present begin to combine for him, as his expression begins to fill with wonder from the vivid colors of the changing world. The light had bathed his mind in brilliance from its knowledge, from its memories and power. It projects those memories all around him, as if constructing an entire reality based on them.

Finally, the last piece of the puzzle delicately falls into place.

That question that all four of them had— “Who am I?” — is now answered.

He is not Vio any more. Neither is he Red, Green nor Blue.

No, he is Link.

He is Four.

As the memory plays on, a princess with blonde hair offers him a hand. He takes it and smiles, heading off to the festival which had changed him forever.

This very festival had shown him an undeniable truth; that he was a hero. Not only that, the fact that he could and still can see the mythical race of Minish testifies to that. The fact that he can still wield their legendary blade proves that. Before his entire journey in Arcaea, the glinting Four Sword was always by his side as he traveled with eight other heroes like him.

However, this does beg the question:

“Do I want this? I never asked for it.”

Yes, he never asked to be a hero, but he’d gladly save the world three times over if it means that those dear to him would live to see the day.

In fact, he did.

He would even split himself into four different parts to save them all. More precisely, the four different aspects of his personality.

That is where the Colors come from.

Green, his determination and courage. The one closest to his personality.

Blue, his anger and bitterness. The one that openly expresses what he really feels.

Red, his other emotions. The one who feels the hurt, the fear, but also the joy and hope.

Vio, his rationality. The one who plans, reconsiders and thinks things through.

All four of them make up his personality and are incomplete without each other.

That he realized after his first split and reformation. That he realized after using the Four Sword. One consciousness becomes four, and four seamlessly reunify into a whole.

The magic of the Four Sword is so integral to his memories and soul that some of it was passed onto that strange diamond shaped shard containing his memory. And with that synchrony between the four, with that united feeling, it acted as a channel to reunite four into one.

However, he has never split himself in front of any of these nine save for Wild. It’s a closely guarded secret of his, only splitting because forced to or far out of sight.

However, it feels nice having others who also herald their own secrets. It feels nice knowing that they refuse to pry into this matter he keeps close.

Those eight he met beyond the black portal that dragged him away from home must understand the feeling of wanting certain things to remain to themselves. And speaking of them… He can only say that they’re amazing.

They’re young, yet courageous. Compassionate, kind, yet know when to fight. All of them. He can admire the captain in the blue scarf, Warriors, for his consistent and intelligent leadership, despite the fact he may strike others’ nerves for his own amusement at times. He’s amazed by Wind’s tenacity despite being the youngest, amazed by his capability and unwillingness to stay behind in a fight.

He can respect Time, the oldest one in armor, for his wisdom and calm demeanor that belies his terrifying strength. He can both be exasperated and annoyed, yet trusting in Wild, that chaotic yet deep down sentimental boy who has seen too much.

He’s grateful for Sky’s kindness and impressed by his highly skilled swordsmanship, yet amused at his well-timed remarks and penchant for sleeping. He hasn’t gotten to know Hyrule all that well, but he knows that beneath that meekness and the occasional quips is a heart that refuses to give up. That sunset had proven so.

To him, Legend is a sarcastic, snarky person who is actually hurting inside. He can appear less than pleasant and snappy at times, but Four can tell that’s just an act. And as for Twilight, Four knows that he can rely on him for both help and the fact that he can overcome any obstacle in his way. He never stopped fighting, even at death’s door.

And he’ll never forget that struggle for life on Twilight’s part. Seeing him grapple for every second of life left, Four and the others searching for a solution as quickly as possible before Twilight’s gone for good… Those orange hues coloring the bandages that cover his friend’s near-fatal wounds—

That sinking feeling of uselessness had first made itself known to him. As a hero, he was able to turn the tide of battle with a single sword. During that sunset, he couldn’t even help in any shape or form. He had feared the worst, either Twilight dying or getting corrupted. Maybe possessed.

Even Red cried. Even Green couldn’t stop the infighting. Before Wild’s increasing temper, he was forced to split into the Colors to snap the former out of it.

With all the arguments and quarrels between him and the others as they traverse this place, it’s hard to say that the memory of splitting in front of Wild doesn’t feel like yesterday. In retrospect, it all too recently happened again, this time without Four realizing.

However, remembering the times he spent as the Colors, getting to know and understand the other four with him even further, even learning new things about them…

It’s been a blast.

They taught him to understand others, to be present, to speak his thoughts and work as a team.

Now, it is time for him to repay the favor.

Now, it is time to show them what he is made of.

“I hope they miss me,” the smithy smirks, “because Four is back.”

The colors of the world projected by his now returned memory drain and fade away, a dim and dark hall in its place. The sounds of conflict die down as a new figure enters into the fray. Silence rings across the chamber once filled with sounds of clashing and shouting. The stale, heavy air making it harder to breathe lightens up by just a smidge as Four returns to the present.

As the world reaches equilibrium, so does his mind and heart. In Vio’s position is a boy whose tunic is divided into four colors, corresponding to each of his traits. Everything stops at once, as if time halted.

Four is almost radiant, a gentle light emanating from him. He raises both his hands above his head, in a gripping position, and throws them down, familiar dual blades forming from the luminescence. The action bursts and scatters the light, as if saying that its master is back and more powerful than ever. He brings the blades close to each other and they combine into one, a single sword now held in both hands.

“This ends now,” he declares.

“Wild, focus on parrying and redirecting the glass! Hyrule, stay behind and try to prevent Wind and Legend from getting hurt! I have a plan!” Four shouts.

Immediately, Four charges forward, swiftly changing directions and parrying the glass in his way. The clattering sound of sword and glass colliding echoes across the chamber as he inches closer and closer to his target. His opponent right in front of him, he jumps and slashes his sword in a downward arc, but is blocked by a large glass wall. Sent back with great force, he plunges his weapon into the ground to slow down his momentum.

“Guess I’ll have to be smart about this! Wild, can you keep up with the glass?” he asks.

“If Hyrule is here, then absolutely!” Wild replies.

“Fortunately for you, he’s right behind me!” Four states, looking at a determined Hyrule behind him. Wordlessly, the boy in green calls upon the scattered shards on the floor, said glass swiftly zipping towards him. Imbuing them with his magic, he binds the summoned fragments together into a makeshift shield. The barrier would not hold up for long, that he knows, but it will buy him sufficient time to get Wild out of his highly dangerous situation.

The banners that he swung on as Green remain present and unscathed, still swaying ever-so-gently from the forces produced during combat. His intent back then was to ease traversal, but only now as Four does he realize that the banners have much potential. He swings his sword like a whip, aimed at said banners. The quickly reforges itself into what seems to be Blue’s whip in response to his motion, tightly wrapping around and grappling one of the fluttering banners.

Four tightly grips the whip’s hilt and wills it to shift back into a sword, only that it would be reforged at the tip of the lash. In theory, it should work like a hookshot he assumes. Given that this is conjecture however, he can only hope that his control over the Arcaea is refined enough for this to even happen. He can only hope that his mysterious ability can work according to plan, and that his sword would not appear directly in front of him. Really, he’s not expecting for this to work considering his limited knowledge and near-baseless guessing.

As soon as a tugging feeling suddenly encompasses his entire body, he smirks in realization. His figure is now being dragged in midair by some invisible force, zooming above and across the entire battlefield. He is pulled with such speed that his hair whips against his face and his eyes are tightly shut from the wind.

All motion suddenly comes to a halt, and so does he. His whip is now a sword, acting like a hook for him. A sigh of relief escapes him, the thrill of pseudo-hookshotting too much for his recently reformed self. He strongly grips the banner as if holding onto a vine, looking at the battlefield. Defeating Tairitsu or whatever she is right now would require some level of unpredictability to counter her steady stream glass and tricky chains. However, his weapon switching does open many gateways to different courses of actions, therefore…

“Looks like I’m going to have to be generous with the usage of my ability!”

Four pulls the sword out of the banner and begins to swing on it. Soon, he lets go and splits his sword into dual blades. He crosses his arms and said dual blades contort into chakrams, much to his surprise. So this was Vio’s weapon… Well, that’s actually not too surprising considering his more strategic personality and logical tendencies.

With an unnatural proficiency that can only be considered as a gift from Arcaea itself, he throws the chakrams towards his target, said weapons slicing through glass and chains like a wild yet refined dance. He focuses his energy on the chakrams, tapping into its structure and guiding it on a precise and clean path.

The weapons manage to land two cuts on ‘Tairitsu’s’ arm, drawing blood. So even when unconscious and controlled, she can still sense pain…

Well, that’s all the more reason to fulfill her request.

The homing blades return to their master as he gracefully lands. Looking for a moment at the chakrams, he quickly cycles through his weapon’s forms before making a pleasing revelation. Turns out listening to pleading shouts of desperation while split and knocked out had its uses.

Quickly snapping out of his reverie upon hearing a pained grunt come from one of his friends, Four tosses a dual blade to Wild and quickly runs over to Hyrule. All the while, the smithy does not notice a chain snaking around his calf. He immediately trips once said chains are tightened, but a spark lights up inside his head.

A sudden brilliance makes itself known to him. For a moment, he looks at the chain and back at his foe. He slices the winding chain around his leg and proceeds to grab it with both hands while standing up.

“You’re not getting me this time!” he shouts.

Four yanks the chain with all his strength, causing it to tremble with the force and appearance of a wave. The other side shows weakness for a moment, but strength returns to the other and she pulls even harder. Now, both sides are engaged in a tug of war.

Hyrule rushes to Four’s side in a rare moment of respite, the bombardment of glass having stopped for a moment when their enemy was caught off-guard. The former immediately grabs the chain and the two tug in unison. The imbalance of power causes the girl in black to trip and waver, before proceeding to exert even more strength. Four and Hyrule’s boots begin to slide across the ground and make markings from the sheer force of the other side’s tugging.

Hyrule’s eyes suddenly widen and narrow, teeth grinding together.

“She’s using her magic to assist her! Allow me to let go for a bit and use my own!” he says, urgency heard all too well in his voice.

“I can’t! I’ll slip and trip if you let go!” Four replies, increasingly breathless. However, a strong magical presence suddenly assists them like a tailwind. With a familiar flutter of light blue, Wild sprints next to them and joins the pair in their struggle, albeit through the use of magic. The tides begin to turn in their favor as the girl’s previously overwhelming strength is countered by their own combined power.

Without warning though, Four snatches his sword from Wild’s hands and fuses them back into a blade, running at astonishing speeds towards the back of his enemy. Reaching his target, he readies his sword into an upwards piercing position.

“I’m sorry, but you’ve caused all of us enough trouble.”

The attack comes in an instant. The blade pierces through her back and emerges just below her chest like a protruding pillar. To others, this may be a gruesome sight. To the girl in black however, she goes silent for a moment and almost laughs in self-pity, the girl finally able to wrest back control of her own body with the grievous wound. Tairitsu falls on her knees, her gloved hands nostalgically curling around the blade. The chain falls down and the deluge of shards fall and shatter into tiny, glimmering pieces.

“Hah… I’ve caused everyone a lot of trouble,” she quips. Unnerved by the reaction, Four takes a step back.

Ignoring him, Tairitsu continues speaking as if her previous actions weren’t nothing short of unsettling.

“You know, this is like the first time I died. Or rather, the first time ‘she’ died. Maybe second? Third? At this point, I don’t know. Well, let’s just call the death before this the second one. In my second death, a girl cloaked in light with empty eyes had killed me exactly the same way the boy with the colorful tunic did, except that she had done it from the front.”

At the description of her second death, Four flinches.

“You… died multiple times?” he asks.

“Of course,” she answers. As soon as she tries to speak again however, the girl suddenly begins to choke. When the words die down in her throat though, the choking stops.

“Damn it… I can’t even say anything about that…” she mutters darkly, almost seething.

“That?” Four presses on.

“I should’ve seen this coming. Can’t let the heroes learn the truth so easily, right Lighty?” she sardonically remarks.

“Lighty? Why aren’t you answering my questions?” Four inquires, a hint of irritation in his tone. Tairitsu morosely smiles.

“I am quite literally unable to. I’m sure you heard my choking. I tried to tell you about the past of this world, of its origins and truth, but something stopped me.”

“Then how about you tell me about yourself?”

“Haha… It’s just another pathetic sob story in this world of girls damned to a fate of staring forever and ever into the silvery sky, eternally unthinking and eternally happy,” the woman sneers.

“Just tell me. At the very least, I can gather some information that helps me and the others.”

“...Fine. I’ll make this quick as my body is rapidly dissolving from its wounds. The original Tairitsu, not this incomplete soul, woke up in a ruined tower void of memory. She was dogged by shards of only darkness and tragedy, so she swore to collect them all and destroy them. After a while, she had grown confident and entered a foreboding labyrinth of filth and blight, aiming to take it down.

“She tore down the walls, the halls, even the towers and stairs until she reached the top. There, she found an anomalous shard of glass that forever changed her for the worse. Realizing that everything was pointless, that her efforts were futile and this world lacked meaning, she fell into despair and wanted to lash out by killing the first person in sight. Some time passed, and even the concept of emotion became foreign. That is, until she met a girl cloaked in light.

“They recounted their pasts, sympathizing with each other, but yet another anomalous shard showed Tairitsu a future where she would die at the hands of the girl in white. Naturally, she had attacked the other with no hint of empathy and the two had a battle so great that it tore both earth and sky.

“That… that had ended with Tairitsu dying by the sword. Her soul was fractured into many pieces from this, and I am one of them. And how I got a body is a mystery even to me, but I can sense that it’s similar to the body Tairitsu had. I—” the girl in black heaves up blood and it splatters on the floor. She supports herself with a hand on the floor, the other tightly clutching her chest.

“I guess my time’s already up. Now, it’s your story that matters, unlike this throwaway villain. Unlike me, you’re a good person. You all have the power to see this through. What you did was an act of kindness for me.” Four’s face becomes somber and recalls the sword to his hand. It disappears from within her, leaving a horrific and disfigured hole. Four swings it, ridding it of her blood and vanishes it into shimmering sparks.

“I see. Goodbye, Tairitsu.”

“Goodbye, the five of you.”

The girl’s body glows and disappears into sparks of pure white light. The blood on the floor is burned away, the tiles clean as if none of it was ever spilled. What is left of her is only a tattered turquoise ribbon lying beside a black scrap of cloth.

“So… The Tairitsu I was talking to was just a fragment of the original and had died by the sword of the girl in white… The original’s soul had shattered into many pieces upon dying, this specific one landing here and promptly regaining a physical form… What other revelations can I make today?” Four mutters. He sighs and heads to where Wild and Hyrule are, the pair helping up Wind and Legend.

“Perfect timing,” a voice smirks. Four identifies the voice as Legend’s, and skips over to him.

“I overheard your entire conversation with that girl and was wondering when it would end. I think you now know how it felt like to be me,” the veteran remarks.

“What do you mean ‘felt like to be me’?” Four replies inquiringly. Legend’s heart falls at the question. Four deserves to know the story, but the story is nothing further than thorny vines stained with his blood.

Four, noticing the darkness that has suddenly entered Legend’s expression, says, “Wait, you don’t have to say if you don’t want to—”

“You deserve to know the truth.”

“What?”

“You deserve to know the truth. Back when I was an amnesiac, I ascended a set of ruins to outrun Wild, Wind and Hyrule, trying to harm them multiple times in the process when all they did was simply wanting me to listen to them. Hyrule had my memory shard and I felt terrible things inside it, so I naturally wanted to get as far away from it as possible. At the top, I encountered… her.”

Legend’s voice wavers and his left hand curls into a fist. He brings the fist up and looks at it, his face full of an unspoken pain and guilt that could fill up his lungs and drown him.

“Her name was Kou, and she did nothing wrong. She did nothing wrong, and I killed her,” he continues, the memories rushing back like a deluge rushing from the ocean to inland. “Did I have to? For my survival? For the others’ survival? Was it… necessary?”

The silence causes him to turn his back on everyone, away from where ‘Tairitsu’ used to be.

“It’s done. I killed someone and I can’t change that. Even if we just met, even if I had to take her life because she tried taking ours, it doesn’t change the fact that her circumstances were out of her control; that something had corrupted or possessed her, and I was forced to plunge that glass into her heart. Yet another thing I’ll carry forever.”

Each word of his piles on years of silent guilt, of repressed sorrow and pain like layers of leaves falling away from the crown of a withered maple. Even then—

“Then that makes two,” Wild says. “We’ve got our own baggage to carry until the end, but at least we’re together.”

To each their own, a phrase that has been said too many times. Whether it be to those of different struggles and stories, the fact remains the same; some burdens will both always and never be shared. And though each is privy to their own battle, Four thinks to himself: no, things cannot be hidden anymore. If Legend had told his truth, then Four shall follow suit.

“I know you all want an explanation for the Colors,” he boldly declares. “I won’t hide it anymore: me and the Colors are one and the same, just different parts of my soul made manifest. It’s like putting my truest self on full display, like different sides and perspectives of the , but I don’t hear them talk amongst themselves when I’m whole. The sword I carry around—”

Four summons his glass sword, holding it out for everyone to see, “—the Four Sword— looks like this. That’s where I derived my nickname from. The power of the sword split me into the Colors for more firepower. Red is my more emotional side. Blue is my anger. Vio is my rationality, and Green is my courage and determination.

“Now, for the big question: How did I get split when I entered Arcaea? I have a theory: Since I’ve split a lot, the magic of the Four Sword has left a mark on my soul. Arcaea mistook this as four separate souls and therefore split me into the Colors. How it did I don’t know, but I know that my anomaly shard contains some of the Four Sword’s magic as well since it’s so integral to my memories.”

Four takes a deep breath and calmly exhales, a mix of feelings at letting his closely guarded secret off his chest. He tries not to show it, but his trembling fingers and darting gaze say otherwise.

Would they judge him? Scorn him for this? Jump to conclusions?

All this gets interrupted when a foreign hand rests on his shoulder. Four looks up to see Wild staring back, a serene expression on the latter’s face.

“So that’s how it is… I won’t judge you. We won’t judge you. There are certain parts of us that make us feel a bit uncomfortable showing to others, and I can’t blame you at all. Just… tell us if you need anything. I— If you want to talk to me about something, then I’ll try to listen.”

“Thanks a lot. No more fights for the next while, okay?” Four lightheartedly responds. Suddenly though, Legend cuts in with a prepared remark, interrupting everyone else.

“I’m sorry to interrupt our little heart-to-heart, but I’m getting sick of staying inside. How about we get out of this ancient library for good and get some fresh air? I miss looking at the sky.”

Everyone else nods in unison, murmurs of agreement from them. However, Four turns back and gets on a knee, grabbing a turquoise ribbon and a black scrap of cloth. Returning to the others, the five begin their walk back, making small talk about the recent events and catching up.

Four reaches the grand double door of the library and pushes it with great strength, said doors opening without a hitch. Light floods the library and everyone’s vision, some taking a step back in response.

Soon however, Wind and Wild race into the shining court, eager to get out of the library. The former throws up his hands in celebration, jumping around with light and free steps. The champion’s reaction isn’t as energetic, but a pleased grin does make its way onto his lips.

As for Four himself, he walks out slowly and takes in the view of the world before him. Arcaea… It’s beautiful. It’s white. It’s sprawling and mysterious. The sky is luminous and ethereal, white at the base and dark blue at the top with stars. The land is filled with many pale ruins and natural wonders, along with stray glass floating around and occasionally jagged, crystal-like formations sticking out of the ground.

Distracted by Arcaea’s pearl landscape, Four forgets the second reason why he wanted to leave the archive of memories. However, upon feeling a soft and silky thing in his clenched fist, he remembers that reason and holds out that hand as if offering something.

Both things are swept away by the wind and into the vast skies above, fading into light as if saying goodbye. The smithy looks at his now empty hand and puts it away, looking forward with a new determination.

He will fight until the very end and play a part in their story.

This is a promise.

Chapter Text

A solemn, radiant landscape. An isolated, serene prairie with undulating hills and weathered stone paths. Silence surrounds it, yet is filled by the solace of the landscape. Amidst all of it, a boy wanders without any reason, but he doesn’t pay mind to that.

For so long, he has walked through a perfect world, finding things and admiring them. For so long he's traveled, shepherding glass that the sky has become a light-refracting ‘mirror’ as far as he can see, and shaped almost geodesically.

He gazes at the gleaming canopy above. As they’ve come together, they’ve grown more vibrant. He smiles, satisfied, before he wanders on again. And, as ever, heedless of all consequence.

Consequence…

What an interesting word.

His mind skips onto it as he continues admiring the radiant, almost transcendent light of the sky and realm. He had never thought of what would happen if he collected these glass shards, but seeing as it hasn’t hurt him at all and has only been good to him…

“I don’t think it’s harmful in any way. It’s beautiful and just that. It doesn’t need to be complicated.”

He tears away his gaze from the mirror of glass, strolling away with light and carefree steps. The landscape of endless warmth and picturesque beauty tears his mind away from that sobering, unsettling thought, embracing him like an airy blanket. Without thought for anything aside from joy and beauty, he twirls and hops across the grassy hills, scooping up glittering glass with his hand all the while.

However, his carefree romp across the prairie gets interrupted as he trips on something. Childishly frowning, the boy turns behind him to find the culprit. He sees something white on the ground. As he heads closer, he realizes it isn’t a something.

It’s a someone.

A girl with hair as white as her clothes lays on the ground motionless in a peaceful sleep. However, the boy’s face hovering above her seems to rouse her from her slumber. The girl’s blue eyes crack open and she rubs her eyelids with her wrist, seemingly undisturbed by the stranger beside her.

A big, bright smile makes its way onto her lips as she gets up, taking in the ethereal world surrounding her. Finally taking notice of the boy’s presence, her eyes begin to glimmer at her potential friend.

“You… You have really nice ears!” she giggles, the boy a bit flustered in response. “They’re so pointy, unlike my rounded ones,” she comments as she feels her own ears.

“My ears? They’re pointy?” he asks, trailing his thumb and index finger along its outline. Sure enough, they come together in a triangular path, the boy’s eyes lighting up from wonder and simple amusement.

“I guess that’s strange,” he comments, “but not as strange as your white hair!”

“It’s… white?” she wonders aloud. She grabs a fistful of her curly hair and laughs upon seeing it. “Wait, it is! I think we’re equally weird, so you can’t just throw offhand comments on how I look.”

“Yeah, you’re right. By the way, what’s your name?”

“Name? I… I can’t— No, I don’t know.”

“You too?”

“I guess so. I can’t remember a single thing. How about you?”

“Me neither. All I remember is waking up in this bright world and wandering around.”

“Speaking about this world, what is up with these butterflies?” she asks with childlike wonder, pointing at the fluttering shards above them.

“They’re not butterflies, they’re glass. They’re memories,” he answers. “I’ve decided to collect them while I just travel the land, but it’s getting a bit lonely with only me and the glass.”

“Then… Then how about we travel together?” the girl replies, innocence and excitement glittering like a sparkling concoction in her eyes.

Something unrecognizable flares up in his heart. Is this… is this what he thinks this is? He has seen many memories of friendship… but has he ever had a friend up until now? Seeing the people within memories so happy with their friends and family had always sparked a certain jealousy and yearning within him.

The answer to her request rolls smoothly off his tongue, accompanied by a sincere smile not from the light of glass.

“Sure. Let’s travel together.”

As if in celebration of a new friendship, shimmering glass comes around them like birds. He lets them weave through his fingers and passes one to the girl, soon letting them go while genuinely thinking nothing about it.

The girl in white observes the glass curiously, flipping it around and poking at it. Her pupils suddenly shrink, then dilate into a more relaxed state as her eyelids droop. Her arms go limp as she calmly stares into the distance, a peaceful expression on her face.

The boy smiles nostalgically at the sight of his new friend viewing the glass for the first time. “The first time is always a shock, isn’t it?” he remarks.

Noticing the glass hasn’t left them, he tries to shoo the swathes away.

They rise. They fly to join with the memories he’s still been gathering, and he looks at their destination now. It’s grown much brighter since he began his collecting. It seems to grow brighter every day…

How many days has it even been? He winces, and a grimace twists onto his face. He shakes it away.

Maybe he only needs more, then whatever is missing will be found. He calms himself and continues waiting for his companion to break out of her light-filled stupor, not letting it bother him that no matter what, he cannot push the Arcaea following him away.

His reverie is interrupted by her jolting awake, her trance over. The girl begins to excitedly recall what she saw within the glass and he smiles, patient and listening. To him, it is unimportant. What matters now is that she’s here and she’s real, unlike the phantasms of people within the glass.

The two set out towards nowhere, in a journey with no destination nor end goal. What matters is the present, and nothing else.

As he leads the way and wanders towards the next place that catches his fancy, a phrase repeats itself within his heart:

It doesn’t need to be complicated.

Chapter Text

As the ribbon flies away from Four’s hand, he lowers it and lets a small smile slip. He finds himself fondly gazing at the rejoicing heroes, his joyful friends. Without a doubt, he knows they care for him and vice versa. And yet, it feels incomplete. They may be five now, but where are the other four? How are they doing?

The smith frowns as different scenarios and situations flash through his head. Are they in danger? Fully unaware of their past like the others? Have they found company? And if so… did they survive? No, that would be near impossible. Links are known for their refusal to give up and their unkillability. He shakes his head and sighs, fully aware that musings such as these would not do anything. But then… what next? If musings like these are useless, then what should he do in this new world that he knows near to nil about? He looks to the direction in which the ribbon danced away, as if asking for answers. The wind wordlessly tickles his cheek in response. He snorts softly, folding his arms as he begins to rummage through the library that is his memory. Though the section about Arcaea is near to empty, what little information he might be able to scavenge could be crucial.

He grabs every single metaphorical scrap of paper relating to this strange glass world. In the end, five fluttering folios reside in his hand. First: Anything and everything is made of glass, as told to him by Legend. Second: Glass can contain memories and are able to be manipulated to someone’s will. Third: The inhabitants of this world are sparse in number. Fourth: The day is eternal. Fifth: Somewhere out there, the others are wandering, most likely without memory.

Realizing his lack of knowledge, he opts to rectify it by heading up to the resident veteran and giving the other a laundry list of questions, that which he wants answers for all.

“Legend,” Four starts, looking upwards to meet Legend’s eyes. The veteran turns back to see the smithy and gives a strained snort as if trying to hold in laughter.

“Same as ever, huh?” Legend chuckles, letting loose his laughter. Four slightly scowls.

“You are not making fun of my height today.”

“Alright, alright. Relax a little, I’m not as mean as the captain,” the veteran says, raising his hands in a mock-appeasing motion. At that, the smithy gives him a simple, deadpan stare.

“Really? Look, I… You know what? You’re not wrong. Just wipe that tiny smug grin off your face and I’ll tell you what you wanna know,” Legend partially groans. Four simply responds with a small smile of petty victory before firing his list of questions.

“First, what’s up with the glass? Second, is everyone who just wakes up an amnesiac? Third, how big is the world? Fourth, how did you meet the others? Finally, how did we even end up here in the first place?”

“I don’t know, probably, definitely huge, met them in a garden, I have absolutely no idea,” Legend lists, raising a finger for every question answered.

“About how we ended up here, I know,” a new voice adds. Wild approaches the pair, looking to the side with head tilted slightly downwards as if in shame.

“It’s all on me. Do you recall our last night as a group? In the fire, there was a floating glass shard. Out of curiosity, I touched it and it transported us all here.” Four places a hand on the champion’s shoulder, sensing that Wild’s mood has been dampened considerably upon disclosing the information.

“I would’ve done that as well. Don’t focus on that, but focus on our next move. Now is what matters.” Wild’s eyes shine with a shimmer of renewed determination, his inner conflict washed away.

“You’re right. I can’t just keep moping like this. Everyone, over here! We have to plan our next move!” Hyrule and Wind immediately turn their heads at Wild’s voice, soon heading over to where everyone else is.

“Alright everyone,” the champion begins. “Now that we’ve gotten Four back, what do we do and where do we go? Any ideas?”

“I mean, we could backtrack and re-explore the entire area for the third time, but well…” Hyrule replies, contemplative.

“Is that really our only option?” asks Wind. “I don’t exactly want to walk across an entire field again just to go on another elevator, into a garden, out of the garden and into the ruins.”

“Good point. Everyone, let’s review our equipment and abilities for a moment. What do we have that we can use to make travel more efficient?” Four inquires to the others.

“I’ll start,” Wild says. “I have my slate, which I store food and water in. Strangely though, I haven’t felt the need to eat or drink ever since I woke up, although it does give me a small boost in energy.” At Wild’s comment, Legend and Hyrule frown.

“You’re not wrong. I never felt a lick of hunger or thirst even after that big battle,” the former remarks.

“My energy just seems to recover by itself,” Hyrule adds. Four’s face scrunches up in confusion for a few moments, but then changes to a more concerned expression upon the realization that he too, hasn’t experienced any sort of physiological need.

“Another mystery in this world of mysteries…” the smith trails off.

“Alright guys, since everyone knows Wild has a sword and a paraglider that he misuses,” Wind interrupts, side-eyeing a smirking Wild, “Then I’ll just tell you what I know. I can summon a gust of wind to blow in one direction and I can control its strength. Pretty fitting for the Hero of the Winds, huh? After that, I have this fairy charm which I can use to contact Wild… I could’ve used that charm to call Wild in the library while we were searching for Blue… Now I feel kinda stupid.”

Legend gives a small huff resembling laughter and rests a hand on the younger hero’s shoulder. “Happens to the best of us. I’ve got tons of tools, but sometimes I even forget they exist. Speaking of which— I’ve conveniently got this red piece of glass that might help us. Just a while ago, it was the bane of my existence,” he says with a smug tone, a crimson tinted shard suddenly materializing in his clasped hand.

“And what is that supposed to do?” Four asks with a hint of incredulity.

“A warp shard. You throw it and it warps you somewhere. I’m guessing that it warps you to places that you and your companions have been to as I’ve never even been in this court before.”

“Hold on for a minute,” Hyrule interrupts, as if he just realized something. “Didn’t Lagrange also have a warp shard? She threw it the exact same way you did back at the tower. She probably possesses an anomalous fragment like ours.”

“Didn’t we also see a memory of Lagrange at the tower doing just that?” Wind chips in.

“But if Legend’s warp shard is also his memory shard, then did Lagrange get her memory back?” Wild asks. “If not, then where—”

The champion’s eyes suddenly widen as if in fear. He goes completely silent and a single bead of perspiration trails down from his temple. Wind suddenly gasps as a sudden fear seizes his heart, a terrible feeling trailing up his spine. Legend also seems to go into shock, but his reaction is more subdued than the other two.

“We need to go back to the garden now,” Wild blurts out, the veteran giving a small nod in agreement. “The tug that led me to Hyrule is back and in the direction of the garden.” As Wild begins to hastily walk to the field, Four grabs him by the sleeve.

“We can use Legend’s warp shard. Don’t just act before thinking,” the latter chides. As soon as Four utters these words, a glass shard colored red zips just past his face, suddenly freezing and enlarging. The glass displays the image of what appears to be a garden, hanging vines and foliage shown within it.

“Come on,” Legend urges. “We’ll find our troublemaker through this gateway.”

The five walk through the glass and in an instant, flora greet them. The champion steps ahead, his right arm bent upwards to feel the vines as if strumming a harp. He never thought he would be seeing this place again, much less after taking Legend and Four back from the clutches of memory loss.

That has been quite a while, hasn’t it? And because of that eternal day, he doesn’t even know how long it has been. A day? Two? A week?

A sigh escapes him. In a place like this, his sense of time has been shut down entirely. At least it seems that things haven’t changed in the garden; glass leaves swaying along with the breeze, white light reflected off them.

But something is different. He can feel something is different, and it’s in an unsettling way. Something is very wrong and he doesn’t know what it is.

He feels that tug towards a missing Link but… it’s warped. It’s strange and twisted, like an anomalous shard of darkness. Disturbing, like a sea of black glass taking the form of binding chains. The champion trudges forward and towards the source of the sudden shadowy connection. Brushing a few vines out of the way, he encounters a black figure resting against a pillar.

No, rather someone in black. He has a shade-like appearance, eyes shut while sleeping, brown furrowed and in visible distress. The person’s lips are frowned and his face a deep scowl. Could he be experiencing a nightmare?

The champion slowly approaches the figure, steps soft and silent, to try and wake him up. Without warning however, the figure’s eyes flutter open, dark as night. Those eyes seem… empty. They seem dead, dull and dark. A gnawing, dropping feeling claws away within Wild’s stomach and some sort of fear, terror, epiphanic horror wraps around his heart like vines and starts to tighten. The color leaves his cheeks as he goes completely still, like a person frozen in time. A million different questions strangle his mind, now that his hope for everything to be fine is shattered like a crystal chandelier plummeting towards the ballroom floor.

“No, no, no… How? Why? Sky… what happened?” he mutters in a trembling voice. He should’ve expected this. That strange twinge in the usual connection was a warning sign. The black clothing was a warning flag. The scowl and signs of experiencing a nightmare was a warning gong.

How did that gentle but bright light in his eyes disappear? Why is he in black?

“You… aren’t you Wild?” the man’s voice murmurs.

This is impossible! How was Sky able to recollect his memory without them?

“Yeah? I… I am Wild,” Wild stutters, caught off-guard and flinching.

“How long has it been since we met?” Sky inquires without a hint of curiosity, voice monotone and not even trying to feign interest.

“I… don’t know. My sense of time has been heavily dampered. Also— how did you get your memory back without us?!”

“Don’t you know?” Sky seemingly half-sneers. “An anomalous glass shard that I encountered by myself. It’s really as simple as that… but the truth inside wasn’t. Spit it out. You know what you did,” Sky demands, voice getting more audible as he gets back on his feet.

“What?! What did I do?” the champion says with bewilderment, astounded at his words. Sky’s eyes sharpen into a glare, so menacing and hateful. He frowns and speaks,

“It’s either you haven’t fully collected your memories, or you’re just playing dumb. Quit the act. Tell them what you did.”

What he did? Could it be— no, Sky knows about the kingdom's fall at his hands. The man had never judged him for that, but perhaps it could’ve changed… But if it isn’t that, what could it be?

Carefully, Wild chooses his next words, hoping not for the lack of direct confrontation, because he wants a direct confrontation, but for his own sake. For the sole reason of his own reality not breaking apart even more than it is now.

“What… did I… do? My memories from this era are complete, from my awakening in the Shrine of Resurrection to the moments just before we were transported to Arcaea.”

“Then it seems you are mistaken,” Sky replies derisively.

Mistaken…? He is mistaken? Wild’s anger starts bubbling dangerously like a closed bottle of vigorously shaken soda, soon to explode if a wrong move is made. The little pieces of what rationality he has fades away, replaced with rapidly growing enmity.

“What do you mean, dearest Chosen?” he retorts, irritation seeping into every word. “I also found an anomalous shard that told me the whole truth.” At the mention of that name, Sky’s fist tightly curls and begins to shake. “Don’t you dare use that name. It’s gone and dead.” In a sudden, Legend pushes Wild aside, eager to take matters into his own hands.

“Gone and dead huh, Chosen?” the veteran mocks with a growing antagonism.

“I just SAID—”

“What sort of nonsense are you spewing out, Sky? Cut the crap and tell us what’s going on,” Legend shoots, his own frustration beginning to boil as well.

“Really? You don’t know? All of you have been either absolved of guilt through loss of memory or simply refuse to acknowledge how things really are.”

“So that’s how it is. Playing coy, are we? You’re really making me want to bash sense into your skull,” Legend glowers.

“Likewise—”

“Hold on for a moment!” Four interrupts.

“I have to admit, this situation is also getting on my nerves, but we don’t have to let this escalate into a full-on fight. Sky. Explain clearly what happened. Legend. Don’t let this devolve into a brawl,” the smith elaborates, desperately trying to be the voice of reason within the rapidly escalating situation.

Legend and Sky look at each other, then look at Four.

“Absolutely not,” the veteran replies, emphasizing the ‘t’.

A simple and dry “No.” comes from Sky.

“Mediator now, am I?” Four says under his breath. “Think about it this way; if we solve this with words, poor Hyrule doesn’t need to heal two bloody teenagers and the sole adult on the ground.”

“I might as well make it five at this point,” Sky taunts.

“And you’re gonna be one of them,” Legend taunts back.

Four sucks in a breath, ready to release his own rising temper, but abruptly exhales in silence. It would only serve to snowball the conflict. As much as he hates to admit it, a fight is the only path forward.

“Step aside, Wild,” Legend commands, a threadbare veil hiding his rage. “Someone is going to be severely injured today, and it isn’t me.”

“Are you sure about that, murderer?” Sky sardonically says. Legend freezes in place as if struck by a thunderbolt. All signs of life leave his expression. Only hauntedness and anger are left.

“Now you've done it,” he says, his tone terrifyingly cold and calm.

In a flash, Sky and Legend disappear, followed by the sounds of glass and combat. Behind them, glass follows like butterflies. Both wielder and fragment dart around in a graceful frenzy, shards colliding as swords clang. Practiced motions crash into each other in a battle of dominance to see whose technique and power is superior. All the while, the flocks of fragments behind them engage in a tumultuous, shimmering battle of their own. Occasionally, white flames sear away at glass that skids all-too-close to the combat in blue.

To the battle’s observers, it is madness. To the combatants themselves, it is steady and ready. From the sidelines, three watch what appear to be an untamed, frenetic mess of glittering combat. The wild, uncontrolled flocks of glass do not discriminate; they fly around like shooed off birds and nearly graze skin at times. Four parries with his dual blades, swinging in wide but precise arcs to deflect the most shards at a time. Hyrule creates a patchwork barrier from fallen glass, holding the line as Wind blasts them away with torrents of air.

“I have to join those two,” Four urges as his sword smashes into sparkling shards. “I can’t just stay here and watch the problem get worse!”

“But Four!” Wind protests. “It’s wrong! We can’t just hurt Sky! He’s still my friend, our friend!”

“I know that. But right now, he’s out of his mind. He’s lost it, and I need to stop him.”

“I’m not coming with you!”

“That’s fine. You should be staying behind. This isn’t your fight.”

“Not my fight? I don’t wanna fight, but that doesn’t mean it has nothing to do with me!”

“Then stay behind or fight! There’s no other option!”

Four quickly runs off, parrying every single improvised bullet with a swing of his singular sword. It soon changes to a glass whip that snags bundles of glass together and tosses them aside. Quickly joining the fray, Four disappears into the sea of shimmering shards. Within the circling deluge of glass, he and Wild give each other a nod of understanding as they stand back to back. Fire manages to burn through the curtain of shining shrapnel, a figure clothed in red emerging from it. Legend warily looks around, arm suddenly thrown to the side with fire coating it as a fragment just barely stabs his hip. It disappears like all the others and he breathes a momentary sigh of relief. However, a shadow suddenly tackles and pins Legend to the ground. The tip of an umbrella is raised above the veteran’s head, ready to plunge into his skull.

“NO!!”

Wild and Four restrain Sky by the arms, Legend taking the chance to get up and dash away. However, a single glass falls down to the ground with sharp end downwards as soon as Legend breaks free. A crew of glass similarly fall like a drizzle of rain, and soon the circular tornado of Arcaea has been lifted into the sky like clouds. Legend's eyes widen in terrified realization, and fire surges in the palm of his hand.

What comes up has to come down.

Glass cascades like a waterfall, like a glacier on everyone. Four and Wild quickly release Sky to focus on the threat descending from the heavens. Wild sheaths his sword and exerts his will over the Arcaea against him, gathering them in swathes and sending them away. Four returns to using his dual blades of glass, slices like a rainbow to prevent any lucky shards from reaching his torso and head. The veteran continuously summons his fire, flames engulfing the trio like a protective ring. However, Legend’s posture slowly turns into a tired slouch, that which Four doesn’t miss.

“We can’t just hold our ground!” Four shouts. “There’s too little space to dodge!”

“I know!” Wild shouts back. “Do you have a plan in mind?!”

“Hyrule!” Legend shouts.

Four and Wild look confused for a few moments, but realization dawns on them when a protective covering crafted from the glass is thrown to the ground.

“Make a break for it!” Hyrule instructs. “We need to head to the ruins up ahead! I’ll keep up with you guys!”

The five regroup under Hyrule’s barrier, Wild and Legend offering their support. Together, they sprint towards the path that leads to the crumbled ruins, but stop as soon as black suddenly appears in front of them.

“Not so fast.”

Sky descends to the ground with what appears to be disjointed wings of glass, shimmering skylight bouncing off and refracting.

“Damn!” Legend curses. “This must be Arcaea’s little present for him.”

“If by little present you mean everyone’s weird abilities connected to their past in some way, then definitely!” Four replies with equal alarm. Suddenly though, fire that doesn’t burn tickles the back of Four's neck. A crackle that can be described as shattered glass burning rings behind his nape, the crackling coming to an abrupt halt in seconds. Recognizing its source, Four’s head turns to Legend, the latter’s knuckles as pale as his fire and his left eye wildly twitching.

“You could’ve chosen to hurt me,” Legend starts. “You could’ve chosen to hurt Wild,” he continues, fury bubbling from a simmer. “But you chose to hurt someone who didn’t even agree to this.” The effervescence of his anger is dangerously close to a steam explosion, like a sealed metal kettle of boiling water left under the sun.

“You bastard. Those last shreds of trust I had in you, that you wouldn’t stoop this low? They’re gone now.”

“Mutually assured,” Sky replies, nonchalant and aloof.

“Wait!” Four pleads to Legend. “Don’t just charge in blindly.”

“But he nearly killed you!” the veteran protests with indignation.

“You don’t have to take revenge on my behalf then! If you charge in blindly, this could be a trap he set up to play with your emotions and rash anger. Breathe in. Think of a way to bypass him and get to a clearing.”

Hearing their conversation, Sky scoffs. “Are you finished with your motherly scolding, Four?”

Four’s eyes narrow and his face goes red.

“On the count of three Legend, we charge him. One, two, GO!”

Legend and Four rush straight ahead for Sky, a sharp shard in Legend’s hand and chakrams in Four’s. The chakrams fly in interweaving rounds alongside Legend, embers and wisps latching on and engulfing every single fragment nearby in a blaze. The veteran swings his fiery shard at Sky, who steps to the side to dodge. At the same time, the burning barrage bolts towards the man in black. A stray fragment shallowly slices Sky’s cheek, him cupping his cheek momentarily before releasing and growling. In a blind attack uncharacteristic of the man’s previous maneuvers, he haphazardly swings his umbrella like a bat and swats away the rest of the flock that target him. He puts a leg behind and leans forward to swing at the head of his enemies. When that doesn’t work, he side hops to avoid Legend’s incoming strike and Four’s chakram ambush, the latter grazing his skin.

Sky resummons his disjointed wings of glass and leaps into the air, lifting his heavy umbrella into the air and dismissing his glass construct. Gravity pulls him down and the weapon comes down like a hammer to sword, wind veiling him plummet into the ground.

Legend manages to jump a great distance to the back. Four is not as lucky. The impact fractures and dents the earth, the smith’s foot caught at the center of the groundward slam in a direct collision course with the black umbrella. A nasty cracking sound comes, and Four screams. Legend looks back and gasps at the smith’s mangled foot. The veteran’s head snaps towards Sky, a manic and murderous look in his twitching eyes.

“I’ll make sure you never forget this.”

With a completely neutral expression and seemingly calm gait, he walks towards Sky. Sky approaches similarly, umbrella dragging behind him. In a flash, the two seem to disappear into colored blurs. Clangs resound from across the battlefield as the two duel each other with the speed of a squall, fire and glass frolicking around the pair’s frenzied dance. Weapons and wills clash, accompanied by frenetic sprinting and hopping.

Outside the range of their ferocious waltz, the champion quickly rushes over to Four and gets on a knee, slinging the latter’s arm over his shoulder. He quickly rushes back to Wind and Hyrule, racing towards the fallen ruins and through a sea of trees. Skidding to a halt near a pillar, Wild rests the smith’s weakening body against it. Hyrule approaches him with hands veiled with magic, a refreshing and calming sensation flowing towards Four’s right foot. However, an uncomfortable feeling begins to manifest as cracking sounds come from his broken foot. The visceral sensation of Four's bones rapidly repairing catches him off-guard, him tightly clenching the nearby debris for support. Thankfully, his leg is repaired in a minute and that awful feeling is finally gone. However, Four notices Hyrule’s tired expression and realizes that healing his foot must have drained him quite a bit.

“Hyrule, you have to rest,” the smith advises as he gets up, testing every joint of his newly repaired foot.

“You should be the one doing that,” Hyrule retorts.

“I’ll be fine. I promise.” Hyrule reluctantly lets it slide as a whip manifests in Four’s left hand.

“I swear, it’s as if everyone refuses to sit down and rest for even five minutes…” he mutters in exasperation. That exasperation quickly turns into fear as he catches onto footsteps emerging from the path leading back into the garden. Wild and Wind seem to pick up on it as well, the champion quickly going into a fighting position.

The man in black declares with an expression that can only be described as sinister indifference,

“Legend is finished.”

Sky raises his umbrella for the three to view, crimson splattered across its ridges and plains. A sword is soon unsheathed with the intent to kill. Wild brandishes the cold steel and goes into an offensive stance. He snarls before summoning a flurry of glass to turn his opponent into a pincushion. Two razor sharp ‘clouds’ rush at each other, the illusion of lightning created as light repeatedly bounces between the mirror glass. Their small domain of pandemonium expands into a near impenetrable cupola of violence and beauty, dark and light clashing within.

However, it soon comes crashing down into a churning mass of glass as both realize they cannot hold their ground. The shifting, scintillating sea crashes against itself in a way that can be described as both ugly and beautiful, muddling into a soothing gray. Wild and Sky glare at each other, a blaze burning in their hearts. Their faces are covered in blood and so are their clothes. In particular, a pond of red stains Sky’s vest, extending all the way to its end like a trickle of rainwater down the window. The man in black spits out blood and coughs, holding onto his umbrella as support for dear life. Wild simply watches out of spite, blood coloring a sixth of his sword from the tip.

“Four!” the champion forces out, suddenly panting and heaving. “Do the thing with your whip!”

Without delay, Four blitzes over to a weakened Sky with his whip, extending its reach to wrap around the latter’s body like a rope. Wild takes a huge breath, breathing in and out like his life depends on it. However, a strange feeling in his back causes his eyes to become saucer-like and jaw to go slack. The champion begins to stagger and soon falls forward onto a knee, hand desperately trying to clutch the origin of the feeling. His hand catches smooth glass protruding like a stalagmite, and he screams. The sound of maniacal laughter undergoing a rapid crescendo reaches his ears, and Wild realizes that Sky can command glass without movement.

He tries to get up, but begins staggering. His vision begins to blur and Four’s shouting becomes incomprehensible. Wild tries to return his breathing to normal, but every breath he takes only serves to make his inhales turn into wheezes. Blood rushes through his ears and his head, everything suddenly heightened and dulled at once. Warmth spreads all over his back, and Wild’s world soon turns into a blanket of black.

The tinkling of glass reaches his ears, twitching in response to their ethereal chimes. His head pounds, his muscles are sore and something warm drips down his nose, mouth and forehead. Then, it all comes back to him. Legend snaps awake, head previously resting on a pillar. He gingerly puts a hand onto the back of his skull, and finds that his palm is now covered in a thin layer of blood. He must’ve had a concussion, but how?

Wait… He was fighting with Sky in a frenzy, trading attacks and setting glass ablaze. However, the last thing he felt was blunt force and an exploding pain in his head after a few moments. After that, he couldn’t remember anything. How long has he passed out for? Is everyone fine?

Hold on, is everyone fine?!

Immediately, Legend gets up and wisps begin to trail from his fingers as he sprints towards the sound of fighting. When the sounds of fighting suddenly die down however, fear seizes him and he begins to run even faster. As glass foliage disappear from his sight, the sight of Wild on a knee greets him. A glint coming from the champion’s back catches his eye and the veteran immediately redirects his course to Wild. Legend panics and holds out his hands to burn away the bloodied fragment in his friend’s back, praying for some miracle that would let his fire heal the wound or at least cauterize it.

“Wild, gosh that’s terrible…” he fearfully mutters, his voice taking a more airy and panicked tone. The sound of bombardment rings out from before him and Legend sees a previously bound Sky escape from his captor’s whip, fracturing ground in the process. The man in black picks up his weapon and heads to the pair, his usual icy indifference replaced by a psychotic smirk.

At this, Legend’s heart beats even faster, like a river rapid or an avalanche. He recognizes this awful emotion enveloping him, one that emerges when his only hope for survival has been smothered out. The exact same feeling as the time Wind nearly died in the water ruins. His heart recognizes this and so does his mind. His entire being understands, this harrowing feeling spreading throughout every single vein in his body.

Once again, he prays for a miracle to happen. For a miracle that will save not only him, but everyone else as well. He wishes with his entire heart for that healing fire, for a chance to protect and live. He pushes his hands forward, to heal that vile wound tormenting the champion, concentrating all of his magic into his fingers to permeate into Wild’s flesh.

His will grows and grows, the bright white flames recognizing his desires. For a moment, the fires offer their complete power and flesh begins to heal, searing closed within moments. The red staining the light blue also vanishes, leaving a pure color identical to before the wound. Legend breathes a sigh of relief now that Wild isn’t actively bleeding out. However, his ears twitch at the sound of wind accompanying a falling object, and his hands catch a dark column just before a second concussion is administered to him. Legend struggles to get up, knees on the verge of buckling as he attempts to lift himself on his feet again, but he keeps on pushing through. He will not let Wild and the others be hurt again.

The veteran keeps straining and grunting, eventually able to stand. Then, he shifts all his body weight downwards, causing Sky to lose his grip on the umbrella and Legend to wield it. He swings it around like a sword, but staggers under its weight for a bit before getting into a proper stance.

“Taste of— your own— MEDICINE!” the veteran snarls, ferocity burning in his eyes like an oiled fire.

“I don’t need my umbrella to bring you down,” Sky taunts back, an frosty type of murderousness in his eyes. His disjointed wings of glass reappear behind his back, Sky leaping into the air before summoning a storm of glass needles. They twinkle with the promise of pain and pressure, sparkling almost as if mocking. The glass barrels down without order, without command, simply flying wherever and whenever. Pale fire comes to burn the fragments away, to make them vanish from space, but the glass only keeps coming. The constant bombardment causes the fire to slowly retreat and die down, overpowered by the storm of shards.

From the fallen glass, a barrier is constructed to defend against the continuous onslaught, but snaking cracks sprout from the protective canopy’s inside, and it eventually falls down and shatters. Soon, real gales enter the fray, diverting and redirecting these improvised bullets, either blasting a flock of them away at once or gathering them in a twister and throwing them away. The attacks of both sides begin to die down, the glass lowering in number while the squalls, flames and barriers decrease in effectiveness. It is only a matter of time before someone loses their ground. It is only a matter of time before one side falls to exhaustion. The first one to fall is—

Sky sloppily returns to the surface, crashing as his magic reserves force his wings to disappear. However, he forces himself up and takes a single piece of obsidian glass that was floating in his proximity. He eyes Legend, who glares back at him. He spots Four pushing the veteran out of the way and taking his place, a familiar sword in hand.

The two simply stare and in mutual understanding, charge at each other with arms outstretched. Then, Sky’s hand becomes warmed all of a sudden. A strangled scream, and he realizes that his hand is covered in blood. It isn’t Four’s.

A wash of lemon colored hair before him catches his attention, and his eyes widen in realization.

“Wind..?” Sky whispers. Weakly, Wind cranes up his head, eyes lightless with an expression of pure desperation and terror.

“You guys… stop fighting. We’re supposed to be family…”

In shock, Sky lets go of the glass and withdraws his bloodied arm. A quarter of his sleeve has been covered in red. He looks up to Four’s face for the latter's reaction, and sees that the smith’s eyes are completely blank and horrified. However, Four isn’t gazing at Sky’s arm. Rather, the smith is staring at his own sword. Putting two and two together, the latter’s world begins to shift and spasm. Everything suddenly becomes incomprehensible as a sudden shriek rings out. The last thing Sky can feel is a sudden thump to the ground, and black greets him once again.*

Chapter Text

This is just another of his dreams. This is simply another nightmare. He has been plagued by ceaseless nightmares that defile even the smallest glimpse of a future, so it shouldn’t bother him. This isn't real. This is simply another mockery of fate, another situation where the world kicks him in the face again. It’s not even worth his attention.

For some reason, this world has enjoyed his torment. Making him see these visions of those who once were and stripping away their lives… Making him take someone’s place in a memory and witness atrocities…

This is nothing new.

But if this isn’t even a novelty nor worth his attention, why is his heart suddenly in pain? Why is it that when that mirage of Wind falls down to the ground with a thunk, the imitation of the boy’s blood makes Sky want to follow suit? Why does his mind want to believe that he is real? That all of them are real? Has the isolation finally made him lose it? …Absolutely not. He’s not even going to lie, and admit that he lost it a very long time ago.

But this all circles back to one thing: If this is a mirage, why does he believe that it’s real? Why does the blood that warms his hand feel too revoltingly familiar? Why does the horrified expression that is too terrifying on Wind’s face make him want to pass out?

All these emotions waking up after being dormant for so long, so much stirring inside that black hole where his heart used to be…

It can’t be. It really, really cannot be.

No. This isn’t real.

Nothing is clear anymore. What is real and what isn’t has blurred so much that they have melded into a muddled squiggle of colors. Unable to discern truth and falsehood anymore—

No, more accurately, unable to accept the truth behind a pretense of his own making that is viewing a memory, his consciousness fades.

Blurry. Everything is blurry. A spike of pain, then overwhelming dull, searing agony. Choked breaths. A plea to stop. Wind tries to take a breath to steady himself, but falls over while doing so. A strangled gasp comes from him as his body meets the stone path, pain flaring up from his core. His heart begins to beat so fast that even his fingernails can feel the thump. The mixture of pain, terrifying fear and queasiness sloshes together within him like an ocean stained with oil, everything overwhelming him at once.

He can hear shouting. He can hear gasping. He can hear panicking and voices telling him to stay with them. He tries to reach his hand out to them, to try and ease their terror, but his sense of touch feels faded and indistinct. Suddenly, even more scorching agony runs through his body, radiating from his backside and torso as he lays on his side. A scream looses itself from his throat and his face becomes wet. Wind tries to grit his teeth and push on, to stay with everyone, but the ever-present pain refuses to leave. Warmth bursts from the places he got stabbed, a feeling of stitching and assimilation in his torso and a sense like time rewinding on his flesh from his back.

The heat under his skin begins to boil uncomfortably, but ends within moments. Coolness flows like a liquid balm through his veins, and Wind retains his grip on his consciousness.

“Stay strong Wind,” a gentle but firm voice pleads. That must belong to Hyrule.

Wind tries to nod his head, coughing and choking when he makes the gesture. Suddenly, a pair of hands support his back as he continues wheezing, sitting him up. His collarbone begins to ache and he squeezes his eyelids shut to deal with the pain. His lungs hurt from all his coughing and hacking, the pain growing even more as the wheezes come.

“C’mon, C’MON! You stupid fire, why can’t you heal him more?!” a voice angrily shouts.

“It doesn’t work like that!” another voice responds. “Magic like that can only heal external and flesh injuries, not conditions and illness. Most likely, Wind’s own body is at its limit as so much of his energy has been used up.”

“Then what can we do for him?! I can’t just let the kid lie down and suffer!”

“Just support his head with something and check his breathing.”

“Well clearly he isn’t breathing well!”

“But it does seem like he isn’t choking on anything except air. Well, I think he just needs rest. A lot of it. The healing may have done most of the work, but I’m not sure if everything has been comple..te…ly…”

Wind’s vision soon grows blurry. Then, a blanket of pure black slips over his mind. Just like that, two more people lose consciousness. Legend and Four look at each other with a sigh, and begin dragging the unconscious people littering the field, except for Wind (the two have agreed to carry him), to a safer location. Said location is more like the path leading to a new area, located beyond the tower’s ruins.

Behind crumbled masonry and fallen pillars, the way to an almost mirror-like body of water dotted with orange flowers reveals itself. At the end of the body of water, a sharp plunge resides, the water overflowing and disappearing past it. Arched columns of glass that float without rhyme nor reason encircle the plunge, beyond the drop a hill and the pale ruins atop it. Some parts of these peculiar structures hang far from the edge, supported by nothing as their columns and crumbled bits stay still in ceaseless stasis. As for the hill itself, unsaturated shades of purple and blue color its many faces, a path to a ruin snaking through to the top. And as always, the ever-present pastel and white sky fading to blue watches over the silent remnants of what once was, the numerous stars dotting its canvas shimmering in remembrance.

For a moment, Four’s eyes shimmer in awe as he walks while carrying Wind. Is this really the outside world? Arcaea… What mysteries does it hold? What other inexplicable splendors does it contain? How does this world work? Why are things this way?

He sets down Wind’s body on the banks of the mirror-like water and reaches his hand out, almost trying to hold the stars in his palm. He notices a lone orange flower floating atop the still water’s surface and scoops it up, observing it for a while before blowing it away. He watches as the vivid bloom crumbles into dust, spreading out like dandelion seeds. Entranced by the unique properties of the world, he steps into the water to see what it does. He bends down to cup water in his hands. When it does nothing, he scowls slightly and tosses it away. The water freezes in place and seems to crystallize while reflecting gleaming light, showing distant places or nothing at all. That shimmer in Four’s eyes return, an endless inquisitive feeling like a waterfall flowing back with full force into his mind. He has to know. He has to know how everything works, what makes this world tick, its rhyme and reason— No, lack of rhyme and reason. He needs to—

“Don’t get overexcited, smith.”

Four turns back and notices Legend with a slightly sour expression.

“While you were messing around, I was busy lugging over everyone, and yes, that includes Sky. I didn’t expect him to be THAT heavy.”

The smith scoffs. “Use your eyes, vet. He’s obviously taller than you.”

“Not again…” Legend grumbles. “Why is my snarking rubbing off on everyone?”

“Coping mechanism for all the unfortunate things that have happened to us throughout this less-than-pleasant new world field trip?”

“...Yeah. That hit too close to home. Anyways, if you don’t help me prop Wind up against that rock,” Legend states, pointing to a nearby rock jutting upright, “You owe me a favor.”

“I owe you nothing, and it’ll stay that way.”

The two continue hauling over everyone else towards the ‘riverbank’, resting Wild, Wind and Hyrule on the east and Sky on the west. Who knows what would happen if that landmine of a man were to wake up next to the trio? Four huffs for a bit, but his head suddenly turns in the direction of the man in black when an azure glint flits across the corner of his vision. Out of curiosity, he approaches the unconscious Sky and plops down onto the white sand next to the latter. This is the first time he’s seen the other up close and needless to say, it is disturbing. The Chosen’s bright colors have disappeared for whatever reason, replaced with black and the occasional turquoise. A capelet hangs from his shoulder, covering a dark blue vest with a white shirt underneath. However, one thing has remained the same: a brilliant blue brooch residing at the center of his chest. This time however, it’s suspended by a black cord like a necklace.

But… Why? If everything about Sky has changed, then why does that brooch still remain?

From what he knows, everyone has returned to normal after regaining their memory. If Sky had really regained his memories and spiraled into this state…

By Hylia.

What did it cost him?

What atrocity had he witnessed that made him a shell of the kind man he once was?

Better yet…

How long has it been since he lost everything?

Four blinks rapidly for a few moments then gulps. He can only stare at Sky’s look of pure distress, face scrunched up so much that it looks like it would cave in on itself. For a moment, the man’s expression relaxes. Then, he suddenly shrieks. It comes to an abrupt stop and he goes deathly silent, the pallor on his face whiter than the sky above.

Despite this display however, Four’s fixation and musing about the brooch continues. He tries to reach his hand out and grab the shimmering blue diamond, but hesitates and retracts his hand. He can’t take this big of a risk so early. He needs some way to either not wake up Sky or restrain him…

Perhaps he can get Legend to hold the other down. However, Sky is noticeably stronger physically than the both of them. Maybe he can pin the other to the ground with glass… but it wouldn’t hold for long and it’d be back to square one. If only he had chains like Tairitsu’s…

Chains. Bindings. Strings that wrap around.

His whip!

That’s it!

Shards fly before him and melt into a formless substance, clear and scintillating. He molds the glass and bends it to his will, calling more and more fragments until the whip looks more ribbon than weapon. Its length trails along the ground and twists like a stream, that same signature sparkle of the Arcaea still present. Carefully, Four lifts Sky’s upper body and wraps the binding around him, strategically avoiding the azure clasp all the while. As he finishes wrapping Sky’s torso, he contemplates whether to bind the latter’s legs. Wouldn’t that be a bit cruel? However, it may be necessary. But if binding his legs is too much, then how does he prevent potential incidents?

…

There really isn’t a way around this, is there? Other options are… much less favorable.

Four breathes in and sighs.

‘My apologies. I know this is uncomfortable but it’s necessary.’

The glass whip snakes across Sky’s body like thick vines, tied at the center to prevent slips. At the sight, the smith can’t help but feel both pity and sympathy. In the end though, does he really have any other option?

“Legend,” Four calls. “Stay sentry to me in case he wakes up. I need to know why Sky still has the brooch.”

The muffled thumping of footsteps against grainy sand reaches his ears as a burst of red suddenly brushes against him. Legend looks incredulously to Four, who responds with a steadfast look.

“This is frankly a terrible idea,” the veteran doubts.

“I know, but I’m doing it anyway. It may be a red herring for all we know, but I just want my friend back. We have to find a way, no matter what it takes,” Four responds, a grim determination in his voice.

“I may have my doubts,” he starts, “and you too, but we can’t just leave him like this. It’s too… sad. It’s too heartless to just give up on him. Don’t you remember what happened to Twi?”

A severe glint flashes in the veteran’s eyes. “Four. Usually you’re the voice of reason, but right now you’re taking a big risk,” Legend says with a rarely seen seriousness.

“So what? Sky is our friend. He’s our brother in spirit. Without us, things would only get worse.

…If you’re not willing to take the first step, then I will.”

At that, Legend’s expression melts into one of pained reminisce. Clearly, that had struck a chord within him. The hint of sorrow fades into a sad smile, sincere yet hurting. But soon, unhidden pain pours from his voice like a pitcher of water as he speaks.

“You’re right. I was like Sky. I was actively hostile to everyone else, but they refused to give up on me. Seeing you refuse to give up on him makes me also want to move forward. You have hope. And maybe, I’m beginning to hope as well. Four, I… Thanks.”

The smith gives a small and genuine smile of his own.

“I understand. This journey has forced all of us to face an aspect of ourselves that we don’t want others to know. For the better…” Four trails off, head turning in the direction of Sky,

“Or for the worse.”

“But we can change things, right?” the veteran asks, a new glimmer of hope budding in his tone.

Four nods. And yet, the beating heart beneath his skin refuses to slow down. Is this fear? Anticipation? A blend of both?
His fist clenches, but immediately relaxes as he exhales.

He will find a way to get Sky back. He will make sure with his own two hands that this ends exactly how he wants it.

With shaking yet determined hands, Four reaches for the azure clasp. He grabs it and observes it like a predator to prey, eyes glimmering from the sparkle of the brooch. However, a strong hand quickly seizes his arm after breaking free from the whip, strangling it as if it wants the life out of it to be extinguished. In shock, he lets go of the clasp and forcefully pulls away. Behind him, an ember begins to burn as a promise for safety, its soft crackle a warning if anything else is tried. Sky’s hands squeeze the brooch in a death grip while squirming backwards as if in terror, eyes squeezed shut all the while.

“No… You can’t take this— It’s from her…” the man in black sputters, hands protectively curling the brooch. “Get away… Stop chasing me, you phantoms of the past…’’

Four and Legend look at each other, equal amounts of uncertainty reflected in their expressions. Unsure of what to do, the two simply stare as the man’s knuckles continue to pale. The smith can feel his own face pale at the sight, his once friend equal amounts terrible yet tragic. In an attempt to placate Sky, he slowly approaches with hands up and steps silent.

“We won’t take that from you. I promise I won’t. Just calm down and breathe,” he says with noticeable tension and fear, his left hand extending forward to try and ease the other.

Sky screams.

His eyes fling open and dart around unfocused, breaths heaving and in a cold sweat. He cranes his neck up to them with wide and staring eyes, terror swirling within the shrunken void of his irises. For a few seconds, he stares at them like this. Then, his eyelids and shoulders droop like sacks of stones while his lips are stuck together into a perfectly straight and unmoving line.

There it is again. That expression of dark apathy. Of uncaring cruelty and unceasing coldness.

The world suddenly seems to go silent and still. Just three people gazing at each other with uncertainty. Breaking the still water of silence, Legend is the one to speak.

“Sky. We won’t hurt you. Just tell us everything and… we’ll try our best to solve things.”

“…”

Legend huffs a bit before speaking again.

“C’mon. Say something.”

Sky stares back with an expression of pure frigidity, yet beneath the deep layers of ice hides a certain… sorrow? The man gets up, wobbling, and turns to leave, yet a hand catches his arm.

“You’re not going away so easily,” Legend utters with a hint of irritation.

Sky returns that hint of irritation with a glare even colder than a glacier in winter. And like a glacier, a growing vexation akin rocks swept away by the tide accompany it. A warning like a rose’s thorns for what is to come if it were to be trifled with.

“You wanna do this the hard way? Again?” Legend scoffs derisively.

The other man’s eyes narrow.

“Fine. Though I’m not gonna kill you this time, that doesn’t mean I won’t hurt you.”

Something resembling a snarl escapes Sky. The two lock eyes, in each a different flame beginning to ignite. Then for the first time in what feels like a century, Sky speaks.

“Don’t act like you have the high ground. No matter how many times you wash your hands, the blood that stains it will never go away.”

In seconds, a hand grabs Sky’s collar, straining so much that it turns white as snow.

“We’re trying to help you, and you say THIS?! You… You monster,” Legend hisses. “And Four almost convinced me we could save you…”

The man in black lets out a low, mirthless chuckle.

“Yes, I am a monster. What else is new? Haven’t we already established that I’m the unsaveable villain of this story?”

“Damn you…” the veteran curses.

Suddenly, Legend’s steel grip is yanked away and the two are separated. Between them, Four stands as an unmovable, unshakeable wall.

“Usually I consider myself the voice of reason, but you two have a very special way of getting on my nerves. If you two stop fighting and start sulking, nobody has to get hurt again. However, if you refuse to back down… Let’s say I won’t hesitate to use force this time. This is for everyone’s good, so pick wisely.”

Both make eye contact with the smith, who stares back with unwavering resolve. There will be no compromise here.

An eternity passes in five seconds. The shimmer of starlight and shine of the sky watch them, waiting for someone to admit defeat. Then, Legend looks away in defeat, eyes cast to the side and head hung low. Sky lets out a tiny scoff as his eyes trail to the side, head turned slightly to the left as if trying not to see Four.

“Good. I really am going to have to separate you landmines, aren’t I? We need to set ground rules,” Four declares.

“First: If you get confrontational, don’t fight. Use your words and don’t throw accusations. If you do get physical, I will sic Blue on you. Second: Don’t get near each other. I cannot trust either of you to act your age and not beat the other person to a bloody pulp, so stay away. Third: If you want to get very verbal and passionate in your arguments, take it where you two won’t disturb the others. Your fights are loud, obnoxious and counterproductive.”

The smith’s tirade causes the two next to him to look away even further to the side. A dark aura looms in the air like a shadowy mist wisping around them, one more non-compliance meaning a messy, disastrous end to this situation. No one speaks. No one objects. No one complains.

“Good. Now I don’t want to see you—”

“Stop. Just stop, everyone.”

Three heads turn in the direction of the new voice. There, with head hung low and eyes lightless is Wind. On his face is an expression too sorrowful, too dark for anyone his age to ever have. A deep sadness pervades his face, his eyelids downturned and eyes filled with pain. It’s terrifying. It’s terrifying to see someone so pure and optimistic wear an expression so jaded and anguished.

“This is wrong. Fights don’t only hurt those who are in them, but also those who are watching them.”

There is no anger nor condemnation in Wind’s voice, noticeably deeper and darker than usual. There is only hurt and hopelessness.

“From beginning to end, I’ve watched and even taken part in every single fight that has happened. In the past, I would’ve shouted at everyone or even cried, but now I’m just tired. Tired of seeing those who I consider family trying to hurt each other as much as possible. Tired of seeing everyone try to kill each other.”

He walks towards them, separating the three from each other with a deep sigh. He pulls away Four’s hands from the other two and pushes the latter aside as he walks past them, not even sparing a glance backwards.

“I… need some time alone,” he says. “I’ll be the Wind you know when I come back.”

Wind walks with heavy and somber steps towards the ruins, freezing for a few moments in what seems to be hesitation before continuing. He vanishes into the pale white of the ruins, a flow of turquoise the last thing reflected by the fallen glass on the ground.

As soon as the glass stops reflecting Wind’s turquoise tunic, the trio begins to undergo dissolution. The first to leave is Legend. “I also need some time to myself,” he forces out, and leaves like the last gale of spring.

The second to leave is Four. Seeing that the boy in red has made his leave, he too walks away, albeit in a more openly somber manner.

Sky does not make any move. He keeps staring into the pale, pearly heavens as if waiting for a form of respite. Internally, he knows this is futile. And just like how staring into the sky is futile, everything else is pointless.

Why do they keep on trying to ‘save’ him? Don’t they realize that someone like him can never be saved?

Why can’t they just hate him and scorn him?
Why can’t he just hurt them over and over again?
Why can’t they just reduce each other to simply terrible people that they have to kill?

Why are his thoughts like this?

He is at a crossroads, but he is damned with the knowledge that both paths lead to the same destination.

Once again, his eyes stray towards the twinkling stars into the deep blue of the sky. Then, they trail down towards the white of the sky’s base and to a familiar hill and a familiar ruin.

Once upon a time, a labyrinth turning into the sky with insane geometry stood there. Now, it is no more than a pile of glass atop a hill. The pulsing filth of the labyrinth had all but fallen away, taken down by a hand who had sworn to destroy all darkness. What a terrible fate she suffered. A tragic, twisted fate was she burdened with.

He almost smiles in contempt of her naivety, yet that brief moment of twisted satisfaction fades away when he sees his own face reflected in the water. He can almost see himself in her in the way of their shared heartlessness and cruelty.

Sky bends down to cup water in his hands and flings it before him. As expected, they crystallize into new memories. From the glass, he collates it into the shape of a butterfly. Its wings flutter as it flies before him, waiting for any sort of command.

Then, with a simple thought, he tears off each of its wings and lets it fall into nothing.

With marginal thought, he stares at the glass pile before his feet. With marginal emotion, he kicks it away into the water, the imperfect mirror rippling from the glass.

This is who he is.

This is who ‘Sky’ is.

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, a little crow whose feathers were pure as snow opened its eyes to see a bright, brilliant, beautiful world. Its innocent eyes looked around here and there as it hopped above and over ruined masonry strewn about the ruin it woke up in, almost laughing as it pranced beneath a sky like a pastel watercolor painting. Suddenly, obsidian petals flew towards it, beckoning it to interact with them. Its heart suddenly started hurting as it pecked a single blossom with its beak. It saw visions of people dying, farewells sealed in stone and heard the crackle of fire overtake people’s screams. The light in its bright blue eyes was quickly overtaken by horror, fading away as these visions came to an end. A dark seed of determination was planted in its courageous heart and the crow swore to destroy all of these petals.

After some time, it knew something inside it had changed. It was now able to laugh with a twitching eye at the terrible aura emanating from the blossoms of black. It was able to smile in the face of the darkness hounding it, and grew confident as it collected more dark petals. It grew so confident that it decided to explore a mysterious forest in search of more flowers of tragedy. As it entered the pale forest, its heart was suddenly in pain for no reason. Everything told it to turn away, to run and never look back, but it did not back down.

It pushed forward through frayed foliage and veering vines like a ceaseless wind, eventually finding a glade deep within. The light streaming from between the leaves illuminated the glade and cast brilliance onto a single turquoise rose. Serenely the grass and leaves around it fluttered, like a flowing dress being blown by the wind.

Like the centerpiece of a stained glass mural, the turquoise rose at the center stood out amongst its floral peers. And like a stained glass mural, it did not move even a single iota.

The crow was suddenly scared. This time, it really wanted to turn tail and run. However, with unsure flaps, it approached the lone bloom, coming face to face with it. It nipped the rose with a forceful motion from its beak, but it could feel something bursting from within its right eye like a breaking dam, turquoise petals blocking half of its vision. The crow screeched in horror as the blossom disintegrated, replaced by a horror indescribable from behind both its eyes.

It couldn’t say anything as the visions burned themselves into its brain, replaying over and over like a video on loop. It shook with great force as it saw half of its feathers, white as shimmering snow, sullied by the filth of the petals it so hated. It hated what it became. It hated itself. It tried to shake the filth off, to wash it away using the nearby pond, but neither worked. As it stared into its own reflection in the pond, dark thoughts of hurting others began looming in its head.

However, the experience had made the crow become even more courageous. Its laughs became more maniacal as it collected the blooms in a sinister scarf that swayed softly as it gilded across the plains and hills of the world. But no matter where it went, it could never escape the giant monolith of a tree at the corner of its vision. For a long time, it had felt the tree’s filth pulsing and stirring from within. However, it decided it had enough of avoiding its constant, incessant, vexing reminders of its existence. It had enough of hiding and running, avoiding and escaping. With resolve that even a hurricane couldn’t lay a finger on, it entered the tree’s gaping hollow.

Faster than a squall, it began tearing down roots and walls with unstoppable vigor and pent up rage akin to a land-rending hail. It ascended the tree as it continued its destruction, ripping apart countless networks of plant matter as it rampaged its way up. Reaching the top, it saw the vast expanse of the white world in a single reflection of its eye. It saw the pale canvas of the land on which much abstract beauty was painted on. It saw another rose, this time pure black. The memories came back. Its wings hugged it as it shook and shook, seeing the same flashing scenes that had torn out a piece of its heart and mutilated it beyond recognition.

And yet, it forced its weak legs to run forward. It forced its quivering beak to rip the rose from its stem.

The whole tree crumbled, the floor collapsing on itself. As it fell along with the labyrinth, the wind lifted its wings and freedom greeted it. Flying at the very last moment, before bark and matter could crush it, it smiled with a hero’s conviction.

However, a blinding white shell began to envelop it, and something in its core trembled from the null light. Tears dripped down its eyes as it suddenly broke. Its body began to shake as it realized that nothing it ever did meant a single thing. It was so attached to the belief that its actions had meaning that when it realized that said actions were pointless all along… it began to suffer.

When the shell split in twain to reveal the outside world, it could feel nothing.

Without feeling nor purpose save for a burning desire to take the life of the first living being it saw, it began to wander like driftwood in the ocean.

And now, the very same crow is right now blankly gazing at the remains of the tree. He can feel old, disused instincts lurching at the sight of the glorified pile of glass on the hill. He can vividly recall when he had taken the labyrinth down, vividly recall falling from the dark sky to the pearly ground.

…

Sometimes, he wishes he were crushed by the rubble of the labyrinth. Maybe then his pitiful existence can be put to an end. Maybe then he can be put out of his suffering.

But he digresses.

They must pay. He WILL make them pay no matter what. Even if it costs him his life. Especially if it costs him his life.

His fist clenches so much that it begins to tremor. He has to hurt them. He HAS to hurt them. Chills run all the way through his body like a rapid river, his violent urges effervescing more by the second. They roll through him like a towering tide, only one wrong interaction away from succumbing to his desire for wrath. Sky turns back, and begins to count.

One, two, three, four, five…

The amount of people off-guard that he can attack. If he takes out Wild first, then he can easily go for the others and end them as quickly as his ambush starts. He begins to smile sinisterly at the thought, his seemingly calm eyes holding infinite, void-like malice. The smile immediately disappears as a black umbrella is called to his hand. His body begins to move on its own and towards an unconscious Wild, both hands trembling like a torrent as he grips the handle of the umbrella. He stops before the champion, hands over his right shoulder as he wields the umbrella like a bat.

“Good night.”

He swings.

…

His arms refuse to move.

His body refuses to kill Wild.

Churning, swirling, roiling rage boils from within, a hurricane of fury and loathing whirling violently within.

Why?! Why can’t he end everything with them?!

Why is this stupid body of his not letting him cut ties with the past?!

Why could he hurt them so sadistically in the fight, but be unable to finish things when the opportunity was right in front of him?!

“Disgusting, broken thing…” he spits out, still unable to make the fatal swing.

His trembling, trembling hands let go of the umbrella’s handle. He brings his blanched hands and glares at them with an expression of abhorrence and hatred. Too overwhelmed by ‘himself’, he turns back and forces his wobbling legs to step away.

What now?

If he can’t kill them, what can he do?

Why can’t he just pick a side?!

Why is his heart so revoltingly, frustratingly fickle?!

These thoughts refuse to cease their cacophonous ringing in his head like a gong in a small room.

He looks back at the edge of the waterfall. He struggles against his entire being to walk there and wade into the water, now staring at the edge of the waterfall. He wants to jump down. He knows he’ll be fine as the plunge pool beneath will catch him, but he just wants to feel in control. He absolutely, with all of his being, hates how weak and indecisive he is right now, everything slipping out of his control. His heart tries to escape from his chest as he approaches the plunge, turning around to face the camp when he reaches the drop.

He exhales, and leans backwards.

Droplets of water rush from the side as he plummets, a perfect mirror to his fall from the labyrinth. The adrenaline fills him with something, both thrill and fear rushing rapidly through his veins. Gravity drags him down like a deadweight made of steel, his breakneck descent causing the winds to surround him like a comet’s streak. Water splatters violently from the gales stirred up, spitting and sputtering in constant bursts of droplets. As his body pierces the tranquil water’s surface, it ripples and breaks the reflected image of the sky above.

Sky sinks deep down, like a boulder into the depths. Countless bubbles form around him, reflecting the deep shades of azure that envelope his entire body. Everything feels so weightless yet heavy, floaty yet weighing down on him. All his senses have been dampened and everything seems to slow down in his point of view. Sky looks up to the water’s surface as he continues to sink, almost feeling something as he sees the glimmering light pierce through the still-rippling mirror. Like a drifter, he makes no effort to try and swim up. And yet, he reaches his hand for the distant, small light.

For a moment, he tries to reach further for the tiny radiance.

Then, he retracts that hand as swiftly as he extended it.

His entire body is telling him to swim up for air, to not drown, but he can’t find the will to escape the shadowy depths. He can’t find the will nor strength to continue on.

However, his legs start moving on their own as the air inside his lungs begin to expire. His vision grows hazy as the once distinct colors of the waters now meld into a messy, undefined mess. His head pierces the waters and he takes a large, gaping breath. The burst of air washes away that looming sense of death, almost ambrosial in feeling and a reinvigorating sensation.

But despite having escaped the clutches of the abyss, a certain bitterness remains.

Why can’t he just drown and forget?

Drown and stop feeling?

Drown and stop thinking?

With great reluctance, he sloppily swims towards the shore of a hill. His teeth grind together as horrid images flash behind his eyes like an inescapable nightmare without any catharsis at the sight of the ruins. His right hand shoots up to clutch his eye, nails digging into his skin as another wave of agony crashes onto his mind. As phantoms of the past continue to torment him, he stumbles his way atop the pale hill while staggering and swaying through a steep, winding path to the very top. Now directly underneath the twilight portion of the sky, he trudges through the sea of glass, said glass clashing and rolling over each other like dark waves.

His knees become wobbly, and he falls down on them. His eyes blank as a horror too terrible to even describe flashes behind his eyes, visceral images of death and despair wrapping his heart like ever-tightening chains of black. As he gasps for air, his hands tremble and fingers twitch, eyes unfocused and darting around wildly. He grabs fistfuls of his hair and grips it tightly as nightmares repeat in his head over and over again, unending and unbending.

Pillars of pain coalesce into unstable, shifting structures as if trying to imitate the ruins that once were. The Arcaea seem to listen to his despair, snaking slowly towards his body and twisting around like chains, tightening as both memories of people alone in their pain resonate with his own memories of the days when he wanted to disappear.

Why? Where did everything go wrong?

He had started out with so much anger and wrath, to the point that he nearly killed them all, but those stupid, stupid emotions of his!

If only— If only he could just stop feeling!

If only he could kill without any trace of emotion nor sentiment!

How pathetic are these hands that can’t even take the life of those who heavily wronged him?

How pathetic is he who can’t even cut ties with the past, he who can’t defeat those who are obviously inferior to him in strength?

His shoulders droop as his eyes dull considerably. His eyebrows furrow as his eyelids squeeze almost shut.

He lived solely for the sake of killing them. Now that he can’t kill them and exact all his wrath and pain on them, what now? Where does he go from here?

When you’ve lived with anger and vengefulness all your life then find out you can never reach your end goal, how will you go on? How will you keep living?

Unable to answer, he stays silent and stares into the pearly sky. His eyes become glassy as his mind starts to white out. Thought begins to fade, and so does feeling. Everything feels so empty, so purposeless and futile.

Nothing has meaning. Nothing has purpose. Everything he has ever done has never meant anything. He knew that all along, but tried to use his hopeless anger as some sort of useless anchor point for his drifting, lost self.

Feeling fades and determination disappears. The sound of the waterfalls around him are the only thing that fills his empty head, his ability to think undergoing rapid dissolution like powder in water. The sound of waterfalls crashing into the plunge pool continues to ring like white noise in his ear. Maybe if he makes the effort to listen for even a single second, he would hear resounding splashes louder than the misty descent of the waterfalls. When vibrant colors begin to approach him, the glass suddenly falls loose. The sudden change causes him to snap out of his dangerous trance, and his heart begins to beat faster.

The colors get nearer and nearer.

His breaths get faster.

Voices start to reach his ear.

His irises begin to wildly shiver in place.

A face filled with caution and fear looks at him.

A gasp escapes his tightening throat.

“Sky?! What’s going on?”

“…”

“I won’t hurt you,” the one with the wind tousled hair reassures, a strange mix of caution, gentleness and uncertainty in his unusually mature voice.

“Get away, get away, GET AWAY!!” Sky shouts, the words mangled in his terror.

“I know what this is,” the one in the mismatched tunic says. “Something so scarring happened in his past that our presence reminds him of it.”

“Like… a flashback?” the one in the blue tunic asks.

“Precisely. However, I don’t really know how to deal with these types of situations…”

“Then if it’s like a flashback, let me handle it.”

The person in the blue tunic approaches him carefully, slow enough for his fear to dissipate slightly.

“I won’t force you to tell me what happened. I won’t try to harm you. I wouldn’t even think of harming you. Let’s just go somewhere less cramped and stressful so that you feel comfortable.”

“Liar…” Sky croaks out with a breaking, breaking voice. “You killed the captain…”

Wild’s eyebrows quickly scrunch together as his eyes widen a bit. Sky flinches and leans slightly backwards in fear of an attack.

“You WHAT?!” Legend snaps.

“Wild… is what he said true?” Wind whispers.

Hyrule simply shudders and Four’s shoulders strain.

“Hold on for a moment!” Wild says, both panic and confusion marking his words. “If I had killed the captain in the past, wouldn't everyone eventually know? Wouldn’t you guys know if Wars had ever been killed?”

“…He’s right,” the smith affirms. “Weren’t we complete as a group the night everyone got transported?”

“He was clearly alive and breathing when all of us were dragged here,” Wind testifies. “I was just right beside him!”

“Then if that isn’t the case, what’s the truth?” Legend hesitates.

Everyone falls silent, before Hyrule is the one to speak.

“I may be the only one who remembers nothing, but I’m scared that something more terrible has come into play. I can feel an anomalous, broken magic signature from Sky. It’s just… wrong. Twisted. Not meant to be there. Not meant to exist.”

A butter knife would be too much for this silence. A toy kitchen knife would be just enough to cut this tension cleaner than the divide between the six. Droplets continue to fly as no one dares make a sound. That is, until Sky’s voice interrupts it.

“You’re telling me… You’re telling me that everything that I’ve seen is fake?” he says, even more fear beginning to leak into his already hoarse voice. “It can’t be… I saw everything with my own eyes. I saw all of you, dead… All of you, killing each other without mercy because your minds were twisted into doing so…”

“Are your memories complete?” Wild asks, his own fear beginning to seep into his expression.

Sky doesn’t answer. His eyes suddenly stare a thousand kilometers into white ground littered with black glass and his chest begins to heave rapidly. His arms drop to the ground and he weakly whispers as he connects the dots.

“So all this time… All this time, everything I’ve ever done was because of a lie? That fire-filled night was just not real? I… I killed someone innocent because of an event that never even happened?”

For the first time in his life, for the first time since he abandoned his past…

A suffocating feeling seizes his throat and strangles it as tears begin to flow like beads of water from a dried up reservoir.

It wasn’t real.

It was never real.

The one purpose he had was a lie.

Yes, he tried to deny the memory the pleasure of belief when he first saw it, but as time passed, he sunk further and further into his own hate until he gave up trying.

His nails leave crescent marks on his forehead as his hands cover his face like claws.

Why can’t he just die right now?

He’s stained his hands forever for something that isn’t real.

He nearly killed the others out of anger caused by events that were fictional in the end.

Shakily, he stands up while grabbing a piece of glass. Everyone gets into differing defensive stances. He puts the glass to his neck and begins to press it. His fingers turn white and start to shake as he applies more pressure onto it.

In a flash however, Wild tackles him to the ground as Wind forcefully restrains the arm holding the glass. Sky administers a forceful kick into Wild’s torso, causing the latter to go rolling and slams his left leg into Wind’s body, the sailor staggering and falling back at that.

“Why do you want— to save— a murderer?!” Sky wheezes out, the physical shock from being tackled to the ground still very much affecting him.

“Murderer?!” Wild says. “I don’t buy any of that!”

“You’re more likely to stay awake for the entire night than commit a murder!” Legend adds, quickly running over to Wind’s side and helping him up.

“Everyone! Duck!” Hyrule shouts as suddenly, an invisible beam seems to blaze through the space between them and straight into Sky’s direction. The air seems to ripple like the winds around a thrown spear, the blast of energy hitting Sky squarely in the chest. His hand shoots up to claw at his right eye, hyperventilating and shaking furiously as his other hand digs into the ground as if to anchor himself in the present. Then, Hyrule lets out a sharp gasp and squeezes his eyes shut. He warily opens them and takes a step back as if staggered, still unsteady on his feet. Four rushes over and tries his best to support Hyrule by getting the latter to sit down. Then, the smith turns his attention to the other four who are busy dealing with a much, much bigger enigma.

“I was on the fence about Hyrule’s magic signature comment but Hylia, I can feel Sky’s very spirit just violently spazzing on itself! It’s like— it’s like something twisted some part of his soul beyond recognition and jumbled all his memories to the point he’s in this state!” Legend says, blanching further as an anomalous aura assaults his senses. It creeps up his nerves, slithers around his very core and runs through his veins like a mist of filth.

“I can feel it too!” Wild replies, equally alarmed. “But I can also feel Hyrule’s strange sticking magic trying to put something together. Like it’s trying to put something broken back together, making the problem much more obvious.”

“Hyrule! Do it again but put more magic into it!” Four shouts from behind. “I have a theory that I wanna test out!”

Another shot. Sky’s eyes suddenly shrink, then dilate. His eyelids droop and his body stops convulsing. Four’s expression suddenly sharpens, eyes focused and desperate. He walks forward and places a hand on Sky’s shoulder. In the most unexpected twist… he smiles. He smiles, and the tension suddenly seems to be swept away by a heavenly breeze.

“There is a way,” the smith declares. “We can fix this.”

“How?!” Legend says in disbelief, hope beginning to blossom in him too, if the sudden clench of his fist and quickening of his breathing isn’t a giveaway.

“Hyrule’s magic has melding properties that don't discriminate,” Four starts. “We have to try and directly mend his soul. I understand that it’s a huge gambit, but it’s our only choice.”

“I’m all for gambits,” Wild remarks, cracking his knuckles.

“Anything to get Sky back,” Wind says.

“I really do owe Sky a favor for always having my back,” Legend says, pensive yet with silent conviction. “Really, I was too harsh on him, and I’m probably the closest to him, no offense. I trusted him quite a bit and we became pretty good friends, so when he turned out like this… I didn’t take it too well.”

Legend sighs.

“All these emotionally draining events back to back are making me expose my soft and sensitive side too often, aren’t they?” he says as if it is a joke, but sadness hides behind his words and peeks through like little droplets of water from a cracking pitcher.

“I’m tired. Well, maybe I have no right to say that when Wild’s been here since the beginning, but I’m really tired of fighting those I’m close to over and over again. I’m tired of fighting Sky, I’m tired of fighting you guys, I’m tired of fighting myself. If there’s a way to end this, then I’ll take it without hesitation.”

A strange fire begins to burn in Legend’s palm, pale as the moon with a twinge of cherry blossom crimson. His eyes are enraptured by the little embers flying like petals, watching as the space around the fire seems to warp and freeze. He summons his usual fire on his other hand and brings them side by side. His heart leaps as he has an epiphany:

His fire had never dissolved glass nor healed flesh; it simply reversed its state in time. The more matter he reversed it in time, the more magic it took out of him.

And if the fire reversed things’ state in time… can it reverse the condition of Sky’s soul before the anomaly wrecked it beyond repair?

He looks at his unconscious friend, and looks at his palm again. The world seemed to have bowed to his request for power to save his friend, a voice beginning to whisper in his head.

“This carries unimaginable risk,” he utters aloud, simply repeating the words in his head.

“You can lose yourself for good… Do you wish to continue?”

“Who are you even talking to?” Wind asks.

“Arcaea is talking to me,” Legend replies bluntly. “I guess it saw something in me and… resonated with my wish to save Sky? I don’t know, but it started talking to me when the pink fire appeared…”

“Hold on,” Wild interrupts. “What’s that part about ‘lose yourself for good’?”

“I don’t know either,” the veteran replies. “But I’ve made my choice. No one can stop me now. Not even you, Four.”

At that, Four simply snorts. He knows quite well that no one in this world can stop Legend at this very moment, and chooses to step aside to let Legend get near.

“Hyrule, prepare your magic,” Legend instructs. “It’s time to get Sky back for good.”

The veteran holds his hand forward to let the flames connect with Sky’s spirit, shutting his eyes to try and sense the ‘thread’ where fire and soul can connect. The thread suddenly becomes visible in his mind’s eye when Hyrule’s magic signature enters the fray and time feels as if it suddenly froze. His sense of space vanishes and the cardinal directions are now indistinct. He gasps when a warping feeling overcomes his mind and makes his body weightless, just like when they used portals to travel between time periods back in Hyrule.

Then, black. He tries to open his eyes, but the world seen is the exact same as when his eyes are closed. He tries to move his body, but his limbs refuse to listen. He can’t tell if he’s standing or lying down. He can’t even tell if he’s drifting about or still. However, a glass butterfly brings small light to the endless dark, like a lamp in the night. Its wings give off little sparks like the dust making up comet trails, like shining blue scales from a morpho butterfly.

He lifts a hand to reach for it, and discovers that he’s lying down. His finger instinctively flicks up to act as a perch for the butterly, and it stops fluttering to rest on its impromptu branch. The space before him suddenly cracks like a sheet of glass. The ‘glass’ showers like a spray of twinkling water, and he sees himself standing in an ethereal yet dark space illuminated by light that acts as if it passed through water. Caustics stand out against a dark floor lit by underwater light, Legend’s steps producing sounds akin to stone each time he makes a step.

Around him, countless jagged mirrors and crystals of varying sizes float, not unlike the memory glass he’s seen before. Clopping sounds echo throughout the silent space as Legend skips to peer into a mirror. As he looks into it with a hand placed on the mirror, expecting to see a memory or his own reflection…

An image of a horrified Sky within an ornate yet dilapidated chamber stares back.

Legend takes a step back in fear. Sky holds an obsidian piece of glass to his own neck. It begins to press into skin... and the mirror suddenly shatters into a thousand brilliant bits. The veteran trips backwards, landing on the ground with darting and unfocused eyes. In terror, he asks: “Sky… What in the world happened?”

Chapter Text

Legend looks at the glass pile, almost resembling bits broken off from fragmented stars. Then, he groans and gets up to inspect what was once a strange mirror. He squats down and scrutinizes it, his eyes scanning over every little reflection for some sort of peculiarity that would help him get his friend back.

Unable to find anything, he mindlessly commands it to burn away. The shattered bits fly back, hundreds of little fragments slowly melding together back into a coherent form in the exact same position as seconds ago and once again, resembles a mirror.

Right. This isn’t ordinary glass and this is no ordinary space. However, there is no reflection to be found inside the mirror nor any memory.

Where did the memory go? Aren’t memories supposed to stay within the glass? Well, it does make sense that the memory would disappear when it has been broken but for some reason, this one is so unstable that the moment he interacted with it, it fractured into a million pieces.

Once again, he holds a hand to the mirror but sees nothing this time. Then, in an experiment, he tries to pull back the threads of time like rolling a video tape. The video tape, however, suddenly freezes in place and white fire envelopes the mirror. It begins to reflect another time and strangely, begins to constantly unravel into threads and reform as soon as it strays from the collective whole.

Legend gulps. There is only one way to find out and the last time he attempted that, he saw his friend about to end himself. He has seen many, many things throughout his life and adventures even though he is not even an adult, but this… this is something he never thought he would ever face. At most, he expected that he’d lose someone or two.

Courage doesn’t necessarily equate to lack of fear. In fact, his breath is trembling right now.

Legend looks at the mirror with hesitation. He looks at the dark, seemingly infinite space behind him. He can’t turn back, but that is okay. He doesn't want to turn back anymore. He relived the lowest point of his life a while ago and faced his worst fear. He saw friends go and helped them return.

There is no more running. When he ran, he ran from dark glass and his friends because he was too weak to face them and the truth. When he ran, he hurt everyone. He thought Sky couldn’t be saved, so he ran away from the problem by hurling insults and injuring his friend. He suddenly remembers; his form in a dark alternate dimension is that of a bunny. A bunny is swift, but it cannot face predators. In fact, it is swift so that it can run.

However, the day a bunny can face a threat head on and live is the day the world changes.

He touches the mirror. In seconds, he’s transported to a forest.

In moments, he sees Sky touching a rose shaped piece of glass within an ethereal yet dangerous forest.

In the time it takes for lightning to strike, Sky falls to the ground, trembling, heaving and sobbing. Legend runs over to Sky, the latter still hyperventilating. Sky turns to face him with blank eyes, not recognizing the new person until something changes in him.

Suddenly, Legend is pinned to the ground. Suddenly, jagged glass sticks up out from Legend’s chest. It doesn’t feel like anything, but his red tunic is now several shades darker just above his heart.

The smell of iron permeates the air and soon enough, a deep terror fills his entire being like coldness freezing his core and spreading through his blood. It freezes and numbs his fingers, chills his blood and turns it into ice. Razor sharp, excruciating, extreme agony melts all the ice and burns everything in his body like an electrical fire.

The shard is pulled up, and plunges down again, this time deep into Legend’s stomach. Horrified, he looks into Sky’s deranged expression as the latter gets more of Legend’s own blood onto his face. Then, the glass falls down like an axehead between his eyes.

The trees become taller and fuzzier, the mist suddenly starts changing colors, everything turns dark… Death is pulling him in a freezing embrace. Dying in a memory, huh? How unusual—

Wait. This is just a memory that he managed to enter, not just view. Legend opens his eyes again, and finds that he’s no longer on the ground. His breaths are still rapid and highly unstable, but he can now think and feel. What he can feel is that he has lost a physical body, and what he can remember is that he can still observe.

So, though still shaken and horrified with sweat trailing down his cheek, he observes his murderer.

Sky’s expression turns cold when looking at Legend’s dead body. Then, it turns blank as if he can’t process what he’s done. Suddenly, he begins panicking and blinking rapidly.

“Legend, no…” Sky forces out, his hands shielding his eyes from what he has just done.

“Why?! Why did I do that?! No!” he shouts, despair filling his words.

“Please be alive! Please!” Sky continues to plead, taking off the shield to make way for his hands that dart to shake the corpse of his friend whose death was caused by his own hands.

“So you— Wait, there’s a chance?” Legend mutters in surprise. The scene before him shatters like glass, and he’s back in the void.

However, despite being whisked back into the black of the void, the memory of his friend stabbing him to death with that crazed look keeps on replaying in his head like a looped video. And yet, beautiful, joyful memories of him and the other seven clash with it. In particular, a recent event happens to drift into the forefront of his mind.

“It’s not often I depend on others for help…” Legend mutters, holding a brilliant sword filled with holy power. “I… I don’t really know what to say… You really went out of your way for me. Especially you, rancher.

…Thanks, both of you.”

“Nice hair,” Sky remarks with a smirk, a thumb pointed to Legend’s now pink hair. Legend’s previously pensive expression turns into a highly mortified one, glaring at Sky with embarrassment. Sky smiles, seemingly reveling in Legend’s peculiar situation.

“How am I going to hide this?!” Legend panics, desperately clutching his bangs.

“We’ll think of a good story,” Sky reassures him.

“I’m cutting it ALL OFF!!”

Legend’s hand curls into a spasming fist, and that frigid sensation that can even freeze blood flows through him again. Ambivalence is fighting once again within him, and both are locked in a fierce struggle. Legend takes a shaky breath in, and lets out an even shakier one. He cannot do anything, still stuck in place. Only trembling breaths fill the void of silence.

He tries his absolute hardest to push the memory of the stabbing into the black void where the memory of Koholint is. He tries to blur it all out, tries to forget… but the smell of iron still permeates the air and the sound of his vocal cords producing a sound that could tear them in half still rings in his ears like a gong. He can still remember everything. The baby blue and purple of the forest. The cold, soft grass. The warmth on his tunic. The exact shape of the glass Sky used to kill him. It was kite shaped, the top right side slightly concave.

He knows there is no threat. He knows this is all fake.

But… didn’t it feel so real?

Just like Koholint?

The smell of seawater and blood meld into each other. The bobbing of driftwood and stillness of the ground clashes with his senses. His hand moves to clutch his face, his chest, his stomach, everywhere he was stabbed so that he knows that he’s alive. However, that keen sense of death still whispers in his ear like a soothing lullaby.

He locked himself into this. He has to keep struggling against the dark, hoping that he can save a glimmer of golden light through the dark against all odds, even when all he has now is himself.

His fist curls. His pulse quickens. He’s alive. He’s breathing. And he can never, ever go back anymore. This is it. It’s time for him to say goodbye to his despair and helplessness. Even if his legs are broken, he’ll force himself to get up again so that he can see the sun rise.

Of course, he’s still terrified. After all, why would someone ever believe that their friend, who has gone mad and tried to kill their other loved ones, could ever go back or be saved?

…

There were a million what-ifs that could’ve happened in that memory, but Sky still felt immense regret.

There’s only one way, and it’s forward.

Legend’s hand and legs struggle upward as if bound by a ball and chain. With fear, he burns the mirror yet again and braces himself for the worst. However, the mirror… dissolves? It turns into bits like grains of sand that immediately disappear as if swept away by the wind. With the mirror gone, Legend once again is stranded in pure nothingness.

Alarmed, he looks towards where the light doesn’t shine. Sleepy darkness looks back at him and a deep seated anxiety suddenly stabs him like a growing spire of ice. Legend grits his teeth and charges into the darkness, heart still pounding like a hammer constantly being lifted and plunged into steel. However, the darkness seems to come alive at his mere presence and nothingness soon wraps around him. He reaches out, and—

He’s standing in place.

Recklessly, he rushes towards the darkness again. He’s back once more. He tries again, resisting. No progress. Legend begins to pace around, unsure of what to do. If he can’t go sideways, can he go above? Legend looks above to see strange, dim brilliance gently providing refuge in an endless sea of obscurity. He reaches out for the light and half-heartedly jumps, yet falls back down as expected.

Not up, not left, not right, none of the cardinal directions. None, except for—

He realizes. There’s only one way forward, but forward doesn’t mean north or south. Legend gets on a knee and stares at the ground. He curls his left hand into a fist and slams it against the ground. The lake of viscous ink beneath his feet gives in to the force of his punch as if it were elastic clay. Legend falls into the pit he created headfirst, but it opens up into a midnight sea filled with bubbles as soon as his head is about to reach the ground.

He momentarily gasps and tries to hold his breath, but a strangled choke forces air into his lungs. Soon, he realizes that he can breathe as normal. Dim, murky bubbles reflecting memories float around the area, unable to be peered into or interacted with. Realizing that nothing can be done, he inhales deeply and begins to dive into the depths, regardless of not knowing if there is an endpoint or not. Surely the ocean has a seafloor, no?

However, his steady dive soon becomes a rapid and uncontrollable plunge as if his body weight has multiplied a thousand fold. Streams of bubbles become like giant kelp to him, his vision only blurring more and more, but somehow, the bubbles seem to come from some sort of giant nexus bubble that reveals a different area altogether beneath.

Legend shifts his position as quickly as he can so that his feet land first, but he falls through the bubble’s surface and inside it. The bubble slowly descends downwards, escaping the ocean of darkness and into stormy, rainy skies. As the bubble continues to fall, he nervously looks from here to there in hopes of finding some sort of platform or land. Soon, gray clouds and a miasma part at the bubble’s intrusion, revealing a ground reflecting the scenery directly above it. As soon as Legend bursts through the bubble’s opalesque skin and jumps out, the impact of his landing causes the ground to ripple.

Then, before him, he sees a white feather with purple and yellow tips, the former layered below the latter. Inky rain continues to pitter patter on Legend’s body as he reaches out to touch the feather, its bursting coldness like a tether.

It doesn’t deter him.

His finger gently scrapes a barb, and light suddenly shuts down every single sense of his. Then, Legend finds himself on some sort of wooden deck above a sea of clouds, a stone plaza behind him. Or is it a pathway? He observes a towering figure of silent stone, the statue’s robes flowing like water that crowns her divinity. However, everything, even the sky, is drained of color and eerily still, as if something has forever preserved the town like amber. His heart begins to race as he looks around.

He isn’t supposed to be here. He is definitely, absolutely not supposed to be here, but Legend continues walking on anyway. He seems to be in some sort of courtyard, ornate white walls protecting that huge, magnificent statue while a platform engraved with golden rings is a few paces away. Danger suddenly flares up and immediately, he jumps to the right to avoid a broken sword that tries to pierce true to its mark: his head.

The impact covers the place in dust and fractures snake through the ground in its wake. Legend turns swifter than a falcon to face the object that tried to take his life, and an unsettling sight graces his eyes. A sword with a royal blue hilt and a bloodied yellow diamond on its winged cross-guard lies stuck in the ground, its blade chipped and stained with a deep red like corrosion. Perhaps even dried blood.

Legend warily approaches the blade sticking up from the now severed grass and broken ground, the speed of the wind increasing as his every step takes him closer to the sword. Then, the rising wind suddenly stops and Legend is knocked down to the ground. The blurry sword before him is plucked out, but Legend quickly rushes to its position with a hand out. Unable to snag it back, he forces himself to stand up and sees the person he expects the most.

However, that person’s clothing is a heavenly green, a pure white sailcloth flowing behind it like drifting clouds, unlike the unreadable black after whatever incident happened to him. The same blue diamond binds the sailcloth in place, the one anchoring similarity between both. And yet, parts of Sky’s body seem to unwind into threads and reform the next second, a deep purple void left where threads have not reformed. The sword in his hand paints a striking picture of the man Legend once knew as a friend and comrade, only twisted beyond imagination.

“What do you want?!” Legend voices, dusting himself and suddenly flinching from pain. Sky doesn’t say anything, and charges at him with deadly speed. Legend side hops out of the way, rolls forward to dodge an overhead slash and barely maneuvers his way out of a strike to his side.

“I get that you probably don’t want me here, but just tell me the reason why!” he shouts as he scrambles around the courtyard to try and find a weapon. Sky chases Legend as they both weave through trees, circle the base of the statue and sprint back to the courtyard’s plaza, the latter unable to find anything. In a last ditch attempt, Legend grabs on Sky’s sword as a strike heads straight for him. He attempts to burn the sword, calls upon that flame deep within him—

“What?!” Legend says with alarm, feeling everything go cold. “Why isn’t it working—”

He immediately lets go, sensing that if he holds on for longer, he’ll lose both hands. Sky, as if sensing Legend’s shock, points towards the clouds. Legend looks there, and sees nothing special except for the fact it is drained of color.

“There’s nothing there, what do you mean?” he asks. Sky condescendingly tilts his head at Legend, and brandishes the sword. The latter’s eyes suddenly widen in terror as he realizes;

“There’s no time here?”

Faster than a blink, a sword is held against the front of Legend’s neck, the hand holding it coming from behind. Sky begins to move backwards, and the blade inches closer and closer to Legend’s flesh.

“Damn it!” he whispers as he also walks backwards, understanding that he’s completely lost. The pedestal gets further and further away from Legend’s sight, but the feeling of emptiness behind him increases every millisecond. The sounds of his steps turn from that of a footfall to ground to the sound of a wooden deck. Then, Legend is suddenly free from the sword, but suspended at the border between land and sky, only Sky’s hand grabbing a fistful of his tunic preventing him from falling completely.

His stomach plunges as Sky’s cold yet furious expression delivers a silent message: There are no second chances. However, he catches the slightest roil of agony like a wave breaking the ocean’s surface, but that soon disappears. A silent goodbye, Legend supposes. What happens if he falls? Will he die? Will he go back? Will he return to the real world?

There is a gamble to make. He has a one in a thousand chance to win, that being that he’s able to go back to the mirror ground realm from previously and strategize. If he goes back to the real world, he can discuss with everyone else what to do next, but who knows what would happen to Sky? If he leaves now, he may cause irreversible damage to his friend’s soul. If he dies here… would his body simply become a living shell?

Legend looks at the deck, the statue, the sky, the courtyard, every single once living thing now drained of color. He takes a deep breath, and yanks Sky’s hand off him, immediately falling into the sky. Everything feels so floaty yet zooms by like an arrow, a feather weighed down by a stone tied to its shaft.

Little clouds greet him as pure, snowy clouds come to embrace him. Fear begins to envelop him once more. Is there really no end? Will he just keep falling until he reaches the surface and dies? His life flashes before his eyes. Everyone he’s known. Everyone he’s loved. All the places he’s visited. Even that island. He falls past the barrier of clouds and he reaches his hand out, as if pleading for something to save him. Yet, only mist barely touches his middle finger.

His voice is stuck in his throat. He can’t even scream or panic or cry. So, Legend forces out a morose smile, knowing that things end here. Might as well laugh at the absurdity of it all, so he laughs though his voice is drowned by the rushing air. His heart rate slows. Everything is so beautiful. Everything is so colorless and frozen, yet ethereal. Is his life the price to pay for a futile attempt to save his brother in arms?

He breathes out, and gives in. He lets weightless freedom crush and consume him. There is no tomorrow, as time doesn’t flow.

His head hits the ground, and there is no more sight.

But suddenly, rain falls on his face like icy tears and a mirror land of stormy skies welcomes him back. A strange feeling like sharp numbness manifests in his right arm and he instinctively brings it up. Legend gags.

His arm is unraveling into threads and reweaving itself, a jittering purple space left on the inside of his arm.

Then, he begins to realize with overwhelming dread:

If he gets thrown off or killed a few more times, he’s dead for good.

Chapter Text

“You’re not getting rid of me so easily,” Legend says with a bloody smirk. Sky deadpans and brandishes the holy sword.

“Sky, the thing about Heroes of Courage is that we just don’t know when to give up,” Legend declares with his arms half spread. “You thought you could kill me the first time? Wrong! You’re gonna have to kill me multiple times before I stay down for good, and that doesn’t mean there’s nobody else willing to take my place.” However, Sky simply scoffs and a strike as fast as lightning grazes Legend’s neck.

“For the noble Chosen Hero, you sure like taking cheap shots, don’t you?” Legend says with irritation, applying pressure to the cut as he glares furiously at Sky. A few moments of silence pass, and Legend’s annoyance immediately explodes at Sky’s nonchalance.

“At least say something!” he shouts as he runs over to the other person. “Then maybe I won’t have to pummel the curse out of you!”

He quickly hops to the side and rolls forward, dodging an overhead slash and harshly kicks Sky’s back, causing the latter to stagger. Using the momentum, Legend throws himself forward and punches, sending Sky flying into the nearby pillar. Sky uses his sword as a crutch while getting up, obviously worn down by Legend’s continued attack. Getting up, the Chosen coughs out blood, staining the white ground red.

“Will that finally loosen your mouth a bit?” Legend asks sardonically. “I’m sick of your silence.”

“Watching your back instead of running your mouth is always a good idea.”

“What?!”

Sharp pain blossoms across his back like a river carving a canyon, and Legend’s vision mottles with spots until the spots converge into an all-consuming black curtain. Air suddenly escapes his lungs and it feels like drowning, something resembling liquid shadows submerging him. However the moment he draws a breath from panic, rain pitter patters on his face. His vision clears up and he sees the ocean suspended above the sky once more.

Still staggered, he slowly sits up and sees his reflection. His eyes swing open with panic as he sees parts of his own face, reflected in the watery ground, becoming floating threads that when he pulls on them, disintegrate and return to their source.

How many more deaths can he take? In the first, Sky left him to fall off the island. The second, the sword was pushed straight through his heart. The third, his back was cut in two. Static and buzzing emanate from all the places where his injuries have been replaced by distortions. He gulps. He can only die two more times before he’s gone for good.

He has to strategize. There has to be something that he can take advantage of, like a resource or the landscape. It would be possible to play ‘hide and scamper for resources’ in the various buildings around the islands, but Sky seems familiar with the place and has the homeground advantage. Definitely not ideal.

The rain keeps on falling and falling as he thinks. However, droplets begin to merge together and form dark bubbles with the reflectiveness of an opal. They descend slowly from the sky, filled with seconds that have passed. Without warning, a bubble hits him, its little droplets splashing into new colors and dyeing the dark landscape.

The skin of the bubble becomes one of a bright world, and the beautiful pastel landscape of Arcaea greets him. A ruin filled with jagged crystal formations is the site of his awakening, said crystals having overtaken almost every crevice of any upwards jutting surface it can find. His hands instinctively rub his eyes and he says his first words.

“Where am I?”

He looks around and explores, innocent wonder in his heart as he observes fallen pillars and flowing engravings. He jumps from stepping stone to stepping stone, pillar to pillar with his arms held out. At the end of the path, he sees a vast, fantastical land of white and glass. Up top, the sight of a strange swirl of darkness just a ways above him introduces itself, the swirl moving closer to him as if its curiosity has been intrigued.

The swirl of darkness soon zips towards him, a swath of obsidian glass surrounding him. However, an uncanny feeling of familiarity appears like a light from a flipped switch, and Legend’s shoulders strain in recognition. A flurry of memories assaults his vision, and all they show are that of tragedy, evil and despair.

The world beneath an endless sea rudely interrupts his vision, the sight someone reaching out their hands and struggling to breath making themselves known to him. Within seconds however, their arm suddenly falls limp and they sink deeper. He sees another vision; two boys quarreling, their voices increasingly intense. One shouts out loud fiery accusations while the other responds coldly and curtly.

“GET LOST!!” the furious one screams. A chair screeches against the wooden floor and the cold one leaves soon after. However, before the door shuts, soft words that Legend cannot make out are said by the cold one, causing the furious one and one other who has watched the whole ordeal silently with terror to recoil.

More and more memories like these assault Legend. Indistinguishable flurries of darkness, but they all imprint one singular emotion onto him: disgust. A wish that isn’t his own forms as the blackness of the final memory melts away to reveal the bright world.

“I’ll destroy them. Every last one. That way, no one else would have to go through what I just had.”

He stretches out his arm and beckons the glass to follow him like a twisted obsidian scarf, beginning his journey in the endless, ethereal repository of epochs. A strange familiarity plucks a string in Legend’s heart, and his stomach curdles as soon as he reaches an understanding: Sky and Tairitsu’s journey share an uncanny similarity.

The scene melts into another memory. A pale forest, and a feeling of imminent danger begins speaking from the back of his head. However, he moves into the forest anyways, making his way through almost endless foliage. The foliage density begins to thin as vines shorten and leaves make way for a silent, ethereal glade. In the middle of the watercolor scene, a shard twisted into a shape resembling a budding blue rose floats, its turquoise sheen refracting shards of light onto the purple grass.

His steps become more and more muffled as he approaches the glass, reaching out his hand to scrape it. However, he retracts that hand as a strange feeling of something akin to dread sloshes increasingly dramatically within his chest. However, he forces that hand to once again reach out, and grabs the glass in a forceful motion.

Suddenly, a feeling of impending death assaults every single nerve. On a silent field of grass, as the sun rises and the zephyrs begin to whistle their chilly morning call, nine people stand divided amongst themselves. On one side, Legend, Time, Twilight and Wild. Another side, Hyrule and Four. On Sky’s side, Warriors and Wind. They have all their weapons drawn out, the intent to kill rolling off in waves from Time and Four’s side. What comes next can only be described as a wild, frenetic dance of death.

As Sky unwillingly fights, he thinks back to the very beginning. Legend, still experiencing the memory, feels what can only be described as a horrific revelation for ‘he’ was the one who started this mess. ‘He’ had landed the first strike of the sword beforehand, which was on Sky.

Seeing that imitation of him indiscriminately attacking those people he called his friends makes anger boil in him and suddenly, he understands why Sky has been particularly malicious towards him.

“The monsters are trying to trick us by talking!” ‘Legend’ shouts to a hesitant Wild. Wild’s face darkens as he draws an arrow, aiming at Warriors. Warriors tries to fight off the combined pressure of Time and Twilight, his attacks getting more and more sloppy as coordination on Time’s side begins to increase. Burdened with the duty to hold off the two, he doesn’t notice the glinting arrowhead zooming for his temple.

Wind screams. Four charges straight ahead and pulls out the Four Sword, splitting into the Colors. The Colors run around the field, inflicting shallow wounds onto everyone save for Hyrule. The four seemingly doppelgangers confuse the others and Green soon takes Wild out for good. Hyrule fires a bolt of lightning towards Twilight, momentarily paralyzing the latter. The Colors reform into Four, and a swing of the Four Sword ends the battle with Twilight.

Sky watches with horror. Distracted, his own head is nearly split open as he narrowly leaps away from Time’s greatsword. The two duel each other as the Colors deal with Legend, Hyrule running around to take shots at the others. A magical sword projectile from Hyrule injures Sky, but he forces himself to dodge Time’s next highly dangerous strike.

Time suddenly moves away to join with Legend. The two launch a joint attack at Hyrule, directed at his blindspot.

The Colors reform into Four, whose eyes have completely blanked. With rage, he forces his way through a barrage of magic projectiles from Legend and takes the latter out with strategic use of the Four Sword.

However, a towering blade suddenly pierces through Four’s body and he falls to the ground. Once again, Sky and Time duel each other. Every single nerve of Sky’s is on fire. His heart threatens to explode. An elegy is sung from their swords, one that sings of the end. Metal clashes against metal, fury poured into both swords. A single misstep from Sky however, and the battle ends.

He falls to the ground and reaches a hand out, only for that hand to fall to the ground. Time suddenly freezes up, as if having come to an epiphany.

“Sky?”

“Why…?” Sky whispers, “Why did you kill them…?”

The once-pristine field is now stained by blood and littered with bodies. However, everything dissolves back into the pale forest, vines gently drifting along as if a tragedy had never occurred. The memory abruptly cuts off as something suddenly breaks in Sky.

Legend feels the cold rain on his face again. His chest heaves up and down, but his breathing slows as he remembers that they had debunked that memory. However, all of Sky’s emotions still linger within him, and he can’t shake off that strange feeling at the very end. More bubbles descend, but they don’t hit him. Legend gets up to peer into them, seeing Sky traversing the world with the obsidian scarf. With glass wings he’d occasionally fly, gliding over entire environments to reach the next place. However, the moment Sky lands and chances across obsidian fragments, a mirthless chuckle escapes him.

“Must be after that incident…” Legend wonders aloud. A larger bubble descends, containing the memory of a labyrinth being torn down by Sky. Once again, he hears laughter, but can also sense a dark determination to destroy every trace of Conflict. Without warning however, a bubble bursts onto Legend’s face as he observes the destruction of a labyrinth, and an explosion of emotions overflows in him.

He sees an anomalous piece of glass, completely opaque before him in an ornate chamber. The wall behind it is broken, revealing the vast and mystical world. He sees a bunch of waterfalls and a large plunge pool, realizing that the labyrinth is located where he and the others are at. The glass before him is soon grabbed and tossed onto the floor, crushed under his boot.

The labyrinth crumbles, and he falls with the conviction of a hero. The glass, the floor, the walls come down with him like a downpour. At the last moment, just before a ceiling crushes him, he glides out of the way of falling chunks of rubble. Descending and touching the ground, he smiles a true smile for the first time in what feels like a thousand years. The light of the sky shines on him like the brilliance reflected from a medal of honor, its light brightening his usually dark face. However...

Why is his heart is suddenly in pain? He takes a step backwards as remnants of the midnight colored glass begin to float towards him. At the same time, the remains of the labyrinth splash down and cause massive waves like roiling, stormy tides. The waves wash over him, knocking him to his knees. And as he covers his head to protect himself, he can hear the blood inside his ears rushing. He can feel his heart bursting to the point he wants to scream. The glass he’s collected begins to gather around him like a spherical shell, capturing him inside.

He looks into the glass with initially a frown of defiance, but as he sees a distorted version of his face smiling back, he begins to tremble. He can only stare back into that twisted, maniacal version of himself in black, sweat trailing down his forehead as he begins to heave. And as Sky realizes his heart is breaking, that his sanity is breaking, he sees the anomaly he thought he'd broken drift into view and merge with the shell.

Fire. An ocean of it engulfing the land. He sees death. He hears the cries of people being burnt alive, left to their fate. He tries to lift his hand, but he’s frozen in place. Ash scorches his lungs. Heat claws at his skin. Even his fingernails feel like they are melting. Warmth trails down his cheeks as he witnesses a world coming to its end, unable to do anything.

A haunting realization grips him: that everything he’s done up until this point has had no meaning.

Sky had felt many emotions since his waking into the white and ruined world. He’s felt sadness many, many times. From the day he woke up, his heart already cried out in pain. However, he’s felt many other emotions. He’s felt burning anger. Crippling fear. Uplifting joy.

True, he didn't have much of a plan.

In fact, he was only walking forward because he believed at the end of his steps there would be something good.
He had hope.
However, the cruelest fate is to have hope and see it crushed before your eyes.

As hope crumbles into tiny pieces, so does everything else. Joy, resentment, disgust; all those have left him a long time ago. The indignation at the injustices of the world he has carried for so long fades. His fear follows as well. All that’s left—

—is the sadness he so intensely feels. It quickly turns into an overwhelming despair of understanding, the pointless nature of everything embracing his wet, teary face.

And then, it too fades.

The memory of the burning world filled with the smell of ash begins to crack as he feels a resonance with the dark glass, giving way for blinding white light. The light is torn in half, and a sea of gray glass flows towards his ankles. The sight of the world outside embraces him, the sound of waterfalls filling his still crackling ears.

Somehow, he feels nothing. It’s as if everything has shut down and become numb.

However, a singular feeling remains: cruelty.

A desire to extinguish a life. Not just any life; the life of the other eight. His hand lifts up and wills the gray glass to fly towards him from the pile of tragedy around him. The shards come together in the shape of a beautiful, fragile butterfly and it flies into the sky to observe the rest of the world. When it comes back down with no news however, his eyes narrow in displeasure.

Without thinking much of it, he tears its wings off one by one, letting it fall back into the pile from which it was created.

The display of simple, thoughtless cruelty causes Legend’s nausea to increase tenfold. Unable to do anything, he’s only able to watch ‘himself’ walk away from the sea of glass and into the wider world of Arcaea. The memory fades out just as ‘he’ takes ‘his’ first step into a bright plain, colors melting back into that of the dark and rainy mirror world. However, the rolling thunder doesn’t faze Legend at all. Now, he can only think of a singular thing.

“We were faced with the same situation for some reason, but you and I did things differently,” he says aloud. “My cowardice made me run away from the darkness and somewhere along the line, I stumbled into the light. You chose to march headlong into the night for the sake of others, not even sure if there’s an endpoint. Why were you the one to be punished and not me?”

Legend stands up, looking at his own blank faced reflection. With a heart weighed down by the horrors of a single person’s suffering, he approaches the feather and grabs it. Once again, he returns to the gray and white battleground in the heavens. The still, monochrome world once again oppresses Legend with its silence, his friend and brother in arms at the center of it all. Knowing the depths of the man’s torture, he doesn’t make any sarcastic remarks.

“I’ve seen it. Your suffering. Not all of it, but I’ve seen how you’ve gone through hell, highwater and back. I understand why you hate me so much. I’d do the same if I were you. I can’t justify what you did, but Sky, we’re getting out of here together.”

However, the sound of rushing air zooms straight towards him. He barely hops out of the way of a sharp projectile aimed for his heart, the perpetrator quickly retrieving said projectile. Sky tries to swing at Legend’s blind spot but the latter ducks, turns and uses the momentum from his body to deliver a sweeping kick that knocks Sky off balance for a few moments.

“Sky!” Legend calls out. “Listen! If we discuss what’s happened, we won't have to fight each other until we bleed out!”

Sky jumps and slashes down, grazing Legend on the side of his leg.

“Maybe you did this of your own will, but we can’t just forever stay in one place! Maybe you think that all this ends with just one of us fully dead, but there’s always a third way!” Legend tries again.

“The third way is leaving.”

“Huh?”

Sky swings the blade to rid it of the blood as Legend puts pressure on his wound.

“Fall from the island,” Sky begins. Return to the mirror world. Take the bubble back into the sea. Then, exit into the void. Lay down on the ground directly under the light and close your eyes, then channel your power to rewind time on yourself. You’ll find yourself with the others. What you do with me next—” he looks away, “—is up to you.”

“Why can’t we find a fourth way then?” Legend asks as his stomach begins to freefall.

“Because the fourth way doesn’t exist.”

Legend begins to approach the other person with a hand out, making the best non-threatening expression on his face possible. However, that hand gets sliced cleanly in two and a horizontal stump remains where his fingers once were. Immediately, exploding and radiating pain, blood spilling on the ground like a newly formed lake.

“Come any closer, and I won’t hesitate to take more than just your other hand,” Sky threatens, but Legend doesn’t miss the waver in his attacker’s voice. The latter is grabbed by the tunic and dragged to the landing platform of the island, the mirage ocean of undulating clouds greeting him once again.

“Don’t ever show yourself here again.”

Water continues to crash outside into the giant plunge pool. The stars are still silently gazing from the dark blue and white sky above them. A clearing devoid of obsidian glass has been made by the other four, Legend and Sky’s bodies laid on their side facing each other within the clearing while Hyrule maintains the bridge between the two’s spirits. However, Hyrule begins to feel a certain dread that signals the prelude to a disaster. His feeling is confirmed when Wind suddenly begins to panic, the younger boy’s breathing quickening.

“Everyone!” Wind shouts, trembling as dread like an ominous tide begins to drown him. “Legend’s soul is about to die! Sky’s actively rejecting Legend’s attempts to save him!”

“How do you know?!” Wild shouts back, the terror in his voice rivaling Wind’s.

“I can see spirits without bodies and feel the souls of others. My feeling tells me that Legend’s soul is at such a low capacity that just a bit more damage will shatter it to pieces, and I can feel that the damage comes from Sky directly attacking him!”

“Then what do we do?!”

“Calm down,” Four says, himself taking a deep breath in and out. “Everyone, we need to support Legend in some way. Hyrule, any ideas?”

“...There might be a way. Time doesn’t flow within Sky’s soul, but I think it does in Legend and all of us. If, somehow, we can make time flow within his soul, we can increase the odds of Legend winning and getting Sky back.”

“Sometimes, I wish Time himself was here to help us,” Wild says. “I wonder where he is now?”

“Stay focused,” Four says. “All of us have abilities of some sort, right? Mine is to create weapons because I’m a blacksmith.”

“I can control the wind because I was also able to do that previously with the Wind Waker.”

“I can put things together for some reason,” Hyrule says.

“You used to be the team healer,” Wild replies. “As for me, I don’t have any standout traits for some reason and thus, wasn’t given any special ability in exchange for really good control of glass.”

“Then what’s Legend’s ability?” Four questions.

“Fire, although I’m suspecting it to be something else because when Legend healed me, I felt like time was rewinding on my wounds. Do you think it really could be—”

“That’s our answer. I just had an idea, though. Hyrule you can put things together, right?”

Hyrule nods.

“Since you know how things amalgamate and what their final shape will be, can you break things as well? For example, think of a pillar of glass. You know how the glass has been transformed to take the shape of a pillar, so maybe you can break the bonds holding it together to remove a whole chunk of it off?”

“I guess that’s possible,” Hyrule says, his brow furrowed in thought. Suddenly, he gives a small gasp. “Four are you trying to say—”

“—That if Legend could do it, it would turn the tide? Yes. I am saying that. Hyrule, use the bridge to pass on a message. Maybe the key to this dilemma can directly reach Legend that way.”

“I’ll try, but I don’t know if it’ll work.”

“Even a zero point one percent chance is better than none at all.”

Legend lays down on the ground, his distorted face cooled by the rain as if the sky is mourning his fate to come. The clouds are still gray as ever and the sea of memories is still suspended above. He holds his hand out to feel the pitter patter of a thousand bygone moments, the lament for a soul soon to be silenced. He can always take the bubble back to safety, but that would be akin to betrayal. However, space itself begins to stir where his hand is. Like a warm embrace, an invisible force holds his hand and brings him up.

“Legend!”

That voice! Hyrule?!

“If you can hear me, please listen! This may be our only hope. Your fire reverses time, right? But you can ‘feel’ the shape of time itself like how I can feel the bonds between substances, right?”

Legend’s hands instinctively grasp the air as if he’s pulling floating threads.

“Instead of rewinding time, go forward. If you can hold time in your hand, throw it far or let it be rappled away. But if you really can’t do it… that’s okay. We don’t want you to die.” In a more melancholy voice like a fading hope, Hyrule adds,

“I don’t want you to die.”

Legend gives a somber smile, his drooping and tired eyes overcome with a wash of emotions like the ebb and flow of a tide at midnight.

“If you can hear me,” he starts, “tell everyone that I’m not dying because I couldn’t take a few hits. Besides, veterans have to set an example.”

Legend breathes in and feels the soothing cry of the rain. The flow of time is like a river, but the speed of the river can change depending on the season. He closes his eyes and focuses fully on each droplet that lands on him, every single moment preserved in it. Then, he feels it. A loose thread that connects them all together. The thread continues to glide onward, but at such a slow speed that it almost seems as if it has stopped moving entirely.

Now, he understands. He and Sky are one and the same. Both of them simply cannot let go of what happened. But unlike Legend, Sky’s battle is not a solitary one. Legend gently holds the thread and lets it weave between his fingers. Through the little ‘time’ that flows, he uses it to power his fire. Given a fraction, he gives back a hundred as the flames proceed to free the thread from its shackles of sloth as although it is a small start, the thread begins to visibly move again.

The drizzle of moments turns into a torrent as soon as Legend opens his eyes. The water rises to his ankles, to his knees, to his chest even and it sweeps him into its depths. Everything spirals into monochrome like a painting coming into being before his very eyes, like a helix of gray coalescing into a thousand disfigured shapes. Legend lets himself be tossed back onto that island floating in the sky once more. However, the static in Legend’s ears suddenly disappears and his missing body parts have begun to reweave themselves from threads that barely cling onto existence.

As always, Sky stands a few paces before Legend with his sword held out. This time however, he holds it in a seemingly defensive posture. Both stare at each other, waiting for the other to act. However, a stray memory passes by in his head as he approaches Sky.

“Why do you want— to save— a murderer?!” The answer begins to resurface from the depths of his heart, these words suppressed deep within him now emerging. They roll off his tongue so easily, like smooth boulders being pushed off a cliff.

“You asked me why I wanted to save a murderer. It’s because I’m a murderer too. I was so furious when I saw you attack others who weren’t even involved in the battle, but only now I realize that I was also like that. A while ago, I hoped that no one would find out about this dirty secret of mine, but here I am laying my soul bare in front of the last person who should know. Feel free to berate me. Whatever I did to you, repay it tenfold. If it saves you and the others, I’ll gladly die.”

As soon as he says ‘gladly’, Sky disappears from his view. A blade runs between Legend’s hands that clasp it, him wincing in pain. He throws the sword sideways and hops out of the way for a slash aimed to his neck. Legend dashes to the side of the field and Sky responds by throwing the sword. Legend just barely dodges, but the sight of a boot approaches at mach speed to his face as if boosted by a tailwind. The resulting impact gives off a crack like a wood plank snapped in half, Legend soon feeling both his head about to give in and a warm liquid trailing down his nose. The smell of iron rises from his throat and he spits out blood, his expression becoming grim. As he catches Sky’s sword with both hands again, he speaks again.

“Sky, I know you wouldn’t even believe it even for a single second, but I’m scared. I lied before. I don’t want to die. I want to see my friends again.”

The sword stabs his thigh and Legend shouts in pain. He has to find that thread again! Legend bites his tongue and dodges Sky’s strikes, trying to find the thread that flows with time. However, another strike comes and hits Legend behind the knee. It comes like a sudden explosion of pain, him going into a stagger and soon falling on his back to the ground. Sky prepares to stab Legend in the heart, towering over Legend with his sword ready to plunge into the latter’s flesh. In Sky’s eyes is an abyss filled with broken hope and withered desire, those once crystal clear eyes like the heavens now an endless abyss filled with the ugliness of existence.

Legend’s vision flashes to that of the forest and he flails, breathing frantically as tears from above fall on his tunic. The smell of illusory blood from the memory of the forest fills his nose again and he tries to get out of the way of the strike, but pain keeps on exploding in his leg to the point he is practically helpless.

The sword falls. Legend’s eyes squeeze shut. However, his hands suddenly screech in pure agony as if a bushel of salt was poured into an open wound on it.

He opens his eyes to see that his arms have shot up to catch the sword. However, the hand at the hilt of the sword trembles as if the world itself is quaking.

“Just end things already!” Sky begs, his voice breaking. “Just take this sword and drive it through my heart! I’ve had enough of living! The Sky you know is dead and I’m just an evil mockery of your friend!”

The scene before Legend keeps flashing between the floating island and the forest, the screams in both scenes all too familiar. However, a string slowly manifests between his fingers filled with cuts and gashes, faint yet soothing.

“Seeing you come back to challenge me over and over again is like seeing a broken record of myself just refusing to give up in the past! Why can’t you just give up?!”

Legend grabs onto that string like it is the last light of dawn, his bloody hands becoming even bloodier as his hands on the sword tighten. From deep within, his own hope steeped in drowning terror flows through his blood vessels, every single nerve ending burning with desperation.

“Just go back and abandon me! I don’t deserve to live!”

Legend pushes back against the sword, struggling against that overwhelming despair threatening to consume the both of them. The thread begins to move forward little by little as Legend fights back more and more against the tide of endless agony.

“Why— do you keep— trying to save me?!”

The thread suddenly begins to rappel forward like a cascade and Sky is pushed back, the sword flying away from him. Although his body is battered and bloody, Legend gets up with his fist curled.

“Because Sky, we’re family.”

A punch hurtles straight towards Legend’s face. An knee crashes into his abdomen and he’s sent flying. Legend rolls onto the ground, coughing blood as he gets up.

“Still family now?” Sky asks, his face pale and expression unstable. “My hands are only good for causing harm.”

“A single… punch… isn’t going… to make me take back my words.”

The back of Legend’s head is grabbed and his head is slammed to the ground, the ground his face impacts with now spattered with blood. A foot is planted on Legend’s back, the sheer force exerted from it making him suffocate.

“I’ve seen many, many memories where people are harmed and killed with this move, but I’m confident that you wouldn’t go down that easily.”

“You’re… spot… on. I’m not… as skilled as you… in the sword, but if there’s one thing I’m known for, it’s being persistent.”

“A battle of persistence?”

“Any day.”

Legend manages to overturn the weight holding him down and gets up at blinding speeds, cherry blossom tinted fire surging from his palms. The embers flying from his hand drop towards the ground like droplets of paint, colors returning to the place where the embers touch. A roundhouse kick heads straight for his face, but Legend manages to catch it just before he’s knocked away, the flames from his fingertips transferring as sparks into Sky.

He pushes Sky to the side, the former firing a precise blast of fire as the latter is thrown to the ground. However, Sky suddenly disappears from his view with blinding speed. Legend looks around for the other person with his arms warily raised in front of his face, but notices that the sword on the ground is gone. Then that means where Sky landed was—

Legend’s view is colored red as a blade protrudes from below his chest.

“Next time, be sure that you don’t give back your enemies their weapons.”

Darkening, dizzying, immense pain so dull and surreal yet piercing and screaming leaps at and suffocates him. However, Legend holds onto the sword for dear life and pours his entire will into producing a fire that consumes it, his own blood setting the small spark from his hands ablaze. The sword dissolves into thin air and Legend uses that opportunity to catch the off-guard Sky with a flame that causes the latter’s arm to fragment into threads like his own.

A test of persistence, huh? Legend smiles grimly. He himself had already said at the start that he was willing to die if it were to save the others.

“We used to be friends, right?” he begins. “Well, you’re not my enemy by any means. Friends lean on each other, so feel free to let it all out on me. I’m a murderer, a hypocrite and a liar, so it’s the least I can do to atone for taking all those lives.”

“I guess we’re more alike than I first thought. The one difference between you and me though—” A punch to the jaw knocks Legend off-balance and he staggers backwards.

“—is that I can never go back. This is my punishment.”

Another punch comes. A kick. Legend doesn’t fight back or move out of the way. The violence keeps on coming, unrelenting and mixed with tears from above. With each hit, blood sprays out of his mouth. Squelching and cracking sounds can be heard from afar along with shouts of agony and despair.

When the flurry of attacks stop, Legend’s face is mangled and almost completely red, Sky’s not much different. However, the corners of Legend’s lips curl up ever so slightly and he speaks after all that has been coming out from his throat are screams of pain.

“I… win.”

He brings up his left hand and snaps. It starts as a miniscule spark. In seconds, it turns into a burst of blindingly bright warmth. Colors drag upward like sloshing fluids, forming bubbles and popping into even more droplets of vibrancy. The very world itself begins to fragment and dissolve, violent tremors destabilizing the monochrome realm.

The two are dragged upwards as well, dissolving into colorful abstract shapes reminiscent of their original forms. Vibrant red and mint green swirl through a sea of gray and white, being pulled towards the shining blue light at the very edge of the false sea. Colors pouring from the light messily dye the realm with vivacity like a spring’s afternoon, brilliance soon overpowering the world. However, from beyond the endless white, two words make the shapeless light dissolve to make way for the familiar pastel sky dotted with stars and shades of blue.

“Good morning,” a voice like the vast, unexplored wilderness greets. “Long time no see, Legend.”

Legend cracks open his eyelids to see a face half-covered in scars, the crystal clear blue eyes and wild yellow hair of that person making a smile appear on his own face.

“Morning, Wild.”

Chapter Text

“Morning, Wild.” A weight soon lands on Legend and tightens around his shoulders. The latter’s own smile widens as he identifies the weight as Wind, laughing as the latter holds him tighter.

“You’re back!” Wind shouts, the boy’s fluffy lemon yellow hair a pleasing sight to Legend’s eyes. The oppressing darkness and lifeless monochrome had worn them down, the sudden and bursting colors brightening his field of view like an exploding drop of vivid paint onto a white canvas.

“Morning, Wind. I appreciate your affection, but I can’t exactly get up from this position.” Wind quickly gets up, freeing Legend from the ground. Nearby, a familiar figure rubs his eyes and sits up in a daze. He blinks almost in disbelief and rubs his eyes just to confirm that what happened was real. The memories start dripping like dew from a leaf.

However, the leaf suddenly bends from a downpour of rain, every single recount of what just happened rushing back in full force. That island in the sky. Legend refusing to give up. His own hands that had sworn to protect stained with the blood of his friend.

He looks at his untainted, perfectly clean hands, his vision blurring in and out. His clothing— it changed too. No, it changed back. So then that means…!

A pair of arms wraps around and holds him tightly. The arms squeeze with such strength that he almost flinches, the owner of said arms beginning to shout.

“Sky, you absolute idiot! Why did you try to stop me?! I was scared! Terrified! I didn’t want you to stay like that! At first, I was mad. Really mad at you. But then, I realized I was no different! That made me want to save you all the more! Don’t you dare scare me like that ever again!!” The guilt inside him flares up like a fire being fed oil.

You. Why are you still here?

You killed her. You don’t deserve their love. You don’t deserve any of Legend’s forgiveness. You don’t deserve anyone’s forgiveness.

“Let me go! I don’t deserve any of your concern!” Sky says as he tries to push Legend off, but the latter only holds him tighter.

“I’m not letting you go just after being nearly beaten to death! You know that my plan to save you really hurt!” Legend retorts.

“So when you let me hurt you until you nearly died—” Sky begins, his words colored with horrified realization,

“ —it was me using my blood as the catalyst for my fire so that I could save you,” Legend finishes. “Don’t even think of running away now that I’ve got you back.”

Sky knows he can’t fight back, so his shoulders slump. He can’t understand. Why would anyone want some evil excuse of a hero to return? Someday, his actions will catch up with him. There will be a day where he receives just punishment and on that day, he won’t even lift a finger as he knows he deserves it.

The thoughts only get darker. They only spiral. Sky is not the type of person to think about the thousands of potential futures, but for some reason, he can clearly visualize each and every scenario that he perceives as possible. A strike to the face. A reunion that ends in bloodshed. Sharp, piercing words that break his spirit as he deserves. Being bound with hands behind his back, scrutinized every second to ensure he doesn’t try something. A spat between him and someone else that can only be described as—

“Listen!” A voice yanks him away from the vortex of dark, dark thoughts. Legend’s hands are on his shoulders, shame beginning to fill Sky when he looks into his friend’s stern expression.

“You’re here. You’re alive. You can still do something, so do something. Tell us what happened from the very beginning and we’ll sort this out.”

Sky can’t find the will to speak, only staring at Legend. Is it guilt? Some strange sort of fear? A mixture of the two and then some more? The words curdle in his throat. When he opens his mouth, all that comes out is silence.

“Don’t force it, Legend,” Wind says. “I couldn’t force my memory to come back. You only recovered your memory because you chose to after running from it. The Colors couldn’t be forced back into Four. Let’s give him some space, ‘kay?” Legend relents and lets go of Sky, getting up. As soon as Legend heads back to the others however, a sudden burst of courage overflows in Sky as if a wall has been shattered.

“Ever since I woke up, all I knew was suffering.” Legend stops dead in his tracks and five other heads turn towards Sky.

“When I looked into the black glass, I felt many things. I felt so much that I didn’t want others to feel those bursting emotions tearing them from the inside out, so I swore to destroy all Conflict. But… I was weak. I viewed a piece of glass that gave me back my memory, but I saw a lie that took root in me. I didn’t want to believe it, but when I viewed a memory even worse I… had enough. I wanted to inflict the pain I felt tenfold onto someone else. And when I found someone else, I…”

“I…”

No words can come out, the broken wall soon reforming from glass scraps. On the others’ faces are expressions of horror. Shock. Concern. He looks at Wind, and sees that the boy only has a deep sadness and compassion in his once crystal clear eyes. He wishes he were blind to that sight, remembering his umbrella running Wind through. He wishes he were unable to see Four’s face as it has given away that the latter has connected the dots.

“Sky, we’ll help you sort out whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” Wild suddenly interrupts, the air of tension broken by the words. “But for now, we have to keep moving. Our next destination… is there.”

Wild’s index finger marks the watery plain past the hill they stand atop, the small lake opening into a watery plain filled with islets like specks of purple stardust. He begins making his way down the hill, jumping from the edge and pulling out his glider. The others quickly follow him to the shoreline, sand kicking up into a storm as soon as they arrive.

“Alright, here’s the plan,” Wild starts. “Me and Hyrule will go as a group and use glass to form a path across the water. Wind, you mind working with Four?”

“Got it,” Wind replies, skipping beside Four. “You want me to use my winds to skate on top of the water with Four in tow?”

“Good idea. Legend—”

“I can easily do a solo crossing. Just gotta be a bit creative with the time reversal. As weird as it sounds, I can probably erase the water from existence for a bit and then return it as soon as I’m across. Rewinding time takes energy, forwarding it returns energy.”

“Alright. Sky, you can still fly, right?” Sky only nods in response, still distracted by his thoughts.

“Last person to make it to dry land on the opposite side has to take care of Legend when he passes out again!” Wild challenges.

“Wild you ABSOLUTE—”

“Ready…” Four ties his whip onto Wind’s arm and holds on tightly.

“Set…” Hyrule gets into a running stance at the edge of the water.

“GO!”

Air compresses and bursts out from Wind’s side while the water freezes over at Wild’s, the lake carved into a valley on Legend’s end. Sky hesitates, watching everyone else slowly shrink away from his line of sight. However, a sudden longing like a feather’s barbs gently brushing against his heart causes him to take a step forward. His heart rate begins to speed up. Another. His breaths become deep. The steps turn into a run, which then turns into a sprint. He takes a daring leap, the pure white sailcloth on his back fragmenting into wings of glass.

The water sprays around him like jewels, reflecting rainbows as it sputters through the air. Mist moistens his tunic as he continues to glide, rifts of aqua rising up like tides and then crashing back down like spines. A gleeful gale that streams past him lifts a weight he never realizes was there, but it soon settles down on him like a sack of stones being replaced on his shoulders as he wonders:

Is it okay for him to be this happy?
Does he deserve this?

No matter how much his hands are wet from the jets of water left in his wake, they will never be clean. No matter if he cuts them off with glass, his entire being is still stained with the blood of another person.

Horrible, horrible person. What more can he do aside from hurting others? Weak willed, couldn’t even deny such a flimsy falsehood. Why can’t he disappear?

His lips press together and his eyes narrow, guilt curling around his neck and strangling him. However—

“Over here! You over there!” a voice calls. Sky’s graceful glide wobbles for a few seconds, but quickly stabilizes when he sees a black and white flying bat thing with a fuzzball for a body right beside him.

“We need your help! Please! Our friend is sick!” it pleads to him, another bat, this time white and black, swerving in front of him.

“You— You shouldn’t be asking me!” he panics back. “I’m the worst person to ask help from!”

“Don’t be silly! We don’t have much time! Ayu is dying!” the black and white bat shouts, almost as if it is about to wail in desperation.

“Ayu?”

“Just come with us!” the white and black bat says. With hesitation, he spares a look towards the others and takes a detour to where the bats soar towards. An islet emerges from the pale blue horizon, the purple rocks making up its shoreline getting more and more saturated as he approaches.

“Thank you!!” the black and white bat shouts. “I’m Drem, and the other one is Fans. Our friend Ayu really, really needs a special glass for help!”

“We need an anomalous piece of glass,” Fans elaborates. “Ayu… eats glass. Without glass, she gets hungry. And when she gets too hungry, without any anomaly shards… she falls very, very sick.”

His speed picks up as soon as he processes what Fans and Drem told him. A cloud of dust kicks up when Sky touches down, skidding to a standstill atop a cliff. Before him is a small field of pale lilies, a girl with short gray hair curled up in the center. Two pairs of wings push him from behind, shoving him towards the girl.

“That’s her!” Drem says, flying lower to look at the girl he assumes to be Ayu. Misery is painted on her face, her lifeless eyes half open and brimming with unshed tears. A glass shard as dark as night materializes before his outstretched hand and memories of that broken world flash in his head. The screaming. The crackling. Those fake memories of everyone. The feeling of Legend’s blood staining his clothing. Wind looking up at him with that lifeless look. Every recollection is all too clear. Every leaf is in the same spot. Every cloud of ash is the same shape.

“Wake up! Please!” A wing smacks into his face, Drem hovering before him.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is the time to zone out,” Fans says. Sky looks away guiltily, but returns his attention to Ayu and the bats.

“You’re right. Will this help?” he asks with trepidation, getting on a knee to show the panicking bat. It turns back and somehow, beats its wings more frantically than before.

“That’s it!! Come on, give it to her!”

“I’m not sure though… This memory is horrible. Can she even eat something like this?” Sky doubts, his hand beginning to shake the longer he holds the glass.

“It doesn’t matter,” Fans assures him. “As long as it’s an anomaly, she’ll be okay.”

Sky gently supports her in an upright position, the terrified face of another girl from this world briefly emerging from the depths of his memories. He shivers, but soon his shaking hands bring the fragment closer to her face. Suddenly, the girl’s eyes ignite with a minute spark and she bites down on the glass. It disintegrates into shining dust like glittering sugar, her face now as bright as the radiance from the particles of light. She takes a breath, an invigorating one, and then asks a question.

“Fans? Drem?” her cracked voice asks. “You guys— did you—”

The bats immediately come to hug her.

“Ayu!!” Drem wails. “You're okay!!”

“Thank you, kind sir!” Fans says as it nuzzles against her cheek, its tears wetting her face.

“Did you feed me that shard?” Ayu inquires.

“I… did,” Sky awkwardly answers, slightly surprised at the turn of events. The girl smiles widely, ebullience exuding from her expression.

“Thank you!” she says. “If it weren’t for you, Fans, Drem and a friend I made, I would’ve crossed the border.”

“New friend?” Drem asks, letting go of Ayu’s shoulder. “Tell us more!”

“When everything was dark and cold, a voice spoke to me. It’s sad. It said sorry, and I asked what made it happy. It likes people, and their smiles. It hates itself, and what it has done. It hates that it's clumsy and uncareful. It really, really hates tragedy. It likes happy endings. But… it’s all okay!” she says with her arms outstretched.

“I told it that as long as you keep on going, you can find things that make you smile! Like walkiiing, or fooood... friends! That's what the world, and life and living in life are all about! We... We keep going, and we get happy endings— waiting for sure! You don’t have to be alone!”

The words tear his heart apart. Going on to get happy endings…
Hadn’t he once believed that?
Hadn’t he once believed that at the end, there would be a light?

So then, he asks a question with his gaze averted to the flowers.

“Ayu, what if you’ve done something really, really terrible and you can’t even talk to the person you’ve wronged because they’re not with you anymore?”

Ayu’s face scrunches up, her eyelids squeezed shut in her deep, thorough thinking. Those eyelids fling open, and she lifts up her index finger with her arm bent and thumb over the other fingers, trying to act smart.

“Well… Find a way to make it up no matter how long it takes!” the girl begins. “Even if you’ve made a mistake and hate yourself, well, there will always be someone who cares for you! Fans and Drem care for me, I care for my new friend and I care for you!”

“But… we just met,” he says, his steady tone denying the presence of sudden dew atop the blossoms.

“You saved my life,” she counters. “That’s more than enough reason for me to care! You and I are friends now!”

The shackles suffocating him suddenly fall away, and the wall of glass shatters into shining shards. Regret still lingers, the slithering shadows wrapping around his ankles and wrists, but it’s more than confirmation he can still do something. With tears in his eyes, he gets up and smiles. A single tendril of darkness suffocating his heart burns away with the coming of a small glimmer, beginning to glide to the other shadowy appendages that constrict him.

“Thanks, Ayu,” he says, trying to hide his wavering voice. “Friends, huh? I have a few that are probably wondering where I am, so I’ll be going.”

“Bye bye!” Drem shouts as Sky gets up to leave. He gently rubs its head and it playfully nudges him with its wing in return, minute laughter coming from him.

“See you next time— um, what’s your name?” Fans asks.

“Sky.”

“Bye, Sky!” Ayu says while waving. He gives a last look to the trio of friends before his cape fragments into glass wings, leaping from the edge of the cliff and into the air. As he sets course for back to where the others were heading, he wonders:

Is this what it feels like to have the wind blow against his back?

Yes, it is.

The answer comes from a voice that isn’t his. A voice so tender like a mother, yet as innocent as a child… Is this the world speaking? Sky can feel some sort of invisible but gentle presence flying beside him, almost as if it is smiling. He picks up the pace and dashes with a burst of speed, soaring like a meteor towards the other five. Where they’ll end up he doesn’t know, but he isn’t afraid anymore.

“Someday…” he whispers, beginning to see the others. They are gathered at a sand bank which opens to a vivid, vast world like a panoramic painting.

Rocky outcroppings, vast stretches of what appears to be snow, crystals galore emerging from the ground in spires, nonsensical ruins crowning the countless cliffs and environments that break through the uniformity of the landscape… Distant deltas, chilling caverns, withered wastelands and fragmented yet scintillating cities…

It is as if Arcaea is saying that his and everyone else’s journey has just begun. It is as if the world is telling him that there will be much more ordeals ahead. Even if slightly, the unknown does scare him. And yet, there is a conviction. A conviction to make sure his hand will put together all that he has broken.

Someday, he will see that person again. Someday, he will have to look that person in the eye with all-consuming guilt, the shame for his atrocities gnawing at his stomach. Someday, he will be forced to bear the weight of his sins.

Though in full understanding of this, his glide turns into a daring descent.

“I know we’ll meet again,” Sky starts. “And when that time comes, feel free to berate me. Whatever I did to you, repay it tenfold. If it makes up for all the suffering I brought you and the others, I’ll gladly die.”

There will be no compromise in his atonement. There will not be a single mistake. Push will come to shove. The leaf will fall from the branch. His sins may not ever be forgiven by the person he’s heavily wronged, but he will do everything to make sure that things will be right.

It has to be.

Otherwise, how can he call himself Sky?

Chapter Text

Cling, cling, cling…

Today, he and the girl are exploring a salt flat, its reflection the sky painted with pink and teal auroras. As the boy looks at his reflection on the ground with marginal interest, he begins to speak aloud.

“Sometimes, I find myself thinking: ‘Arcaea, who made you?’ It was made with reason, yes, but that reason seems to be… self-indulgent. Is this some attempt at escape? A selfish, altruistic act meant for its creator to take refuge? For all I can see, this world seems to have ‘heart’, and we have resonated with that heart.” The girl stops in place, the radiant clings of her heels colliding with the mirror ground suddenly halting like a stilled windchime.

“I… never thought of that,” she replies, doubt beginning to stir in her. However, it quickly comes to rest as she continues. “But what sort of good will it do us if we think about the what-ifs? Why, just enjoy the now and don’t think too hard. This world is warm, and that’s all. What does it matter who made it, why and how?”

The boy stares at her, almost disbelievingly at her simple-mindedness, but considers the sentiment behind it. With a begrudging sigh, he does admit her point has some merit.

“If you insist,” he says dismissively. “But we’ll see how well this statement holds up in the future.”

“It’ll hold up well enough,” she asserts.

“It won’t.”

“It will.”

“It won’t.”

“It quite absolutely will!”

“It quite absolutely won’t!” The boy’s statement comes out as a harsh, frustrated shout. The girl recoils, taking a step back, and he grimaces at his sudden outburst.

“I…” she murmurs, her fingers locking together. The girl’s voice barely comes out, her little statement like a critter shyly peeping from within a hollow log. “Oh, I said something ridiculous, did I? I— I’m sorry.”

With a sigh, the boy answers, “No, it’s not your fault. It’s an easy thought process that many would follow, but something is telling me that this world is far more than pretty.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she admits, “but that doesn’t mean everything is bad.”

“You’re not wrong on that.” The girl’s face lights up again.

“So, have we found a middle ground?” she asks, moving closer to her friend. He gives a content smile in kind.

“I suppose so.” They continue walking along the salt flat, the radiant mirror spanning as far as the eye can see. However, a crack suddenly rings through the air, and the ground beneath the girl shatters like a window being broken. A shout escapes her as she raises her arm in hopes of being caught, but the boy’s fingers can’t even brush against hers.

A sound like crashing water resounds from below and the boy peers over the edge. Water blooms into a white flower once the girl plunges into a small lake residing in the shadow of the overhang he peers from, a bobbing blob of crimson that he assumes is her beret slowly making its way towards what seems to be the lake’s shoreline.

He quickly jumps after, going into a head first dive and tossing all the newly formed glass to the side opposite of the girl. With the air before him clear and the wind rushing past his face, the boy splashes down into the lake, a few dozen fragments forming as soon as he resurfaces.

“Over here!” the boy hears. His head turning to find the source of the voice, he sees the white haired girl waving enthusiastically like a moving signpost. However, a shard approaches her and she touches it out of simple curiosity. Right before his eyes, she disappears, and he picks up the pace to reach land.

As he makes his way onto dry land, the boy’s eyes behold a massive fjord whose cliffs have seem to be impaled with glass spears. Their chalk-like walls and protruding pillars of crystals make it seem as if it were once a battleground where giants out of opal had clashed, every swing turning stone into gem. The ethereal tranquil of the scene is disturbed ever so slightly by another shout from the girl, now coming from the other side of the fjord.

“How did you even get there?!” he shouts, utterly befuddled on how she had managed to even set foot onto the outcropping opposite of the one he is on. A glass butterfly lands on his nose and a flash of brilliance blots everything out save for the light. When colors return to his sight, he finds himself right next to the girl.

Perfect timing, he has to say.

Without any sort of warning however, she grabs a fistful of his sleeve and begins running off with him in tow, bolting towards an opening in the fjord face overgrown with glimmering vines like a curtain of amethyst wisteria. Through a dark tunnel they go, the walls having splotches of radiant gems growing on them like paint slathered onto a tubed canvas, crystallizing like amber.

The tunnel opens up and floods the pair’s world with light. Suddenly, a feeling like water condenses on the boy’s face, and he swipes a finger across his cheek. Seeing no water but feeling moistness, he concludes mist is present nearby. But where can it have come from?

His eyes begin to open from their squint, and the answer reveals itself, just right in front of him. Cascades of water surround him at every turn, cool droplets and mist landing right on him. Sound returns, and thunder booms all around him. Rainbows dance everywhere, the light from the sky split into seven colors by the water. Prismatic rings bound atop the water’s surface, their leaps like dancers performing directly on a lake. Dry land stretches forward like a promenade, sometimes breaking into little islands within hopping distance.

Sharing a smile with the girl, the two know what today’s adventure is. Cool mist whirls around them as they start to stroll, pointing here and there in awe. Soon, their walk turns into a jog, and into a run. Laughter peals through the valley of wondrous waterfalls, a simple saunter now a lighthearted race with no endpoint in sight.

When the girl hears an audible thunk and sees that the boy isn’t running next to her anymore, she puts their race on hold for the sake of her friend. She offers a hand, but he flinches as he tries to get up. Noticing that his left shoulder seems to be injured, she promptly realizes that their race will be on hold for a long while. In her best attempt to help, the girl kneels down and slings his uninjured arm on her shoulder.

“A-are you okay?” the girl asks, struggling to get up.

“You can let go, I’ll be fine,” he bluffs, but winces as sharp pain shoots through his shoulder with the slightest movement.

“But with that sort of injury, I don’t think that can be counted as fine! I will be supporting you despite what you say!” She finally manages to stand up, letting go of his arm as soon as she’s sure that he’s stable on his two feet. Their pace slows to a beamish yet relaxed stroll, going back to a slower appreciation of the beauty surrounding them. As they smile in wonder, a sense of completeness makes itself at home in the radiant waters, spreading throughout the whole region.

Such are their days, spent in joviality and journey. Such are their lives, in this land of both resplendence and regret. Such is their world, filled with serendipity and sunshine.

Chapter Text

“Saya, where did the glass go?” The question is directed at a woman with green hair staring at a pedestal, her eyes tracing the grooves of the stele to gather any sort of information. The peculiar diamond shaped glass she has been providing shelter to is gone, and her mood has been dampened.

“Nil, it isn’t her,” Saya asserts, her finger sliding across the flat top of said stele. “There is no conceivable way that horned fool could even work her way through that mechanism. She must be too busy tending to those ‘souls’.”

“Not only that, the protective barrier has somehow disappeared into thin air.”

“That is something of my concern as well. What sort of abilities can that single person have?”

“It could always be multiple people.”

“Unlikely. Those that travel together always get split up in the end.”

“...Right.” Saya’s long cape flutters as she makes her way around the room, observing every single detail that is present. A strange trace of something on the pedestal eludes her, like a ‘mirage’ or ‘presence’ of some sort neither belonging to her or Nil, but no identifying detail.

“Did you find anything else?” she inquires, heading towards a part of the floor that seems to be separate from the rest. As Nil follows, the platform descends, revealing a vast library filled with natural light beneath the spire they were previously located in.

“The soul fragment we found is gone, but I did find a lot of blood,” Nil begins. “There was a message carved into the floor. I’ll recite it: ‘There’s something terrible beyond this passage. If you’re reading this and I’m not here, I’m inside there along with Wind, Legend, Vio and Blue. This is Hyrule.’ ”

“New names…” Saya mutters. “Were there many more inhabitants of this world than I thought? Or is it that these people have been wrapped into Arcaea’s weave some time ago?”

“They might be like me. Somewhere along the line, after the world shattered and the sky grew warm again like you said, they somehow broke into this realm and awoke with no memories like you and I.”

“‘Broke into’ isn’t quite correct, Nil. More like they somehow entered.”

“But they did break into this place.” A rare scoff escapes from Saya as she brushes a strand of hair out of her vision. Much like an elevator stopping at its destination, the platform goes completely still when it touches the ground and rises back up as the two get off.

“How many records have been damaged?” she asks.

“Above two hundred and fifty is a safe guess.”

“Then this only confirms that whoever broke in wasn’t that reaper as she reveres those memories like living, breathing beings. It is quite funny, considering this is a strange sort of ‘after’.”

“And are you going to show me that ‘world’ like you told me you would?”

“I will.”

“Along with Vita and an explanation?”

“...Yes.” Nil and Saya walk into a dark, shadowy corridor past a message scratched out into the floor. They head past a dark and grand chamber filled with torn curtains, towards a seemingly innocuous wall whose surface is pristine from any sort of blood whatsoever. Saya touches the wall, said wall rippling and disappearing.

Behind it is a rectangular elevator which she motions for Nil to follow her into. They head into the chamber of obsidian glass, the cold air becoming freezing as they descend into the earth. Nil’s breaths turn misty and Saya just slightly adjusts her cape to cover her arms as the walls disappear to reveal a massive cavern filled with glowing sparks like fireflies.

A giant ‘tree’ rests at the center, its soft radiance dyeing the cavern a dark blue. Around the tree are dozens of other plants, stems and stalks having taken over the roots of said tree. Innumerable leaves and blades of verdant grass spread out through the floor of the chamber, running beside a river whose mouth plunges into a waterfall.

“Is that your world?” Nil questions, pointing at the tree. Saya nods in response as the elevator comes to a still at ground level, her heels making a clopping noise as she makes her way to the tree. However, Nil soon notices that her gait becomes less and less confident when she approaches the tree and a new, unfamiliar figure kneeling before it.

“Is that—”

“Yes,” Saya cuts off. “That is Vita.”

“You never told me she was a child.” Saya stops just before Vita’s body, kneeling down and letting a single droplet of emotion drip through her usually emotionless eyes. The little girl’s body has been frozen by glass, crystal formations having frozen her arms and legs in place.

Vita’s eyes are wide and blank, but if one looks carefully, her puffy eyes give away that she was crying in her final moments. Saya’s face becomes completely apathetic again, seemingly nonchalant as she begins to speak again after some silence.

“In retrospect, I was a sort of parental figure to her. And I regret that I was incapable…”

“Regret…” Nil mutters. “You don’t really talk about anything you consider irrational that often. I thought you focused on building this new world and freeing the girls simply out of curiosity and the want for a reason.”

“I gave up on finding reason long ago. This world is nihil embodied. Do you understand why I gave you that name now?”

“And in a strange irony, I believe that the future will vindicate me with a meaning to all this,” Nil replies. “How are we not at each other's throats or like strangers?”

The corner of Saya’s lips quirk upwards with sarcasm.

“Because you don’t let that heart of yours cloud your rationality.” The woman gets up and strolls past the girl, heading towards the luminescent tree. She reaches out to touch the tree, but reconsiders and pulls that hand back.

“Nil, did you meet anyone before I found you? How long had you wandered before we started working together?”

“No one. I felt like I had been wandering for months, maybe years before we met. At that time, I was also trying to search for something that I couldn’t explain. I wanted to know everything about this world so that I could make my next decision. Sometimes, I had vague feelings of recollection and thought a lot about it, but eventually dismissed those feelings as I realized they didn’t do anything to help.”

“You and Lethe appear quite similar with those pointed ears, but your viewpoints are like day and night. I am thankful that you are nothing like that stubborn, bullheaded woman.” Nil huffs with arms folded.

“If we ever do encounter her again, I will not let any casualties happen.” Another sardonic smile appears on Saya’s expression.

“You do realize we want each other dead, no?”

“I do, but violence isn’t always productive,” Nil challenges.

“A peculiar suggestion. You are saying for us to talk?”

“I am. Is that too difficult?”

“I had tried that when Vita was with me. It ended as well as one might expect.” Saya turns back and observes Nil. A regret begins to blossom in her as she looks at him and his appearance, soon smothering that blossom to pieces when it tells her about his and Vita’s similarities.

“I’m not going to press further,” Nil assures her. “Now then, about the unidentified fluctuations Lagrange had told us about?”

“Let us make haste. If we depart any later, the possible anomaly would have already disappeared.” The pair head back upwards, leaving behind the tree and the girl. Nil curls his fist as the elevator ascends from the depths of the earth. When he had wandered the world with only the intent to ‘know’, he encountered a silent wasteland. Broken pathways, fallen walls and aimlessly hanging chains decorated the frigid repository of crystals.

However, it was not the cold that made him shiver; it was the body of an unthinking, unfeeling and unmoving woman who wore a blue dress. A massive, scintillating spike protruded through her chest like a sword being driven straight through her, but for some reason, he could find no blood. Most of her and the umbrella he assumed she carried around were crystallized like ice, her blank eyes staring into the gray and brilliant heavens.

She was breathing. She was alive. But was she truly ‘alive’? Was she truly alive when all she could do was stare into the sky without a single remnant of thought?

Now knowing that Vita suffered the same fate, his resolve has been steeled. And even if Saya believes that nothing she does has any meaning whatsoever, he will find a way to prove it to her no matter if everything the two have built falls apart.

Saya and Nil emerge from the dark chamber. As soon as sunlight bounces from a shard and hits them, the former grabs him by the arm and touches the pale blossom on her right eye. Nil sighs as the world begins to spin. He’s always disliked Saya’s teleportation because of the way the warped world makes him want to fall over.

Space becomes uniform as the two remerge from a glass shard. He can feel Saya letting go of his arm as he takes in the location she’s warped them to. Nonsensical arches encircling a long plunge, waterfalls majestically roaring at the island she’s taken them to. A shifting feeling swarms at his ankles while he walks, almost as if he’s wading through a river of shale. He looks down to see a sea of black glass whose lagoons slowly dry up into an island.

“Someone else has gotten here before us,” Saya notes. As Nil is about to speak up, a sudden string is struck in his heart. A twinge of some emotion he can’t quite really identify strikes him with the precision of a surgical needle, a vivid image of a white cloak drifting through the air suddenly present in his mind. There it is again. That feeling of familiarity that hounds him. Who are these people in the visions? Why are they in his supposedly blank memories?

“You…” a new voice hisses. Saya immediately tenses, turning back to see a blonde haired woman with majestic horns atop her head.

“Long time no see, Lethe,” she responds without a hint of mirth. Lethe’s hands tighten on her scythe.

“Weren’t you traveling with a child before? Saya, what happened to her?” the reaper asks in a tone screaming danger.

“And it seems like you have also taken someone in,” Saya ripostes. Nil looks at a teenager warily standing a few paces behind Lethe, most likely older than twelve yet younger than fifteen.

“Don’t tell me you have polluted his rationality with your baseless ideals,” Saya says with a tone of condemnation.

“Polluted? You’re just heartless. You must have replaced that girl with whoever you’re with right now because she was a burden to you!” Lethe accuses, her voice beginning to fill with intensifying indignation.

Saya’s uncovered eye narrows, and the world seems to freeze in fear.

“Heartless? I am heartless? You think I replaced Vita? You dare think that she is no more than a tool in my eyes? Have you ever been awoken by a sneeze so severe it alarms you? Have you ever worried about the life of another living being?”

However, Lethe still stands tall and does not flinch at Saya’s silent, oppressive acrimony. The cascade of vitriol only intensifies, the pressure suddenly increasing by ten, no, a hundredfold.

“It’s easy for you, who desecrates the memories and souls of the dead, to say!”

“Does that even connect to my previous argument?” Saya retorts. Lethe’s eye narrows in pure vexation and she shouts,

“That’s IT, I’ve had ENOUGH!” The reaper bends her arm, preparing to cut down the person before her. However, her right arm is suddenly held back.

“Styx?” she questions, looking towards the person restraining her.

“I know you hate her, but violence will just make things worse,” Styx replies, his tone stern as his grip on her arm tightens. On the other side, Nil desperately holds onto Saya’s cape to prevent her from moving.

“Time out!” Nil shouts. “Not a single drop of blood will be shed!”

Saya tries to break free, but Nil yanks her cape backwards. The former loses her balance, Nil quickly grabbing her arm to restrain her in place. Lethe tries to go in for a swing, but Styx locks his arms around Lethe’s and shifts his center of gravity to the lock, rooting her firmly in place.

“Stop fighting!” the boys say in unison as they hold back their respective companions. Saya and Lethe glare at each other, but even the harsh looks from the other two is not enough to force their escalating squabble to a halt.

“Let me GO!” Lethe shouts, struggling to break free from Styx’s iron hold.

“Not until you promise to stop fighting!” Styx shouts with aggravation, holding on for dear life as Lethe tries to yank her arms away from the lock. However, she throws her weight in Styx’s direction, disorienting him and forcing the boy to let go.

Lethe charges towards Saya with her scythe arm extended, a trail of dust shooting from behind her shoes like a comet’s trail. The imminent danger overwhelming Saya’s senses, she raises her leg and slams the sharp part of her heel into Nil’s stomach. The shock leaves him recoiling, the loosening of his grip for a mere second letting Saya jump out of the way from the scythe aimed at her neck.

A flock of glass flies like a razor wind towards Lethe, and the reaper swats away the shards with her blade like a half moon traversing a starlit lake’s surface. A swing comes for Saya’s neck, but she swiftly evades and grabs a nearby fragment, intending to repay the favor in full. The glass whirls like an axle spin, Lethe’s eyes its destination. However, another shard forces it into a blade lock and a gloved hand casually stops Lethe’s blade from hitting its target.

“I said, not a single drop of blood will be shed.”

Nil stands between them, his expression completely serious and commanding. The air gains a chill as the aggressive exchange between Saya and Lethe completely cuts off, Nil’s usual steadfast and calculating gaze now filled with authority and elegance.

The tightening of his grip on the scythe and increased force put into his shard hand send a silent warning towards the two on opposite sides, a threat to put things to a stop himself if they refuse to capitulate. He knocks Saya away by overpowering her fragment and with a single hand, sends the scythe caught clattering to the ground.

“Are we ready to talk like adults now?” he says with a hint of contempt. Lethe tries to call her trusted weapon to her hand, but Nil grabs her arm in a way that a little more strength would twist it. In a last resort, she tries to spear Nil with her horns, but he grabs one just in time to throw her down to the ground. As she groans while trying to get up, she asks with equal amounts trepidation and animosity,

“Who, or what exactly are you?” With his other hand, he easily bests Saya in their duel of glass, the sheer force of his shard pushing her to the point she puts a hand on the ground to increase her friction.

“It doesn’t matter,” he responds as he brushes the dust off his sleeve. “But if you really need my name, it’s Nil.”

“Did you know that there used to be a child who traveled with that heartless person behind you?” Lethe comments, barely hiding a seethe. A rhetorical question, but Nil knows exactly what to say in response.

“The girl with blonde hair, red eyes and a black dress? Of course I do. Saya isn’t the type to withhold truth and obscure reason. No, she’d much rather say it as it is and continue on with her work.” Lethe, about to take a step forward in defiance, is abruptly stopped when Styx taps her on the shoulder. A reprimand nearly escapes from her, but she sharply exhales in bitter surrender when Styx remains obstinate. He walks forward, facing Nil head on without any fear. However, there is veiled acrimony laced in his words.

“Pleasure to meet you, Nil. My name’s Styx.”

“Pleasure to meet you too, Styx,” Nil returns with half-hearted, false courteousness, his voice betraying his thoughts on the other person.

“May I start?”

“Whenever you want.”

“Why did you and Saya come here?” Styx inquires.

“A colleague of ours had detected an unusual energy spike right where we are standing,” Nil answers, choosing his words carefully.

“Interesting. Me and Lethe came here for a similar reason. Recently, she noticed that the Arcaea have been restless nowadays, as if they are waking from a long slumber. She sensed that the memories pointed her in a certain direction, so she followed it. Along the way, she met me and we agreed to travel together.”

“Why exactly did she agree to travel with you?”

“There is someone I’d like to meet,” Styx says, the twitch in the boy’s eye just barely noticed by Nil.

“I don’t think it’s right to just leave him alone,” Lethe adds. “It’s all too easy to get lost here.”

“Surprising, coming from someone like you,” Saya mutters from behind.

“Back to our topic,” Nil interrupts in a louder voice. “Ever since an incident left Vita in a frozen state, Saya and I have been trying to find a way to free her. In hopes of finding a potential clue, we traveled here.”

“Vita’s… one of the ones who chose to rest?” Lethe asks, suddenly disturbed. “Don’t you know that you can’t truly bring the dead or frozen back?”

“I know full well of that,” Saya answers. “However, leaving her in that state is simply what someone with too much time would do.”

“There’s an irrevocable, absolute boundary between life and death, memory and the present. You can’t violate it as you please,” the reaper says, her voice more assertive. Saya clenches her teeth, deciding to try a more, to her, alien alternative.

“You used to guide souls to the afterlife, no?” she begins. “Surely you have seen the souls of children who have died too young.”

“If it’s their time, no matter how unfortunate, I cannot do anything about it.” No matter how steadfast Lethe presents her answer, there is an undeniable waver in her words.

“Is it wrong to want a deceased loved one back?”

“No…”

“And Vita is technically alive.”

“...”

A thin smile begins to grow on Saya’s face.

“If you want to know more,” she continues, “then walk through this glass.”

A lavender shard seemingly materializes out of nowhere. She tosses it and it suddenly freezes in space, enlarging like a mirror to another world. Reflected on its surface is what seems to be an astral observatory, abstract structures of gold wrapping the place as if it were a globe. The domed, diagrid roof crosses a greenhouse with a planetarium, capping a cylindrical room full of instruments and glass arranged with the principle of reason. The person who Lethe identifies as Nil draws near to Saya, the pair soon vanishing into thin air. She looks with trepidation at the portal before her, looking at Styx.

“If we don’t try, how can we know?” he says, walking to her side.

“I don’t know if this is right,” she replies. “We’ve always fought with each other, hissed at each other, cursed each other out, our ideals diametrically opposed, but now…”

“I don’t know if this is right too, but I think that’s for you to judge, Miss Lethe. You’ve been here for much longer than I have.” A step. Another. Anticipation fills the reaper as she approaches the lavender light of the glass, nearing and nearing to the observatory on the other side. Something new in a world that doesn’t change; isn’t that slightly scary? For the first time in a while, a thousand futures fill her mind: of worst case scenarios, of disasters in the making, of insults and lies.

As she places her foot into the observatory however, an unfamiliar face greets her.

“Lethe, are you not?” the alien woman before her inquires. Her braided violet hair and the little creature with kite shaped ears are the first things to catch Lethe’s attention, the second being the fact that the woman knows her name.

“Did Saya tell you?” Lethe cautiously replies.

“Indeed. I apologize for not introducing myself first. My name is Lagrange.” A sudden crash roars through the place like thunder, the sound of clanging metal reverberating from wall to wall. Lagrange steps aside to reveal a figure on the floor, most likely having tripped on the numerous instruments scattered across the ground.

“That over there is my assistant Finixe. Please forgive his carelessness.”

Lethe gives a slightly surprised, then pitying glance at the fallen Finixe. She notices Nil shaking, barely curbing his laughter, and Lagrange giving a small sigh. Suddenly, the little creature beside Lagrange approaches her, curiously wiggling its ears at her. As if on instinct, she reaches out to pet the thing, choosing to ignore the chaos in the background as it gently bounces in delight.

Well, she supposes, none of her worst-case scenarios look to be coming true any time soon.

Chapter Text

‘I am not these dark clothes I was born with. I am not these dark memories I am tormented by.’

A hopeful thought that led to tragedy. A blinding radiance ended that tragic story.

But when the dark turns to light, she awakens… in a ruined tower. Her memories are scattered and her head is fuzzy, but for some reason, she remembers.

Remembers…?

This isn’t normal, right?

The girl looks at herself and sees— sees that she is exactly back where she had started. Except that this time, something doesn’t feel right. When she gets up, why isn’t the glass hounding her?

She tries to recall further, and remembers a great battle with… with who? There must be something incomplete. She tries to search her soul, and it begins to dawn upon her that something is missing from her very being. But the name ‘Tairitsu’… that name hasn't disappeared.

She clenches her teeth and attempts to recall just anything, searching the depths of her heart to find an answer. She remembers her first awakening. The obsidian mirrors that maliciously followed her around like a mockery of her fate. Then a labyrinth which for some reason, changed something in her. She can’t remember what caused that change, unfortunately.

A meeting in a dilapidated chapel, but with who? A battle, but why?

She tries to think even further, to search the gaps of her memory, but a texture like glass bits manifests in her throat. She gags, but nothing comes out. Her vision is clouded with stars while static buzzes in her ears, everything topsy turvy and filled with kaleidoscope colors.

The girl looks at her hands, touches her arm, and it all feels normal. However, her beating heart will not cease to return to its original pace. Oh, a certain, recognizable feeling of helplessness germinates in her core. There’s something wrong.

At that moment, a vivid memory strikes her, and she remembers one more thing:

She isn’t supposed to be here. This entire situation shouldn’t be possible.

“How… did I…?” the girl strains, beginning to shake from realization. A haunting feeling grips her like thorny vines at her throat, and the girl realizes she is on borrowed time.

She has to complete herself. There is no if, there is no but, she has to do it. Otherwise…

Chapter Text

What does ‘justice’ mean?

What does ‘righteousness’ mean?

These questions have been floating around in Saya’s head for some aimless, useless reason. Despite that, the answers to those have graced her long ago:

It matters not.

Perhaps the thoughts began when the first incident occurred. It was some time after she found out the culprit of her archive’s vandalism: five people with pointed ears like Lethe. One more with a white cape followed from behind them, perhaps joining after the incident, but something had ticked Saya off about that individual.

As a rhetoric, she had asked if the six newcomers knew there was a Creator. That person’s response?

“This world of theirs can burn.”

His companions were quite disturbed, a child in turquoise loudly objecting. However, three cold words escaped him:

“I don’t care.”

Saya had never met anyone lacking so much empathy and self preservation before. She was… intrigued.

Therefore, she extended her hand to offer him and his companions to join her and everyone else’s insignificant clique.

This little gathering of the lost aims to find a way to… take ideological revenge, as Lagrange puts it.

If the Creator embodies apathy, then they are volition.

If the Creator turns a blind eye to those who have frozen themselves, they will free those people just to spite the Creator.

Not much time has passed since they have started working together. Their days consist of going to aberrant locations, scouting them out, analyzing and experimenting. Most of the time, the one named Wild leads these excursions, most often taking along the ones named Legend and Wind. The child of miniscule stature, Four, is usually working on something with Saya and Lagrange.

Lethe has been tending to the glass near and in the Void, occasionally venturing deeper into that fraying hem, but not once to the ‘lowest world’. Meanwhile, Styx has been out on solitary excursions to locate the place where a great battle occurred long ago to find answers. Finally, supporting everyone is Finixe, going around to help.

…One day, a glass hurtled straight to the white caped person’s neck. He narrowly sidestepped it, the shard flying into the wall. Saya had been near him when it took place in the winding hallway between rooms of the observatory, immediately calling for an urgent meeting. They were not able to educe the source of the attack, but one thing was for certain: it had to have been intentional.

This was the first incident, and this had made her mind wander to a question she had abandoned with an empty answer.

The second incident is now.

“—with this evidence, there is only one thing I can conclude,” Lagrange announces, standing at the center of the meeting room.

“The perpetrator is in our presence.”

Disconcert and doubt is passed along like a hot stone, a game played by darting eyes. Seeds of suspicion begin to shake the woven crown of roses whose thorns died long ago, the little organic daggers reviving to burrow into its wearer’s head.

The name of the one who bears the crown of twelve roses is trust, and trust’s head is now bleeding.

“A traitor?” Nil questions. “Then I will be their judge, jury and executioner. I don’t take traitors lightly, you know?”

He withdraws a small, thin knife from a pouch strapped to his calf, holding the gleaming weapon for all to see. The light bounces from the metal and across the floor, anticipating for its shine to be dulled by spilled blood.

“No matter who you are, I will raise this blade against you if you dare turn your back on us.”

“You… you’re crazy,” Legend mutters. “You’re really willing to kill us?”

“If torture doesn’t work, then I have no choice but to put you down. After all, can a general lead an army if it is filled with candorless, sycophantic backstabbers?”

“Please listen to me, everyone!” Four interrupts. “We can’t just start pointing fingers.”

“Everyone’s safety is on the line,” Nil replies, dismissing Four’s suggestion. “We could die.”

“I agree. We gotta find the whole truth first,” Wind adds, eyeing everyone.

“Then I suggest we each keep track of who was with us, what actions did they take and if an attack happens again, who it targeted or was closest to,” Lagrange says. “Saya, weren’t you with Sky when the first attack happened?”

“Indeed,” the aforementioned person replies.

“The second attack happened to target Wind, no?”

“Wild was with me when it happened,” Wind says. “We were walking around the hallway, discussing the first incident when glass shot straight for my neck. We ran into Styx while trying to warn everyone about what just happened.”

“Styx, your alibi?” Lagrange inquires. Styx takes a step forward and begins speaking.

“I recently came back from a mission as usual and was resting in the meeting room when Wild and Wind panickedly entered the room. They told me that another attack had happened and it went for Wind this time.”

“I vouch for Styx,” Lethe adds. “I saw him walking towards the meeting room myself near the time of the incident as I was about to head out.” Lagrange begins to frown, her fingers curling into a fist.

“Whoever our perpetrator is, they are quite intelligent,” she remarks. “Multiple, seemingly unrelated people are being targeted to hide their intent. However, there is one thing they didn’t account for:

“Their target happens to be only the newcomers.”

“Are you implying that the culprit is not the six of us?” Four asks, warily glancing at Saya and Nil.

“Precisely. They must hold a grudge against the six of you.”

A silent, intangible explosive is detonated at this statement, and if everyone’s blood were to be combined in a flask, the crimson concoction would freeze. Despite that, Styx, the paragon of tranquil, brushes it off with his next words.

“We would be getting nothing done if we stand here and panic. Everyone, let’s resume our activities and see what happens.”

“But—” Nil interjects, only to get cut off by Finixe.

“I agree fully. C’mon everyone, we’ve got stuff to do. This effort won’t get itself done. Meeting adjourned, everyone go back to what you were doing.” With unsure glances at each other, everyone files out of the room save for Saya and Lagrange. The two’s facade of neutrality is abruptly let down as they walk towards the furthest side of the room, and they begin to discuss.

“There is something about Sky that feels off-putting,” Lagrange begins, her voice hushed.

“It has come to your notice as well, I see,” Saya replies. She leans against the wall, facing her conversation partner and the entrance. Those useless, philosophical thoughts start to bother her again, but she drives them away with a simple self-assurance that it is all vapid nonsense.

“I said that the perpetrator’s target were the newcomers,” Lagrange raises six fingers, “but I did not tell them that I suspect that it has to be one of our own companions. They clearly seem to trust each other very much, so much so that it could be dangerous to both us and themselves.”

“Adding that along with the fact that those six, our companions and Styx seem to have known each other in their past lives further complicates this situation. However, memory loss can easily change a person. Nil’s hawkish attitude before fosters my own suspicion for him.”

“You’re not blaming Lethe for this?” Lagrange questions, tilting her head. Saya only sighs.

“She lacks the intellect to execute this sort of stunt. She would rather kill me directly.”

“…So that’s how you think. Then I feel it is only fair that I also hold my vigil against Finixe since he was silent through the whole affair.”

“By that logic, the six should be under suspicion as well.”

“What motive would Wind have? I neither doubt the child’s incapability of malicious intent or my proficiency at deduction.”

“A fair judgement. Therefore, everyone except for Wind are potential suspects as well.”

“Now, to our side,” Lagrange pronounces, lowering herself to the floor in order to sit with her back against the wall. As she brushes her dress, Saya follows suit, resting right next to her. The latter’s black cape flutters as she sits down as well, momentarily blocking Lagrange’s view.

“Isn’t it a pain to wear that?” she flippantly remarks.

“Arcaea has insisted on a mandatory black cape as part of my attire. I do not understand why, but there are more beneficial activities to carry out than ponder on the seemingly arbitrary nature of our apparel.”

“Then make that an extra question we will solve in the future. Apologies for the tangent, this question had been drifting in my mind for quite the duration. Now, onto Styx and his alibi. Put succinctly, it is perfect. Furthermore, it is backed up by Lethe’s testimony. However, I don’t deny the possibility of him orchestrating all this.”

“In that case, I have a plan to rule out possibilities.”

A gray plain of ash and detritus. Obsidian arches hang high above, iridescent in color and standing silent like halos erupting from the soil while shimmering scales drift down from said arches. Crystals float in the dark purple sky at varying elevations, their chatoyance gently reflected onto the dark ground while brambles of impossible blue roses pervade the whole area.

Legend finds himself aimlessly drifting through the field of roses, sauntering past a dark stairway reaching for the clouds and as strange as it seems, beholding the grand piano frozen in the sky. With his eyes to the sky however, the tangle of vines on the ground is of no notice to him.

When he desperately tries to regain his balance however, the tangle only ensnares his ankle tighter like snaking claws holding its squirming prey. In a sudden, a volley of glass head straight for his trapped foot, Legend panickedly trying all sorts of maneuvers to break free of his restraints including curling in on himself to brace for injury.

The glass hits… the vines. Not him, not his leg, but the very vines that have caught him. A hand is extended to him by the person who sent the glass, and he groans.

“Need a hand?” his rescuer offers, extending the eponymous body part.

“Why did Saya think it was a good idea to pair me and you of all people…” Legend mutters. “Wild, I’ve already lost it once because of you, once more because of Sky, don’t make this the third time.”

“By the first time, you mean the tower incident?” Wild asks, leaning a bit to the side in curiosity.

“What do you think?” is Legend’s sassy response. Yet, something else more sincere escapes him, something more… bitter.

“...You know, I’m still mad at you for what you did there.”

Wild’s gaze shifts to the side, and he can’t bring himself to look at Legend when he gives his reply.

“I’m still mad at myself too. For some reason, I always fight when there’s a problem. I don’t listen. I don’t consider others’ viewpoints.” The former walks somewhere further and sits with his back turned against the latter, the two unable to face each other.

“You’re right about not listening,” Legend admits, “But I’m also guilty of that. I made the same mistake as you the first time we confronted Sky.”

“Guess you and I are more similar than we thought.”

Their backs are still turned against each other, but the air begins to lighten. Then, Legend’s eyes widen as he hears something he’d never expected to hear.

“…I’m sorry for chasing after you and rallying everyone to follow me,” Wild says, bunching his tunic in his hands. “For some reason, I couldn’t get the idea that you didn’t want to remember.”

Now, it is Legend’s turn to say what he’s wanted to say for a long time, pride and shame all shoved away to make a path for those words he hid deep down in the depths of his heart.

“Then I’m also sorry for trying to hurt you and end your life despite knowing the truth.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Wild interjects. “No means no, and I didn’t respect that. You have every right to hate me.”

Suddenly, Wild feels a warmth against his back and another head leaning against his own.

“That happened, this is now. Let’s bury this hatchet.”

“…Thank you. I guess what matters most now is—”

“—our perpetrator.”

The blue roses gently sway in the breeze as the two look above. Once upon a time, these heavens were torn apart and bleeding gray, the world falling into ruin at two giants’ clash. Whereas the diametrically opposed could never reconcile a millennium ago, the two here have let the last drop of blood trickle before closing the wound. The little drop disperses in the river, rushing towards the great estuary of the unknown future.

Yes. Only one thing matters now.

Chapter Text

It has been a while since the boy met the girl. It has been a long while since they had started traveling together. The veritable, ethereal lost paradise of Arcaea suddenly seems much less mournful with the presence of another, the two sharing smiles and conversation.

The boy finds that he enjoys the chatter accompanying the idyllic world that unfolds on and on like an endless open air library. When his travels were solitary, every single thought and remark of his was internalized.

“Ah— look over here!” the girl says, running off to yet another sheen that has caught her fancy.

“Don’t run off just like that! You’ll get lost!” the boy shouts, racing like the wind to catch up with her. Now tailing her, he observes the landscape to find what has enraptured her this time. What a headache her spontaneity can be, but the excitement never gets old when she finds something new.

The radiant plains of Arcaea dotted with ruins slowly fade into a muted tone, the expansive prairie of gray clouds hanging above letting cold light through in shafts. The ground beneath begins to make crunching sounds as he and the girl are welcomed into the almost divine realm.

White rock formations break through the ground like spikes piercing through a massive sheet of white velvet, the silhouette of massive arches that touch even the sky obscured by the gathering of swathes of bright clouds. A passing gale bites at his face, and the boy pulls closer to the girl for some form of comfort. The girl’s cheeks are rosy and her breaths have turned misty, a sign that she isn’t faring as well as he’s hoping.

Snow, an uncommon sight in Arcaea. He’s only seen them through memories and doesn’t recall there being any snowfall in this world, but somehow isn’t surprised at the existence of a tundra like this. Looking at the snow that has landed on his palm, it resembles scales or dead organic matter. This strange, strange world really has everything, doesn’t it?

“Is that… snow?” the girl asks, kneeling down as well. “I’ve always wanted to hold a snowflake.”

“Well, I don’t think snow will be falling any time soon.”

“Then maybe a few years?”

“Maybe. The problem is that we can’t even tell if a day has passed or not, much less a year. Give or take, I may have been here for months before meeting you.” The girl gives a little nudge that causes him to lose balance, the boy falling to the side like an unbalanced rock tower being knocked over.

“Don’t think about it too hard!” she asserts with a playful grin. When the boy doesn't get up nor respond, the girl’s face quickly turns worried and she starts shaking his motionless body. However, in a sudden, he jerks awake and gives a push of his own that causes her to also fall over.

“Not very funny, right?” he says, a hint of a satisfied grin on his face. Despite that, the girl does not laugh. She quickly gets up and points at something, a dark figure standing out from against the pale snow. The figure suddenly collapses onto the ground, and the girl rushes to it. The boy follows along and sees the girl on the ground, supporting someone else by the neck: another girl, this one in black.

“We should get away from here,” she says, looking at the person with concern. “Her body, it’s too cold.”

The boy picks the unconscious person up, bridal style, and gives a brief nod to the girl. The two trudge through silent, snowy lands with a third person, eventually arriving at the border between spring and winter. When a warm bluster of wind drags its soothing fingers across their cheeks, the darkly clothed girl’s eyelids begin to flutter. Noticing her stirring, the boy immediately jogs to a fallen wall, setting her against it. A murmur escapes her as she comes to, the bright light causing her to flinch.

“Who… are you?” she whispers, looking at the boy. “How did— how did I end up here?”

“Rest easy,” he replies. “We found you unconscious in a cold, snowy place, so we took you to somewhere warmer. Are you okay now?”

“...I’m fine. Who is that over there?” she asks, pointing at the girl in white. Suddenly, the girl in black lets out a yelp and clutches her head. Visions flash through her mind like a rewinding video, of a chance meeting that led to destruction. Solitary suffering, aimless agony, sardonic and mocking laughter, the memories brought up dredges of herself that she never even realized existed. A single word escapes her.

“Hikari?”

The girl in white freezes up at the name, but suddenly relaxes.

“That name… is it mine?” she asks. “It feels… right.”

“Perhaps,” the girl in black replies. “Then… my name should be Tairitsu.”

“Do you know mine, then?” the boy inquires. Tairitsu shakes her head, and he sighs.

“For all my time here, I’ve never seen someone like you,” she answers. “How did you end up here, exactly? How did she end up here?”

“I awakened to a bright sky and pale glass. After peering into it, I wanted to collect more to enjoy myself. I soon met… Hikari, if that is her name, lying asleep in a patch of flowers. When she woke up, we made brief conversation and began to travel together. None of us have any memories of anything, but you seem to recall things.”

“You’re perceptive,” Tairitsu praises. “I do remember quite a few things. In fact, I remember dying in this world and waking up again like this. My soul was fractured after that death, and I’m searching for more pieces.”

“Do you want to travel with us?” Hikari offers, getting closer to extend a hand to the other girl. Tairitsu nods and accepts, getting up to look at the two brightly clothed individuals. A pit growls in her, knowing that the very person who extended her hand was the same person to have murdered her a long time ago.

But… she doesn’t feel any hate. She doesn’t know why, but she can feel that her actions were enough to warrant her own death.

Now walking behind the other two, a second wind blows behind her. A second chance. She can do it right this time. She can do something meaningful, something good in this cruel world.

Even if it turns out to be nothing, even if it is useless, it won’t break her like it did last time. Whatever that shard of her had seen, it twisted her soul beyond repair, but a small hope remained. Tairitsu must be that separated hope, having seen the worst but ready to get up and fight again.

Her first act of defiance against Arcaea in this second chance will be to keep these two sane.

Chapter Text

What would an outsider think in the face of highly personal happenstance?

When Hyrule had passed out from exhaustion from healing everyone, he had a dream. A long, long time ago, from even before the new world, there was someone Hyrule had always wanted to know better. The person was steady. Friendly. A source of joy. A pinch of mischief, a bucket of sass, that person was filled with all those little things that made life a little better. He felt safe with that person.

Within the velvet folds of the dream, the two were walking through misty, mystic woods with pines so tall they seemed to bend as they reached for the afternoon horizon. Dulcet whispering of wildlife glided through the air, flowing through hollow mossy logs and joining the murmuring of a brook in a dance of nature.

“You know,” the person started, “I don’t like running around, unlike the rest of you, but this view is just amazing.”

“I know, right? Everything’s so green and wonderful and alive!” Hyrule smiled, voice bubbly like sparkling seafoam.

“You’re so excited about just a forest…” the person sighed, but the sigh soon turned into an inquisitive lilt. “What was your home like?”

“I’m… not sure,” Hyrule admitted. “Everything I know is just white ruins, white landscapes and more white things. If it weren’t for Wild, then I wouldn’t be sure if I had ever visited a real forest.”

“All you know is white?” Hyrule looked away as if he was the sun covering its face at night.

“I woke up in a pale world,” he began, “and knew nothing. I’m supposed to be Hyrule, the hero who used to travel with Wild and others before we got split up in that pale world, but I don’t know if that’s really me.”

A soft hand soon rested on Hyrule’s shoulder, and comfort rolled off like soothing, undulating waves of clouds from his companion.

“Well, even if you’ve forgotten,” his companion started, “I think you’re still you, no matter what. Sure, you take the memory away and some part of you leaves too, but your core is still there.”

A warmth began to spread from Hyrule’s chest to everywhere in him, all of those haunting questions and doubts being silenced for just a moment. For once in a very, very long time, he felt his lips curl upwards.

“Thanks. I gotta be crazy for saying that sort of thing,” Hyrule smiled, but suddenly felt his heart about to burst. An ominous chime rang in his head as his companion walked before him, and suddenly stopped. His breathing constricted like a python wrapping around his windpipe when the other person’s head turned to look at him with a dead expression, filled with a thousand unreleased shrieks of madness. Now, Hyrule finally knew who he had been walking with.

“No. I think I’m the crazy one here,” Sky uttered.

Crimson suddenly colored Hyrule’s vision as he noticed glass quickly sweeping across his vision. Then, pain unlike anything he ever felt before incinerated every nerve in his neck as if the very concept of rage itself condensed into every possible synapse that it could reach and sent a message that only spoke of one thing: he would not see the day again. As he tried to scream, only gurgling sounds and the overwhelming stench of iron came out. The landscape flickered between forest and the pale remains of a collapsed tower, all covered in a blood-colored filter.

Scarlet liquid rushed out of his mouth like a downpour as he could only stare into Sky’s eyes. In those eyes was something Hyrule inherently both could and could not understand. No, he could not understand what it was itself… but his being understood its nature. The closest word he could find to describe it—

Insanity.

Sky was a nightmare with a bloodstained umbrella that had crawled from the darkest parts of Hyrule’s imagination, the antithesis of everything Hyrule stood for.

Paralyzing terror surged within the latter the moment the epiphany had revealed itself to him. He tried to breathe, but only wheezed. Sky’s head tilted slightly in some of interest as he watched Hyrule struggle onto life. Hyrule tried to hold on, tried to stabilize his condition, clutched at his neck to stem the bleeding… but went limp as soon as words came from Sky’s mouth.

“You’re still alive? Why do you try?” Haze soon began to overwhelm Hyrule’s being as he continued to fight against his inevitable death, but an answer slipped out from him, an answer run ragged with desperate gasps.

“Because—I don’t know how— to give up!!”

A sharp object suddenly lodged itself in Hyrule’s throat, and no matter how much he wanted to scream, his vocal cords had been severed.

“Worthless. No matter how hard you try, the outcome remains the same.”

A powerful force pushed Hyrule’s flimsy body in an instant and his head struck the ground. His teeth sunk into his tongue, yet he could not even bring himself to express any more pain. Something began to eat away at Hyrule’s heart. He didn’t know what it was, but it felt like the feeling of losing hope. Of giving up. It was something he thought he would never do, yet it felt almost familiar. Futility, was that the word? Was that the word to describe how he felt as he, unable to find the will to even hiss from the pain, looked into his murderer’s deranged expression?

Hyrule’s eyes flung open and his hair felt sticky from sweat matting it. His hands were clenched around his neck and they trembled, feeling for some invisible, nonexistent wound. Fear was a lesson that Sky had taught Hyrule with the skill of a professor.

Hyrule kept on holding his neck, making sure he was still alive. He rapidly heaved as he tried to ground himself in reality, even beginning to count the amount of fingers he had just to make sure he was alive, that it was all a bad dream and that he would not be stabbed in the neck. He was safe, he was sound, no one was out to kill him—

“Sky’s missing!” …Someone was out to kill him. Hyrule had to hold in a shout of terror as Four ran to the former with the news. As the group tried to find the aforementioned person, Hyrule hid behind everyone else as if using them as a shield. He trailed far behind everyone, fists curled and protecting vital areas such as his heart and, of course, his neck. The thumps of his heart reached even his fingertips as they managed to pinpoint Sky’s location, down on the island below.

As Hyrule jumped down the plunge, swam to the sand bank of the island and trekked up a tall hill, he could not stop thinking about what could possibly happen. When he came face to face with Sky atop the hill however, what he felt was not fear. Far from it, actually. Seeing his worst nightmare now so… terrified and helpless, he almost felt pity. Yet, repulsion still stirred in him whenever Hyrule remembered what Sky had done to everyone else, especially to Wind.

The aria of swaying crystals brings his mind to the present. Now, Hyrule stands amidst a giant forest of crystals, teardrop shaped gems hanging down from a string running through rhinestones. The prism-like tears split light into seven colors, rainbow fragments spread across the ground like bands of vibrance. The trees themselves, standing so proud that he has to look up to see their crowns, have been crystallized too. Like a grove of mirrors, they scatter the rainbows specks and they glint with subtle wisdom as if having seen the world change, but itself staying the same.

By some terrible luck, he, Wind and Sky have been sent here by Lagrange for… some reason. Maybe Hyrule can’t remember properly, but it was for some investigation, right? Something about fluctuations, something about anomalies becoming more widespread, something about the world’s balance being shifted… He could not, for the life of him, concentrate during Lagrange’s detailed explanations. He’ll leave the complicated stuff to everyone else, thank you very much!

A little light catches his eye. With squinted eyes, one can say it resembles a firefly, mindlessly drifting with its luminescent body to ever so slightly illuminate the places it travels to. Hyrule tries to follow it to cup the gentle brilliance in his hands, but it flies away as if riding a wind blown by fate. Then, it stops behind a tree surrounding an amethyst glade, hovering in place as if hiding. He follows suit, unsure of why it has behaved that way, until words reach his ears from ahead.

“You don’t have to look at me like that. I already know what I am.” No wonder the firefly suddenly stopped; it heard Sky’s voice.

“What are you?” another voice replies, Hyrule recognizing it as Wind’s. The despondency in the latter’s voice makes the former’s shoulders droop, the weathered tone an unnatural phenomenon that should have never come to pass.

“A murderer who enjoys violence. Nothing more, nothing less,” Sky answers, just as Hyrule peeks from behind the trunk of the tree. A glacier soon freezes his circulation in place, however. Piles upon piles of shattered glass, Sky standing in the middle of the disorganised scene with an umbrella that is an imitation of the original. Wind stands next to Sky, and Hyrule wants to shout for Wind to get away as far as possible.

“I don’t think so. You seemed pretty horrified when you stabbed me. Not only that, you’re still here, so there’s gotta be some part of you that wants to make things right.”

“Why do you think so? Even if I’m ‘back’, even if my clothes are the green you’ve always known again, it doesn’t change the fact that I tried to murder everyone I met,” Sky responds coldly.

“I still believe there’s the old you left. You aren’t trying to pick fights or threaten us anymore,” Wind says, expression softening.

“You think I don’t want to pick fights? You think I’m not actively trying to suppress my violent thoughts?” Sky snaps. “I try, I really do try to act like how I used to, but the Sky you knew gave up, and I am here. Just a resentful, remorseful shadow of that good hearted, tranquil hero.”

“Every part of you is still you, like it or not. Yeah, you did some real bad stuff, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get better.”

“Still me…? You’re naïve.”

“Sky, you just said you’re back. You’re acting just like before Legend saved you—”

“OF COURSE I AM!” Sky roars, his simmering anger finally boiling over, and Hyrule can feel his heart banging against the walls of his insides like a prisoner desperate for escape. “I was being sarcastic! I was never ‘back’, everyone thinks I’m back, I’m NOT! I’m still that shade who gets furious at the slightest trigger, just able to feel self-loathing now!”

When Wind flinches however, Sky suddenly freezes up. Hyrule discretely leans forward and squints, noticing that the latter’s posture has drooped like a wilted plant.

“...I’m sorry,” Sky mutters. “Every part of me is still me, and I will never change. Please, don’t try to help me. I will only drag the both of us down.”

Hyrule takes another peek as silence falls between the pair ahead, but suddenly holds his breath when Sky begins walking in his direction. Hyrule immediately gets down on the ground as quietly as possible, hoping that the sussaration of the canopy would cover the rustling of bushes. The light also goes down with him, remaining still in solidarity of his efforts to stay unnoticed.

Breath held, he watches and waits for the subject of his eavesdropping to move out of range. Another pair of boots run past his hiding spot, unintelligible words flying through the air like an ephemeral arrow. The light suddenly dims and brightens as if it were winking, slithering through the shrubs as if it were a bioluminescent snake. Psithurism his cover, Hyrule sneaks along the path of little sparks left by the light. When it suddenly disappears from sight however, Hyrule does not slow down.

By some terrible luck, the ground beneath him is no ground— it is little more than a hole covered by foliage, perfectly sized to accommodate the circumference of his form. His heart jumps to his throat as he falls through the hole, free falling into a grotto filled with iridescent bryophytes. A bed of moss cushions his fall, but a sharp pain comes from his left leg as he tries to push himself up. Hyrule looks at the leg, and sees that his ankle has contorted into an unnatural shape. Power flows from his fingertips immediately, but a look of worry crosses him when the ankle does not twist itself back into its former glory.

Calling the scattered pieces of glass, he wills their form to change into that of a slapdash crutch. The light, his mysterious guide, swirls around him as if amused, and rushes towards a tunnel, illuminating its walls with soft radiance. Hyrule does his best to limp towards the light, going deeper and further into the grotto. The soft light from the hole above begins to disappear as he treks through the tunnel, darkness devouring its soft gleam and in turn, Hyrule himself.

Winding, twisting, turning, going through and across small, empty chambers like an earthworm, Hyrule ventures deeper and deeper into the grotto. Finally, all is as black as a void, and the only thing he can hear is the echo of his boots across the cavern walls. A soft, lavender light suddenly manifests into being, flying around and leaving a trail of colored glimmers in its wake as if excited. It soon comes to rest before him, and a veil made of auroras comes into existence around the circumference of the cavern.

“Greetings, dear Hyrule,” a voice says, the words ringing across the room.

“Wh—Where are you?! WHO are you?!” Hyrule says in alarm, raising his guard against the light.

“I cannot give you my name, for I have no name to give.”

“No… name?” Hyrule incredulously says. “Should I call you No Name?”

The voice seems to chortle, the light flying to his shoulder.

“I jest. Your confusion is endearing, and I do have a name. However, you are not to hear it until you have proven yourself. Despite that, I do feel quite gracious right now. Ask your questions, and I shall answer if I want to.”

“...Why haven’t I recovered my memory?”

“My!” the voice exclaims, and Hyrule jumps from the sudden, booming enthusiasm like the detonation of a bubble bomb. “You are more observant than I had initially judged you! Discerning, might I add. In comparison to your dear friends’ souls, the memory erasure worked as intended on yours. As a result, you face much greater difficulty than them in the recollection department.”

The lavender light begins to glide around as if it is a teacher explaining something on a blackboard that stretches from wall to wall.

“Oh, but that isn’t the only factor! You played a part in your own predicament as well! You see, Arcaea listens to ‘heart’. Your heart desires not for your past, therefore you do not receive it. Do you know Maya?”

Hyrule gives no reply, and the light gets nearer to his face. The former feels a certain discomfort, shrinking back as the voice continues to speak.

“Quite the charming girl. Loves to sing, or I assume she does. She carried into this world a heaping of memory, and wanted to suffer because of it. Arcaea listened to her desire, and gave her suffering. Pitiful memories of pitiful people, crying and alone.

“Eventually however, she realized she did not want to live that way. Maya decided she wanted to be happy. Audacious, considering ‘she’ had caused her own misery both then and in the past. Histrionic, even, when she broke down crying on the ground just a few moments ago. And yet, memories of bygone tales, of beautiful memories had come to warm her. She was repulsed at first, but then accepted Arcaea’s comfort—”

The light grows, transforming into a pair of angelic wings, and effulgent feathers drift down from it. They disappear into nothingness as the voice continues, Hyrule holding out his hand to grasp the falling scintillation.

“—like the embrace of an angel! She walked into the light through a path shaded by nightfall! A spectacular scene!” the voice declares, the pair of wings bursting with divine radiance. However, an ominous feeling causes Hyrule to steel his nerves, and he asks a question he dreads asking.

“So… what happens in the end?” A chill runs down his spine as he can almost visualize the owner of the voice smiling with a smile that can calm the oceans and still the very winds of life.

“Would it be appropriate to call her dead when she is still breathing? Oh no, don’t be mistaken; I’m not saying she is still thinking. Far from it.” The air stills, its breaths of wind silenced by the words, yet the spaces in between shudder.

“Any more questions?” the voice asks, so saccharine and condescendingly compassionate. “You have one chance left, then I shall leave you to connect the dots. It isn’t fun if I give you all the answers right now.”

“If so,” Hyrule blurts, “how do you know all this?”

“A forbidden question with a forbidden answer!” the voice proclaims. “But I am quite the benevolent being, so this does not count.”

Benevolent? More like a— Hyrule pushes down a flippant remark forming in his head and instead presents his inquiry.

“Can you tell me all about the glass monsters? I don’t think a ‘paradise for the lost’ would want to kill its inhabitants, if what Lagrange said is right.”

“Monsters…” the voice says with what seems to be disapproval. “What a lackluster, tawdry name for something as anomalous as them. Let us call them Horrors; a relic name from a relic time. These Horrors originate from none other than you and your other outlier eight. As I said, you nine are quite special, and with this sort of ‘special’, you actively cause malfunctions in Arcaea. These Horrors are one such malfunction, and they want you dead to further their own existence.”

“So the Horrors that have been chasing us down— we can never truly get rid of them?”

“Correct! Like a curse, you— dear me, I have answered one extra question. I have always loved discourse, so consider that my kindness to you. And a few words of advice: Don’t be so hasty in believing your eyes. Until then!”

The light compresses, then explodes into glittering sparks, the veil of auroras disappearing and leaving the chamber in total black as it once was. A sudden radiating pain flows from his injured leg as soon as the visual spectacle fades away, a necessary yet awful reminder of his circumstance. Looking at the maze of tunnels that had led him here, he gulps.

He can only pray that Sky and Wind haven’t left. And if they have, the only hope left for him is that he remembers the way back. A glaring problem, however, is that he feels like he’s beginning to forget the route.

A breeze howls through stony, haphazardly carved lands with crystal spearheads cutting through scintillating, velvet mist. Broken rings of divine white ore, adorned with chains and detritus, watch sentinel over a sleeping wetland. Atop a hill overlooking the pellucid landscape lies an observatory, and beyond that hill is a border where light and night coexist. A figure emerges from the observatory, heart heavy and steps even heavier. Away from the watchful eyes of all, the figure lets his shoulders droop. Yet another incident has occured with no leads. Nil spares a brief glance to the building behind and sighs, the constant tension draining him.

This is nothing like the frenzy of the battlefield. There is no gore on the floor nor violence causing silence. This is a show of control, of a plan woven by a brilliant mind. Slowly but surely, everyone’s blood will freeze from a quiet chill. This is a poison that takes its time to kill.

And if the glass even strays close to the neck of his friends, to the neck of the first person who saved his life, showed him kindness, gave him a name to call his own and a new way to live— There will be no mercy for them. Whether Saya or everyone else trusts him is of no concern. What matters is that they are safe. He will lose no more. He already lost one home by ending up in this world, he will not let this new one be ripped away.

A gentle, sweeping wind stirs from behind and towards his back, signaling the arrival of another. A black cape flutters and grass gently rustles as the new person makes her way to Nil, now standing next to him. He walks forward, but pauses to turn around and offer a hand with a smile, one that speaks neither of any lie nor malice.

“I’m going to take a small walk to clear my head, and I’d like you to join, but it would be rude of me to let you fall while going down. It’s steeper than it looks,” Nil remarks, but Saya refuses the hand and walks past it.

“I am perfectly capable of going down by myself,” she dismisses, already beginning her cautious descent. “I’ve traversed far more dangerous, unforgiving terrain on my own.”

“You’re the most prideful person I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something…” he whispers under his breath. Saya continues making her way down without any more sharp reply, her companion sensing her exasperation. He huffs and follows behind closely, two traversing a winding path to the land below. As soon as they step foot in the wetlands, the small talk from Nil, almost grating, begins to fill the air, accompanying the singing gales that carved the lands a thousand years ago.

However, the air suddenly ripples in expectation and Saya immediately brings a flock of glass to her side. Nil withdraws his knife as soon as his companion’s guard is raised, but suddenly swings in her direction. Saya’s image suddenly flickers away, and the blade’s edge lacerates an amalgamation of glass instead; a Horror, to be precise. If they had known that what attacked them had a name, would they have been more cautious while wandering around? Perhaps, yet they too know that despite whatever terror exists, the only thing that can rival them is each other.

“This cute little letter knife only holds a candle to an actual sword, but it will do,” he smirks, tossing the knife upwards and catching it perfectly by the handle. “If I had a blade, I would have decapitated it with a single slash.”

From a short distance, Saya reappears, summoning a glass shard to her hand and holding it as if it were a dagger.

“I have murdered someone in the glass with a bread knife,” she replies. “Do not underestimate its potential.”

“Resourceful…” Nil says, his eyes twinkling from Saya’s cleverness. Now standing still, the pair can see the Horror’s form with certainty. Glinting, serrated rings like folded paper tutus encircle a glass orb, most likely a core. Little bits of glass hover around it like the debris of a destroyed moon floating around its origin. It lets out a screech like glass dragged against glass, Nil and Saya quickly covering their ears.

“These things,” Nil shouts amidst the scratch, “are getting stronger and smarter, aren’t they?!”

“I would say it is an astute observation,” Saya shouts back, “if you had said it before the newcomers arrived!”

“Silver lining: they take more hits to die, so I can show off more!”

“You are insufferable!” she glowers, him winking in return. A barrage of glass from the rings, shaped like long trapezoids, aim haphazardly at him, Nil side hopping out of the way. The glass soon stops and gathers into a line from behind, acting like a whip attempting to cut his legs. Deftly, he backflips out of the way and wrests a single glass out of the bunch, throwing it like a dart straight towards the core. The other rings of the Horror fly before the core to form a shield protecting it, but a figure rushes from behind, holding a glass shard, and slices from behind.

Some of the rings protecting the front of the Horror quickly shift behind to protect its backside, a piercing screech from glass sliding against glass produced. Saya ducks to avoid the rapidly whirling rings aimed for her neck like chainsaws, but a wing of glass slams into her and sends her flying.

“Saya!” Nil shouts, tightening his grip on the knife. His knuckles whitening and shaking, he jumps back and drags a volley of glass into the air with him, targeting the core once more. With the energy of a heated chamber filled with hydrogen, he sprints to the Horror’s side and twists his body so that the trajectory of the knife forms a semilunar arc. The knife knocks away a couple of shards, the energy transferring through the strike, but Nil does not let his momentum fade.

He leaps into the air and slashes in a vertical arc, attempting to bisect the rings. As the rings consolidate to block his strike however, a force suddenly pulls them away and reveals the core. Though a knife, it inflicts a scratch onto the core with the strength of a sword. A volley of glass soon follows like a barrage of razor sharp leaves, the Horror’s own rings being turned against it.

“Saya?” Nil says, looking at her figure appearing from just in front of a shard to his left.

“We both know well that it takes significantly more for me to be put down,” Saya replies, sending away two fragments that threaten to blind her. Daringly, she warps just beside the rings of the Horror and exerts her command over the glass, pulling a good chunk of it away and launching them as far as possible from the battlefield. She tries to tear away the rest and struggles against the increasing grip of the Horror on its rings, but the clang of metal against glass resounds from behind as Nil deflects the shards threatening to turn Saya into a knife block.

With the time Nil has bought her, she manages to win the war of control and completely disarms the Horror. Thinking quickly, she claims the glass making up its rings as her own, calling every fallen fragment to her side and making sure they bow only to her. Noticing this, Nil follows suit with the cascade of glass heading towards the pair, the Horror calling back its previously tossed ring but being thwarted by him. With synchrony as if they possess a two-way mental communicator, the glass Nil and Saya have gathered turns against the very core they had protected just seconds ago, the rapid salvo dealing damage like a thousand needles shot at a target.

Under their relentless, combined assault, the core shatters, now resembling no more than a broken snow globe. Nil smiles with satisfaction at the fallen fragments, momentarily inspecting them before tossing it over his shoulder to Saya, who catches it with perfect positioning. For the millionth time, she feels a burning desire to go and hit him in the head with the nearest blunt object.

…Has she always been this irascible of a person? She clearly remembers being quite steady back then, even more so when Vita was still with her. Is it this specific person that makes Saya even angrier than she should be? What is it about Nil that makes her infinitely more vexed at him than Lethe? That newcomer in red, Legend, seems to share a similar sentiment, from what she has observed from the two’s interactions. If she had a better sense of humor, she would perhaps remark that this phenomenon should be scientifically studied. Unfortunately, she is, as Nil has once called her, “stolid as a brick.”

Despite all that, she does her best to hold in the barrage of carefully prepared, engineered insults for she knows it will fall on deaf ears. The two have ‘argued’ often, yet these ‘arguments’ were either intense back and forth debates that eventually became insightful, or frustratingly one sided chides being deflected with teasing. She would never admit, however, that she did enjoy the debates.

“Nil to Saya,” the aforementioned person chimes in. “New reverie? We aren’t sitting ducks.”

“I admit you have a point this time,” she acknowledges in return. “But have you always been this… talkative?”

“I wasn’t, actually,” he admits, slightly catching Saya off guard. “I used to have a fairy speak for me as a proxy before I arrived here.”

“Fascinating… I never felt that you were averse to conversation.”

“You’re not surprised about the fairy?” Saya lifts her finger and gently touches the flower blooming from her right eye.

“I have seen many things. When you have wandered Arcaea for as long as I have, you would have witnessed such an amount of miracles to the point of banality.”

“Then is the sudden appearance of nine people all at once who seem to come from the same reality dull to you?” he says in rhetoric, earning nothing but Saya’s usual deadpan.

“Why do you ask if you know my answer? Do you desire a reaction or to disprove me?” Nil gives a teasing smile.

“Maybe both at once,” he says, and Saya feels like sighing for the millionth time.

“I would rather we head for the ruins perched above the ridge than continue this conversation. We have not ventured there in a long time.”

“Very well.” A trip towards the top of said ridge begins, the two finding a rugged road from the base of the stony spine overgrown with bushy, plant-like rocks which leads to its ‘tail’. A steep hill graces them with its welcome, a cold, mocking greeting for all their effort to simply reach it. However, Nil and Saya do not back down, beginning their trek upwards. The former moves in front of the flower eyed woman, walking with a silent yet burning determination. Within that fire, Saya sees a flicker of her past self, that individual who still believed in the truth underlining all reality.

“It was a long while ago when I was much like you,” she remarks, her calm tone hiding something indescribable, something akin to nostalgia. However, Nil does not immediately agree. In fact, his answer leaves her in slight bewilderment.

“We are still alike. Even if the odds are stacked against us, we still try. Even if it all seems useless, we can’t simply do nothing. Isn’t that right?”

“...A commendable deduction,” she mutters. “Then it is my turn. You are being this way because you fear losing me.”

Nil flinches and the most minute sigh escapes him before he replies, looking away from her.

“Perfectly said. If I ended up here, then I must’ve fallen in battle. How many lives have I let slip past my fingers? I’m allowing that no more.”

The path begins to incline steeply as talks, the ruin becoming larger and larger in size as the two approach. Suddenly, the loose dirt suddenly starts to give way. Nil loses his footing, but Saya quickly grabs his arm and easily flings him to the flat ground above, rushing there before she herself falls down. Slightly dazed, he gapes at her walking towards him.

“Thank you…” he says, the adrenaline still rushing through him.

“Keep your vigil. Avoid getting injured, most notably from environmental hazards and laughably simple mistakes.”

Gathering his composure, he follows Saya and walks together with her into the floating, shaded ruin in search for solace and secrets of the present. Two from completely different times, different realities, of different principles and demeanor, but with the same goal: truth. Light trickles through holes from the eroded ceiling like crepuscular rays, dust dancing within the shafts of light. The walls reverberate with the sound of footsteps, a sound unheard since the reawakening of light. The mare tranquillitatis of the ruin is only further accentuated by the little glass pieces hiding in little alcoves and dusted corners, appearing almost yellow from the sunflower hues of the place.

The peaceful quiet stretches on and on as Nil and Saya traverse its corridors, explore its chambers and venture deeper into its heart. However, the former suddenly appears distracted as Saya presses on ahead. Her keenness picks up on this, and she stops briefly to, in her eyes, snap him back to the present.

“Your look is distant,” she remarks. “What troubles you?”

“I get the feeling,” he pauses, “that something has been following us.”

He turns behind to see— a single glass shard. Slightly unimpressed, Nil grabs it without much thought. Inside however, if his astonishment can be represented by a binary scale of one to ten, he would be at twelve. Before his eyes, a certain horned woman carrying a scythe and her younger companion at what appears to be an antiquated reception area filled with ornate trinkets, regal picture frames and all things outdated. Lethe and Styx sit adjacent to each other on some ostentatious chaise with a cloth draped over the headboard. The former’s scythe lies against the side, the metal of the blade glinting from the little light let in by the almost fully drawn curtains. It reflects the chamber as the two people converse, gazing upon the room created by a mishmash of memory.

“Do you remember anything from your past?” Lethe asks. Styx shakes his head.

Looking at him, she says, “But somehow, I do. I had guided dead souls to their final destination in that life, but somehow, I died and awoke in Arcaea. It has been a long time ago since I woke up, but my memories are still highly incomplete.”

“You… guided dead souls?” Styx queries incredulously, suddenly straightening his posture. “Can you guide them the other way? Bring them back to the mortal realm?”

Lethe sighs, looking sadly at the young boy. Reading her expression, he slouches again as she says what both of them expect her to say with stern, minutely sorrowful finality.

“I can’t and I won’t.” However, her next words soften with a hint of sympathy. “Did you lose someone?”

“Maybe I did,” Styx says, looking down at the rug and its swirling patterns like syrup drizzled over a watery basin.

“…I’m sorry,” Lethe replies softly. “Losing someone at any age hurts, but for someone as young as you…”

No more words are said. The voice of silence grows ever louder, an indiscreet grief pervading the air. Soon, the memory fades away and Nil finds himself back in the ruins.

“What did you see?” Saya inquires almost immediately.

“Maybe it isn’t important,” he begins, “but the child, Styx, is grieving. He asked Lethe if she could bring someone back from the dead.”

The other person pinches the bridge of her nose. “It does explain the generally reserved and somewhat avoidant behavior, yet it does not offer any more insight into our current dilemma.”

They look at each other with varying levels of disappointment, but suddenly, Nil’s eyes fill with the gleam of… inspiration?

“What is it?” Saya inquires, noticing the stroke of brilliance almost immediately.

“I don’t think our trip here was in vain,” Nil says, looking at the shard that had tailed him. “Because I’ve thought of quite the nice bait for our culprit. Hook, line and sinker.”

“And what do you require of me?”

“Complete trust.” However, Nil smiles knowingly. “But I already have that from you, don’t I?”

Saya only minutely tilts her head and looks at her confrère with focused eyes.

Chapter Text

Tairitsu… has not felt happiness in a long time. Perhaps the closest thing is hope, but even hope is only tangentially related to that emotion. Despite that, she can say, maybe with some doubt and hesitation, that she does feel even the tiniest bit of joy around Hikari and her friend. It is like warm sunshine and white feathers to be around them. It is like spring, the new coming of hope after a long winter. 

Does Arcaea pity her fate? Maybe. 

Is she naturally a pitiful being? Haha! Could there be any other answer to that aside from absolutely? 

Fighting in both worlds until the very end, until something more than her rips her life away from her… No matter. The former Shaper will just try again, like she has always done. Thanks to the help of her new friends in finding parts of her soul, Tairitsu’s body has managed to somewhat stabilize. Of course, that had included remembering certain things, both pleasant and not, but what can she do about that? Strangely though, the boy almost reminds of her homeworld, Lephon; she can feel something like home leaking from his soul, spirit, whatever is piloting him. 

In her travels across Arcaea, both in the past before she died and now, she never really encountered underground systems. Mostly, she stuck to the land and the light which ironically, did not provide her with safety whatsoever as misery continued to chase her on and on. But now, she is watching over two most likely children in a deep cave system, swallowed whole by darkness’ maw. No, this is not a good idea, but has anyone ever had good ideas in this world? 

In the deep darkness, little specks of light appear on the walls like starlight. The specks become more numerous, and Tairitsu soon realizes that the stone comprising the walls itself is the source of it. Looking a bit closer, the faint scintillation reveals a soft blue color dyeing the galactic stone. She looks at the ground, yet her legs are still awash in deep midnight. 

“Careful,” Tairitsu instinctively says, just before a sudden high pitched yelp comes from in front of her. She turns to behold the boy holding Hikari by the sleeve, the latter in danger of falling over the edge of a cliff overlooking a large underground lake. Tairitsu grabs Hikari’s other sleeve, pulling the girl back to land as a few stones are displaced from the ledge like dew bouncing from a leaf. 

They breathe a collective sigh of relief, yet as if a gargantuan beast is beginning to wake up, the ground suddenly trembles. The ledge, lacking the strength to support three people, begins to give way beneath the boy and Tairitsu’s feet. Though Hikari tries to reach for them, the two fall away faster than her hand can catch theirs like dew sliding off the surface of a leaf. The wind bends like a circumzenithal arc around the falling pair’s body, like an aerial shield as they look at each other in worry. 

Without warning, Tairitsu leans over to grab the boy’s shoulders and with unexpected strength like a latent power being drawn, flings him upwards so that he is positioned to break the water’s surface feet first. She then tries to shift her position to ensure that her entry into the lake is as painless as possible, but gravity only drags her further down as she falls down with her back facing the water. Bracing for impact as the surface of the lake spreads out into the whole of her periphery, she squeezes her eyes shut and curls into herself like a cannonball. Two bodies soon meet the aqueous skin of the lake, irrupting into it with a violent tower of water as if Excalibur were plunged into the ground. Water begins to fall back down like rain as two heads sink deep into it. 

Hurriedly, a mess of sunshine reaches out to a cloud of midnight. Tairitsu reaches out for the boy, but her fingers barely miss his digits as she sinks deeper. She grimaces as the pain in her body from impact binds her like thorny vines as she tries, yet again, to swim up and desperately claw her way out for air. The expression on the boy’s face changes into an apologetic grimace as once more, he fails to grab her hand. An idea soon creeps up: if her arm cannot reach vertically enough, then her hair, which is already like kelp— His hand soon yanks her hair and a flurry of bubbles escape from Tairitsu’s lips in surprise. However, Tairitsu suddenly panics from the sting of her hair being pulled, looking angrily at the boy. Her wild, frantic movements cause the hair in his hand to slip, the girl in black desperately trying to catch up with her friend.

‘Have you gone mad?!’ she conveys, through an angry series of gestures, but suddenly winces in pain from the impact of the fall. Noticing this, the boy grabs her hair— again— and holds tighter this time, attempting to swim upwards like an engine on its dying breath. However, a sudden boost from below, courtesy of Tairitsu herself trying equally as hard to swim upwards, brings the pair upwards. Their heads barely manage to break the water’s surface, desperate gasps for air filling the dry portion of the area. 

“I’m sorry, but I beg your pardon?!” Tairitsu sputters just after a wheeze. “Is dignity a foreign concept to you?!” 

“I saved your life, and this is your show of gratitude?” the boy bickers back. “Using your hair as a rope for me to pull you like cargo to that shore… I feel that it’s becoming an increasingly favorable course of action.”

“I can swim myself,” Tairitsu says as she begins heading for the aforementioned shore, but her eyes begin to squint as each movement leaves her in pain. With a devious smirk, the boy quickly swims in front of her and grabs her hair, dragging her along as he swims towards the shore. A flurry of grumbling and insults straight from Tairitsu’s homeworld pervade the air above the lake, even spreading through the total darkness of where the starlight does not touch. The girl’s pride is only more damaged as the boy continues to drag her atop the cerulean colored shore, the latter not letting go until both of them are completely untouched by the lake’s brim. The not-so-innocent smile still on the boy’s face and the glare on Tairitsu’s silently clash against each other as the girl begins to sit up. 

“I’m not thanking you,” she says. “Do you think you’ll get thanked by someone for dragging them by the hair?”

“What you are saying,” the boy pushes away the strands of hair that disturb his sight, “is that you want to drown next time?” 

“I would rather drown.” 

“And then I would just retrieve your unconscious body by, as you eloquently put it, dragging you by the hair.” Cursing under her breath, Tairitsu swiftly stands up and gives him a good shove, causing him to fall. Then, she grabs him by the back of his collar and walks towards the next stop on their impromptu adventure; the large opening whose walls are completely out of smoky blue crystal. Like siblings who have known each other for their whole lives, they continue to squabble back and forth until the corridor opens up into a cavern of dripping dew. A crystalline temple rests above a mushroom rock towering over a garland of blue, blue waters. The aqua gently swirls beneath a crown of stone that acts like walkways towards the temple. 

Smartly, the boy says, “Unless you want to waste strength dragging my heavy physical form up the rock path and perhaps make us fall, I suggest you let me go.” 

Very smartly, Tairitsu lets go abruptly and causes him to fall on his back. The boy groans as he gets up, eyeing his friend disapprovingly. She smiles back satisfied, having taken her revenge. They walk in single file across the bridge, wary to not slip, trip and potentially end their journey in a pitiful way. As the boy walks however, he finds his eyes drawn to the ‘water’ far below, almost hearing it call out to him with its strange blueness, can water even be that blue? Despite that, first and foremost is good judgement and good judgement tells him not to follow his heart. Making it to the mushroom rock, Tairitsu suddenly stops in front of the gaping hole of an entrance into the temple. A bit confused, the boy also stops.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” she starts. “Something tells me that you aren’t just a normal person. You remind me of my homeworld for some reason, so I need to check something now. Give me your hands.” 

Doing as she says, the nameless boy stretches out his hands for Tairitsu to hold. She closes her eyes and starts checking around for any trace of power, but her breath catches in her throat as she senses something very, very familiar.

“You definitely aren’t from my world, but you have the power of a Shaper…” Tairitsu disbelievingly notes. “Your hands aren’t special, your ears or eyes aren’t too— but I can feel something resting in the deepest part of your soul.”

The boy asks, “A Shaper? What is that?”

“The ‘chosen ones’ of my world. They can use their powers to shape things, like bending lighting bolts, shaping space to deliver a voice and other miracles. I wouldn’t call them miracles because I’m so used to them, but I suppose you and others would. You don’t have these powers yet, but the factor that allows for these things to happen is present. I don’t have the slightest clue how this even happened to you, but one thing is for sure—” 

“—someone who knows about or is a Shaper has done this to me?” the boy concludes with equal incredulousness as Tairitsu.

“But that isn’t possible,” the girl in black says, her denial showing clearer than a window on a sunny day. “No one can escape the prophecy that took us all. Everyone prayed for the Powers above to punish us Shapers for laying claim to killing the god of my home world. I tried to fight back, desperately wishing for a miracle, but had fallen like everyone else.”

“Then it seems that someone has escaped the prophecy.” And as absurd as the statement sounds, Tairitsu finds that everything fits nicely into place with the hypothesis. Scanning her environment, she remembers that wintery waste, of the angel who had descended and—

“...I’m sorry.” A tension in her face that she knows not about releases at those words, Tairitsu realizing that her expression had darkened as she was suddenly brought back to that day. Momentarily, the girl shuts her eyes and just cracks them open, looking at the ground. 

“Bygones are bygones,” she says, more quietly. “All the Shapers are dead, and it’s a sad story that happened a long time ago. For now, there’s a building we have to explore and someone we have to find soon.”

Nodding without much emotion at each other, they push open the door and are swallowed by the murky blue shadows within.

Ignorance is bliss. 

A statement Hikari had once taken comfort in. 

Content with the world, never questioning, never asking, never thinking further than momentary joy. Complacency had once swaddled her like a mother’s embrace, obscuring her mind with fluffy, warm clouds. 

Once upon a time, when her friend had not asked many questions, she did not as well. When he started being dissatisfied with the lack of answers, she tried to sway him to her side. When Tairitsu came along however, she started lagging behind. As their odyssey stretched on, Hikari saw herself only getting slower and slower as the distance between her and her friends widened like the opening maw of a yawning chasm. 

And like a yawning chasm, the girl in white watches her friends get swallowed up by the lake, soon disappearing out of sight. She has to reach them, she knows, but the thumping in her chest as she peers over the remains of the broken cliff refuses to let her plunge as well. She would rather not test her ability to swim, either. 

Making her mind to turn back and head back into the starry-walled tunnel, the only sound being her heels echoing against rock fosters a conducive environment for suppressed thoughts to emerge.  

“Why,” she begins, “does this feel so familiar? Walking alone…”

Some emptiness begins to form inside her like the gathering of a miasma, spreading through her body and eating up any trace of lightheartedness she has. Her hand clutches the bow at the center of her jacket, memories going through her head of the day she saw a boy with pointy ears peering over the girl as she opened her eyes for the first time. 

She’d gained a friend. She’d gained a whole world. She’d then gain another friend, and then her name. A precious thing called Hikari, a precious thing called a name. And with no reason at all, all these things feel unfamiliar. 

She would have dismissed these confusing, speculative thoughts a long time ago, but look at her; she is entertaining them like a philosopher would. Something… something has changed. Does it scare her with such a realization? Does she take comfort that she too has begun moving forward like her equals? No, she does not know.

Hikari gulps as she faces a dim crossroads, but not from fear of the dark; the thought of facing the unknown inside her own head scares her far more than anything else. Ignorance is bliss, and revelation is agony. 

…Something is wrong. He went into the temple with Tairitsu, had seen an overwhelming blue, and is now on the floor. He cannot remember anything else between the last two memories, except for something like a beautiful voice calling him to embrace the azure light. 

Pushing himself up, cerulean brilliance fills a geodesic chamber of crystals while something like the blue mist of an alien, divine being swirls around in the air. The chamber is as large as a ballroom, perhaps some fancy tower encrusted with crystals upon crystals, yet none of them happen to be out of memory glass. Something tells the boy that this is not normal, that he has to run, that he is not meant to be here, but the mist begins to condense.

The blue light at the center of the scene like a star pulses as the condensed mist forms tendrils that rush towards the boy. With reflexes he never knew he had, he rolls away and breaks a piece of crystal to use as a blade from a nearby cluster. He tries to find an exit while running around, but his stomach drops as it begins to dawn on him that the only possible way he could have entered the place… is falling down from the roof. Why else would there be a hole in the ceiling?

The boy swipes away another tendril and runs, looking for a way to climb the walls. Perhaps he can struggle his way up by planting a pair of crystal blades into the walls and hoping the blade does not break or continue to try and find a secret exit, but as he ducks to avoid a tendril that tries to grab him— a whole salvo of tendrils launches at him. The boy slashes one away, tries to outrun another, even wages war on them with small crystal shards he calls to barrage them, but one of them causes him to trip and the fight is over. 

The light grows even brighter and brighter as the tendrils restrain him and pull him towards the radiance, so enthusiastic as if claiming another victim, but he tries to break free, tries to struggle, tries to cut the tendrils using the crystal shards, but the tendrils cover his hands, squeeze, and CRACK. He screams, and—

…

An dazzling

          effulgence  

                         gence

An unfaa t h om a b le

                      ab le 

              ha s        descen ded. 

 Shin ing   fo  r eve r

                 and ever

                            until the s  k  ie s brea  k

                                                        an d    it    al l        tu  r ns    to     dust.

The heavenly Blue, the amazing Light spreads across Space. Space is filled with Blue, which is filled with Light, which is filled with radiance. No, stop— No no no Nonoka? Nooonoookaaaaa Is she having fun? Nonoka must be having fun now, she has seen beauty, soooo muuuchhh beauty, Mitsuko? Mitsuko, what a beautiful name, is it real? Is it real all real just — stop, wait— want to— STOP— everything unfolds into a field of flowers, flowers all Blue, Colorless void black of nonexistence, galactic Spaaaaaceee, a broken Husk erupts with Blueeeee Light, And Coda’s Light filled remains, it’s so 

Blue

It’s so amazingly Blue It’s so magnificently splendidly Blue Leaking out Blueeeeee azure cerulean cobalt like the sky like the gemstones on the wall like the smoky rocks like friend’s eyes— Don’t you DARE MENTION— Oh Confliiiiiiict, Tairitsuuuuuuuuuuuuu where is sheeee Hikaaaarrriii they will find you! They will find you and you found them and now you found yourself and have always found yourself and what found you is you in the depths of this temple haven’t you? Haven’t you? Haven’t you? Haven’t you? Haven’t you? Haven’t you? Haven’t you? Haven’t you? Haven’t you? Haven’t you?

Blue drips everywhere and spatters onto the ground from my lips, and I can feel the Light grabbing the back of my Throat, it’s spreading upwards and to my Eye, did it get my Pupil, I think it’s crawling from inside my pupil and out, it’s filling every crevice in my Skull like frosty galaxies drowning my Brain until I cannot even breathe and gasp for air. It is wonderful, like being able to see a perfect brilliance itself that fills my soul— NO! I will not— it’s amazing— it ISN’T! 

My Heart, the Blue is, I think it’s trying to devour it whole with itself? I think it’s eaten up my Intestines and filled up my Pancreas, ahahahaha— 

I WON’T KNEEL TO YOU! — Just g i ve u p and let y our se lf e mbra c e the Lig ht!

My Blood Vessels, it’s flowing through it like perfect liquid brightness and it’s amazing—

 I won’t let some mere memory, some mockery destroy me! I am NOT your vessel! 

I am NOT your toy! 

You AREN’T EVEN REAL. 

I AM. 

Do you hear me? 

The only pilot of this body is me, and will forever be me. 

Only I get to choose my fate. 

You are nothing more than a fake. 

An imitation of memories.

    Noth  in g more than a fak e. 

A   f a bric a tio n. 

                           just no t h ing    in th e   e  nd.

                                                      end.

…

          …

AAA

    AAAAAAAAAAAA

                                           AAAA     AAAAA AAA AA A A A AAA A A     AAAA A

               AAAAAA      AAA A              A              AA