Chapter Text
Prologue
A hero stands atop a cliff, a princess to protect by his side. A ruined castle lies in the distance, casting harmless shadows that make his skin crawl. A great battle has been won. Guardian corpses, finally dormant, lay scattered across a field that smouldered. Even from their distance he could scent the scorched grass as the smoke billowed.
A tunic, once a brilliant shade of blue, was blackened with dried blood and fused to his skin. Corruption and gore clung to its fabric like death and when the wind blew, the stench was an assault on his senses. He longed to peel the garment from his battered body. Stop by a stable with a stream and scrub his skin until it felt like his own again. But there was the princess to think of now. The heir apparent of Hyrule should not be subject to his usual arrangements.
The castle seemed to loom as he considered this. Turrets had begun to eclipse the sun and their silhouette burned into his eyes. He closes them, but the image remains, seared onto his lids.
All is silent. His thoughts are entirely his own, and he knows the Champions are gone. Their spirits had warded him, healed him, spurred him onwards in the months leading up to his fated battle with words fiercer than any enemy he faced. Now they had faded beyond a whisper. And although he had never physically felt their presence, he felt their lack.
“One hundred years,” says the princess beside him, gently shattering the silence. Her voice is soft and warm and tauntingly familiar, like dandelion seeds on a summer's day. Her name is Zelda.
Her name is Zelda. Over and over and over he repeats it.
Princess Zelda. Or would she now be considered Queen?
Queen Zelda.
Zelda.
Z
E
L
D
A.
He wrangles her name like one of his beasts and longs to tether it to the fragments he’s collected in his mind. Fleeting memories of wispy yellow hair draping around a face he could only just recall, and a pair of striking round eyes. Eyes that had been looking expectantly at him in the hours since Calamity Ganon had fallen.
“After all this time and somehow, against everything, it’s still standing. Isn’t it beautiful?” She asks.
He doesn’t know whether she wants an answer.
The hero opens his eyes, squinting against the fast-fading sun. He wants to agree with the princess. Even with the aid of the Divine Beasts, the battle had been long. A century long slumber and half a year had escaped him trying to save the princess and restore peace. Desperately he wanted to see what she saw. Take his calloused hands and root around her brain until he could pluck out the memories of the life he used to have. A knight and his princess.
He looks across the field, eyeing crumbling turrets and old guardhouses; blackened moat waters and rusted gates; decimated courtyards and rotten flags that bore the kingdom’s sigil, stubbornly flapping in the winds a century on. The hero did not see beauty. The castle was nothing but crumbling stone and an echo of a time long passed.
Hairs on his arm prickle and the tips of his fingers itch. Months in the wild had sharpened his senses to being preyed upon. He doesn’t need to look to feel the princess’s eyes bearing down on him. She did expect a response.
When was the last time he had spoken aloud?
His mouth goes dry. A pattern since his Awakening. No sooner would words form than would they die on his tongue.
His lips move only to clamp shut. His tongue tastes bitter and he knows he’s bit it too hard. His throat is closing and the blood seeps down, hot and metal and thick, and he itches to claw open his neck and conquer the silence. But his princess is before him, so he does not. He is still, and the stillness is familiar.
“Link.” The princess’s voice is careful now, as if the wrong word might spook him.
Link. He starts at the sound of his name. It was so rare he heard it. To most he was simply Champion, or Hero, or He Who Will Seal Away the Darkness.
A soft hand that he doesn’t know whether to bite or kiss brushes his face, and he feels every bit the animal she treats him as. But he lets the hand stay, because he doesn’t have the words to ask for anything else. She withdraws and he has to fight the instinct to chase after the warmth of her fingers.
“Look at me. Please, Link."
He obeys. The day is fading, and its final sunbeams flood Zelda’s face with a glowing haze that turns her hair to gold and her eyes to blue flame. The princess from the pictures in the Sheikah slate, untouched by the century stolen from them both. He recalls the images now as he stares at her. A field with flowers, a ceremony with unfamiliar faces, escaping through thickets of trees with her hand in his, a war. But beyond these snippets, moments the slate had frozen forever, was nothing.
When at last he speaks, the words scratch his throat and trip clumsily from his lips. “Why can’t I remember who I am?”
Then the light leaves and the world loses its shape till it’s as flat as one of the slate’s pictures, and the life goes out of everything. The sun is gone and he cannot see what pain he’s caused.
For a moment all is calm. Birds sing their final songs and crickets chirp to their tune. Grass tickles at his ankles and trees swish and whisper in the wind. But then everything is tinged crimson and smoke is rising and Link’s eyes snap to the glowing red moon above them. For once, he knows exactly what is happening.
The world holds its breath, and then it cries out. Monsters are rising, shrieking as they wake. Some he himself has slain, others new beings entirely. They appear in troves across the field in the distance, and their weapons glint red from the moon’s light.
The princess’s eyes are wide and he can see the confusion beneath the fear in them.
Calamity Ganon was gone, so why did the blood moon rise?
Smoke licks at his heels and he doesn't hesitate. He seizes the Princess, swinging her behind him before the first monster has the chance to form even its feet. Darkness whirls around them and it’s becoming more apparent with each rising foe that they stand in a graveyard of enemies. Schink . His sword is drawn with a slash of metal , his shoulder and arm aching in protest.
The first monster forms, then the second, and third, until ten pairs of beady eyes gleam back at him. Their red skin was like leather pulled taut over muscle and bone, and their eyes seemed to pulsate under the moon's light. Bokoblins.
The first one charges.
“Link!”
There is no fear as he raises his sword. The blade slides along the creature's arm like butter, lifting skin and muscle till at last the sword imbeds in its neck. A howl rips free from the monster’s throat. Thrashing and clawing, the creature’s anguish reverberates along the hero’s sword and he can feel it shaking his bones. With one final jerk, the monster goes limp, gangly limbs falling into a cloud of smoke. From ashes to ashes.
Clawed hands point accusingly. The Bokoblins shriek and stomp and raise their clubs high. He knew their weapons well. A few unlucky shots from his past adventures had left him with broken ribs that would leave him breathless for weeks. One good swing, just one, would crack his skull till his brains spilt like yolk.
A hero stands atop a cliff, a princess to protect behind him. A ruined castle lies in the distance, and it’s bloodthirsty under the moon’s red glow. A great battle had been won, but yet a war raged on. Another page of bloodshed in Hyrule’s history books. Once again, the Kingdom needed the hero.
So Link bares his teeth, readies his sword, and lets the hero he used to be take control.