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Before time, all things yield.
In heaving paroxysms, the land below threw fire into the sky and onto the earth until those invincible flames— their rage and passion made them so fatigable— became cold and inflexible stone. Great floes of ice had pressed— slowly but relentlessly— into those same mountainsides until the crags themselves gave way, leaving violent scars in the rock. Nothing could stop these glaciers— until they found the ocean and were subsumed into vast, undifferentiated water. Those seas, too, eventually withdrew until there was nothing but hot, inhospitable sand. Then came new water, and deserts became lush.
She had seen it all. She had outlived it all, as she would all things yet to come.
Before time, all things yield. But even time can never take an immortal dragon.
Upon the land, the specks of dust twirled. Specks of dust who called themselves kings. Specks of dust who called themselves priests, or warriors. From her vantage point high above Hyrule, and from her perspective millenniaforged, her heart broke.
Did they not see how fragile they were?
The people of Hyrule were scarcely more than embers launched from a fire. All that they were, the whole of their beings, shone for but a moment against the unimpressed march of the centuries before they were culled into the dark. And, yet, as they realized their impermanence, the specks of dust lashed out against it.
In vain, some of these great men sought true immortality. They would do anything, kill as many as it took, if they thought it would prolong the light of their spark for even an instant more.
In vanity, some of these great men sought to build something that would outlast them and carry their names through all time. They erected vast structures and monuments of stone, or bound nations that stretched across the land.
But, before time, all things yield.
The kings who desperately struggled to conquer death saw their lives, ultimately, extinguished. She could feel their pain when they realized they had failed. She could feel their eyes upon her when, with their last thoughts, they wondered what secret she carried that they had missed, what spell. Why she, alone, was evergreen.
The great stone edifices and cities would last just a few heartbeats past the lives of their erectors. The rocks would topple and the streets overgrow until farmers used those beautiful stones to mark their fields. Travelers never knew that they walked what were once bustling marketplaces or courts of royalty.
The empires, too, fell. Sometimes they would last years, or even centuries more, but inevitably the people would realize that the threats that bound them were nothing more than the words of a dead man. And, so, new violence began, setting the stage for new kings, and new warriors.
New specks of dust, new sparks of fire.
Every legacy of every man was, in the short or long course of history, damned to be forgotten. Time took it all.
And as time’s eternal, untouchable— yet impotent— companion, her heart broke.
Even for her, though— even when compared to the trajectory of time— some sparks, some moments, some people were remembered.
The young man had returned.
She had first noticed him because of his temerity. He was a small, delicate Hylian flying through the air on little more than a scrap of fabric! Nothing but his grip and favorable winds shielded him from the land so very, very far below. He would fare no better than thin ice dropped from the same height. A dragon could fly, but the man faced this peril with such carelessness!
He surprised her again when he caught her.
How long had it been since another being had touched her? How many years?
Had it ever happened?
He was gentle. Awed, but certain.
That was when he had taken it.
She had not been sure what “it” was, until he had retrieved it and she could finally lay eyes on it and recognize it as a sword— a mortal’s weapon. It was not a part of her, yet it had been with her since… the beginning? Was that possible? She had not known it could be taken, yet part of her felt relieved that it was now his. She had passed a burden, relieved an age-old tension, which she didn’t even realize she had held.
And, yet, now he was back. Why?
She had nothing else for him. Was he here to return the sword? She panicked at the thought. Before the man had taken it, she could not recall a time without it, even over her long millennia. Yet the idea of having it returned filled her with dread. He was meant to have it. She had carried this sword for longer than even an immortal dragon could conceive, so that it might someday be taken by this delicate, impermanent mortal. Could he not see that?
Yet, even as he neared her head, the sword remained sheathed. He had accepted the burden as his. He was not going to restore it to her.
However, this only meant that the question was stronger: why was he here?
Link’s feet slipped under him as he walked along the dragon’s back. This winds this high in the air, coupled with the creature’s slick scales, waving movements, and even resonant heartbeat and breath made this ascent treacherous. His arms still burned from the flight here, and could not be counted on to find purchase and hold his weight if he fell. Only his skill separated him from the open sky.
Yet, he barely noticed.
He had to do this. He had to make this journey, no matter how dangerous. He had to return to the Light Dragon.
Because he had just learned a truth he could not accept.
He reached the head and stood among the dragon’s hair.
Gold hair , an unwelcome part of him observed.
He went to a knee. It was not because he stumbled. Rather, it was the deliberate, practiced gesture a Knight of Hyrule learned at the onset of his training. It was a gesture he had performed countless times over the last century and longer.
It was a gesture of servitude to royalty.
”Your highness,” Link whispered, and then the next words caught in his mouth.
A title, an honor, was one thing. It was the proper address from a knight, a subject.
But she had asked him not to call her that, and that was what was so hard.
It called to mind his training, and hers. It called to mind their stolen and forsaken youth. It called to mind the Calamity, of the sacrifice they had made which only they two could truly understand. It called to mind the quiet nights in Hateno Village, or the adventures on horseback where they were the only ones around.
It called to mind the descent into the catacombs under the castle.
It called to mind everything they had done, and seen. It called to mind everything that— even after the Calamity— might have been a part of their story, together.
Everything that, if it was true, was now gone.
”Zelda?” he finally choked. And then he collapsed, his face buried in the sun-colored hair so foreign and yet— he could no longer deny— familiar.
He was not a man who cried often. He recalled the day they had learned that Revali had fallen at his post— that all of the Champions were dead. He recalled holding the Princess’s hand as they fled into the trees, and then holding her body when her feet failed under her and she wailed to the sky.
He hadn’t cried then. But that was his burden, wasn’t it? He had to be a rock for her, even if everything was collapsing around them.
So, no, he hadn’t cried then.
But, now?
To become an immortal dragon is to lose oneself , the woman in the vision had said.
The enormity of the sacrifice washed over him, dashing him against the rocks. His role had been simple: to save Zelda was to save Hyrule. The two were inextricable.
With this awful truth, however?
...sacrifice your heart and mind. Sacrifice what makes you you .
It was a long time before he could speak again. When he lifted his face, his tears stung in the cold, high wind. He needed to say something , but all he could think of was the feeble, impotent question whose answer was now carved in his heart.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” His voice grew shaky again as he continued. His lungs felt like they could scarcely hold the air to form words, much less sentences. “I found them… your memories. I think I found everything you left for me. You left them, so I could find out what happened. Why. The sword. I had started to wonder when I first came here, to take the sword, but now I’ve seen it all and… just… Oh, Zelda.”
He fell onto her again, desperately searching her eyes— a dragon’s eyes, but when the light hit them, he could pretend they were hers , her real eyes— for any sign of recognition.
He found none.
He sat with her for a long time, riding with her through the sky. He was scared to leave.
In losing her, he had lost every dream he ever had. Whenever he pictured after — after war, after rebuilding the kingdom— he was never alone.
But, now?
She would pass over her kingdom for all time. Her friends from this age would fade. Even if the Kingdom stood for eternity, even if they somehow defeated Ganondorf, the name Zelda would fade. She would watch over them, never remembering that they were the reason she had done the unimaginable. The ultimate act of love, and it was obliviated for both giver and receiver.
Completely unknown.
Except , his heart stirred, for one person.
In the months before he and Zelda had defeated the Calamity, Link’s travels had taken him to a ruin east of Fort Hateno. A century ago, this would have been a village, and Link’s recovering mind held the faint ghost of a memory of passing through this town when it was a living thing. In the wake of the Calamity, however, whatever people survived had fled to the remaining, larger settlements to cling together in the face of the storm. Without the Hylians, nature was far along in taking the land back. Thatch roofs had long fallen away, and stone foundations were now shaded by trees that had grown through floors and over their structures. Grasses and roots punched through the cobblestones of the road, reducing the path to little more than a stone-strewn field so treacherous that he could only take his horse through in halting steps.
Had Link not received a warrior’s training— and had he not spent these last few months on constant alert as he wandered the wasted Hyrule— he may not have seen the shape among the green. He dismounted and approached slowly.
In the years after, he could not recall which of two things he noticed first.
First, the shape was an old man on his knees.
Second, the large rocks were tombstones, and the man knelt before a grave.
”I’m no danger, swordsman, and I’ve nothing,” the man said in fear when he recognized Link’s proximity. The old man didn’t pick himself up from the ground. When he saw that Link’s hand did not reach for his sword, his demeanor softened before he continued.
”My wife,” he said without prompting, gesturing plaintively at the headstone. It was in noticeably better shape than the markers around it— both because of evident upkeep, but also because it seemed much newer than the village’s old graves.
”We lived here for many years, both before the Calamity and— now— after. We stayed; we were the last ones. Before she passed, she asked to be buried here.”
He sighed. Link could see tears falling into the grass.
”It’s been years. I know that, to you, it must seem like there’s nothing more for me here. Sometimes I almost do it, I almost leave. I’ve packed my belongings more times than I can count. To live the rest of my days with friends, family in Hateno. But, every time, the same thought takes me: I am the final threshold between a village and a ruin, between a history and a ghost story. I am the last person for this place, and the last person for her. If I leave… you’ve seen the village. This graveyard. I can’t let that happen to her.” He was fully sobbing now.
”I just picture that she’s still here somehow, in some form— whatever waits for us when our time comes— and that she’d wonder where I was. And she’d be afraid. And so, I unpack the bags. And I come here every day. Every single day. And I tell her about the birds, and about our garden. About our people in Hateno, when I see them. I tell her about the things she loved, and about the way our world has changed.
”So long as I am here, so long as I return to this spot, she isn’t forgotten. And, if she’s still here, then I can reach into the Dark Cave and touch her again. She isn’t alone. I promised that I would never leave her alone.
”But, you’re young. You must think me sentimental.”
Link opened his mouth to speak and was surprised by how dry it was. In a way, the old man was right: Link was young. But, in a very important way, Link was very old. The world’s memory of his friends, and even of himself, had become so much sand in the sea. His head was full of thoughts of his princess imprisoned for a century in a battle he could not fully comprehend.
So, when Link finally spoke, it was with a young man’s voice that had been shaped by a century of loss.
”Yes, but it’s beautiful.”
As Link rode through the air, a plan— a wish, if he was being honest with himself— took shape. He remembered a night laying on the roof in Hateno where they pointed out the constellations and told each other the myths and legends they had read about in books or heard about in their travels, and then told each other stories that had nothing to do with the stars at all. They had told each other about their friends from a century ago, and they cried together. They had told each other about their dreams for the century to come, and they laughed together.
He had told her about his fears, and she had held his hand through it.
Link took a steadying breath.
I tell her about the things she loved, and about the way our world has changed.
“Sidon,” he began. Even just one word was much more difficult than he thought. A quick exhale, and then a slow inhale. He imagined that he was breathing her aura, taking whatever power had restored the Master Sword and strengthening his own lungs with it.
“Sidon,” he attempted again, “is the King now. He’s the King of the Zora! And he’s engaged! Her name is Yona. I think they’re a good match. She controls his impulses, but she also lets him do what he thinks is right.”
Once he began, the words couldn’t be stopped. He told her about the Zonai Survey Team. He wished she could see that the collection of erudite historians Zelda had put together suddenly found themselves living a life of high adventure as the most sought-after experts in the entire Kingdom.
He told her about her school. He told her how proud she should be that they had not missed even a single lesson in the aftermath of the Uprising. Her teachers, her students— they all knew how important their education was.
He told her that the children all missed her, and wondered when she would be back.
He told her everything. By the time he ran out of things to say, the sun had set. His throat burned when he recognized some of the same constellations they had seen from that roof in Hateno. At some point he had sat down in the dragon’s flowing mane. The sensation was peculiar, and he could not help but remember sitting on the grass with Zelda to study some plant or creature. Yet, Zelda was not here— but, in another way, she was. Moreover, this was not grass— this was something much more important to him.
The insistent cold was finally finding purchase in his chest. He knew it was time to retreat to the surface.
“May I return to you sometime?” he asked. He felt ridiculous. The dragon drifted beneath him, impassive. In a dark corner of his heart, he was not even sure that his presence today had been noticed at all.
“Perhaps not every day, but I can come back. I can tell you everything I’ve found, everything we’re doing. Your school. Lookout Landing. All of it. Would you… like that?”
Nothing but the high wind and the dull, deliberate roar as her lungs emptied and refilled. He wondered if she had ever taken the same air in over her millennia, in breaths centuries apart. He wondered if he had.
Yet no words came from the Light Dragon, no matter how he needed them.
“...I would like that, I think,” he concluded instead, feebly. He rose and looked out over the dragon’s side. Kakariko Village loomed far below, as good a place as he could imagine to pass the night.
Before he jumped, Link hesitated. In the far distance, he could see the dark clouds rising from Hyrule Castle. There was almost nowhere in the Kingdom he could not see those tendrils, and even fewer places where he felt they could not see him.
“I know how this has to end, Zelda. Purah realized there’s one more sage. We’re trying to find them— I’m trying to find them. And I will. Maybe they will reveal more to do, more preparations to undertake, but I don’t think so. It will be time. We will return to the castle.” He let the words linger in the air. “The Sages and I will go together, and I have trusted each of them with my life a hundred times over, but I know… I know that it has to be me. There is only one sword which can resist him, and there is only one of us who can take it up. Even if all of us fight, there will come a moment. It will just be him and me. I am as prepared as I will ever be, the strongest I have ever been, but I do not know if that will be enough.”
Link did not fear dying.
No, that wasn’t true.
Every living thing feared dying. That was the defining characteristic of living things.
Except, perhaps, the unwelcome voice mused bitterly, for an immortal dragon .
Link feared death. Even with all he had to fight for, he could not battle the way he did if he did not also believe he had to live for those things.
What was true was that the idea of dying no longer panicked him. He had gazed into the Dark Cave too many times— had escaped not through talent or grace but sheer, stupid luck— to have not reconciled himself with the truth that his oath would almost certainly, one day, kill him. Delaying that fate a little longer, living to draw his sword again, was the product of preparation. That resolution is what allowed him to enter Hyrule Castle to face Calamity Ganon, and what would allow him to enter its catacombs again to face the Demon King. That preparation is what allowed him to triumph before, and was the only thing that would allow him to succeed again.
Yet, he knew that his death was a real possibility.
Link felt cold when he contemplated what failure would mean. The fate of all of Hyrule stood in the balance, but that had been true this whole time. Ever since he had become the princess’s appointed knight, ever since he had learned the word Calamity , he had known the stakes. Those consequences were no less important than ever, but they had been etched into his practices for over a century. He could no more extract the people of Hyrule from his thoughts than he could stop thinking.
No, this heartache originated with what was new. When his thoughts turned unbidden to the idea of dying in the Depths, he wasn’t envisioning his body below ground. No, he immediately thought of the sky. He pictured the Light Dragon— Zelda— floating above the clouds. How the last and only man who knew the truth was gone.
I am the last person for this place, and the last person for her… she’d wonder where I was. And she’d be afraid.
It hurt too much to even contemplate. Instead, deliberately, he turned his thoughts to what it would mean to succeed.
Link climbed out of the chasm beneath the castle. With Ganondorf destroyed, the monsters which had lately plagued the countryside had vanished. Link rode the now-quiet highways to Hateno to begin the rest of his life.
The schoolchildren of the village grew up alongside their town, and one day had children of their own. The schoolhouse evolved to meet the needs of its students, but it always remained Zelda’s school. In fact, Link appended a new sign.
ACADEMY OF ZELDA, PRINCESS OF HYRULE
Above them, the Light Dragon occasionally drifted by. Her appearances were always marked by great excitement.
One day, Link figured out the words to tell them. Maybe the villagers didn’t fully believe him, but that was okay. From that day forward, whenever she passed overhead, they all waved and called out to her— and, even if she didn’t know the words, even if she didn’t know why, she knew the feeling. When she flew over Hateno Village— when she flew over Link— she knew the warmth of every heart.
Link, for his part, went to see her constantly. As he aged, the villagers smiled and laughed goodnaturedly at the old knight and his paraglider. They would wave; he would wave back. Everyone knew where he was going, and they embraced it. Perhaps they didn’t fully understand— particularly the younger generation— but they knew how important it was to him. He would stay with her for hours at a time, telling her all the news of Hyrule. How the wars of their time had transitioned to a lasting peace. Sometimes he would stay long enough that the sun set, and he would lay on his back and watch the stars with her. It wasn’t quite what they had described to each other, but they had arrived here nonetheless: Link and Zelda, after war, watching the sky together. He even allowed himself to think that the Light Dragon came to look forward to his visits. She never knew his words, but they built something like a friendship.
But even picturing this happier world, Link— the real Link, the one for whom confronting Ganondorf was still to come— frowned.
The Light Dragon was eternal. She was blessed to watch over Hyrule for all time. Even if she didn’t remember it, she would get to see the fruits of her sacrifice and invigilate the kingdom she and her knight had fought so hard for.
But she was cursed, too, because outliving all things meant that all things she knew would die while she went on.
And that included her knight.
The old man rose from the headstone. He grunted and grimaced as he straightened out. Link offered his hand, but the man waved it away.
”Kind, but you’ll not be here tomorrow— yet I’ll be back to do this. Might as well prove to myself I can.”
He gazed around the cemetery, then up to the sky. Clouds had begun to roll in, and in the direction they were coming from both men could see rain falling distantly.
”I’m nearly out of time, I think.” There was no fear in the statement, but there was sorrow.
”It’s cruel, in a way. I promised myself that I would always be here for her, but no one could ever keep that vow. No living man can truly promise forever.
”My friends know what I want, when the time comes. Whether they’re at my bedside, or whether they find me. I want to be placed right here.” He patted a patch of grass about a meter away from his wife’s grave.
”And, who knows? Maybe we will have a forever. Our ghosts can watch our village until the tombstones themselves fall apart, and longer still. I just know that whatever comes next, if there’s anything, we’ll both be there.”
They spoke for a bit longer, but Link’s ride was not yet complete. The man returned home, and Link led his mount into the darkening woods— away from Hyrule Castle, and yet always closer to it.
Link was ashamed that tears came again. The inevitability of it all weighed on him. No matter how often he came back, no matter if he loved her for the rest of his life, he was condemned to lose her again. One way or another, one day or another, his body would fail. If he didn’t fall to a sword or a monster, then he was just waiting for his meeting with time itself.
The Light Dragon would live on. Whatever he was to her, whatever he would be to her, whatever his stories meant to her, no matter how often he came, he would be gone. What she was to him, he would take to the grave. And they would be apart— one below, and one above, for the rest of days.
He had been having dreams about the last time he had seen her— really seen her, not her memories of her time in the distant past.
It was when the stone dais holding Ganondorf had begun to collapse. Link and Zelda were both pitched into the darkness below, and their eyes connected as they reached for each other.
The fear, the desperation in her eyes that surely reflected his own— that was the last time he had seen her.
Sometimes in these dreams his reach was long enough. He was able to take her hand, pull her to himself, and— in this realm of fantasy— they both survive the fall unscathed.
But, more often, he dreamt of the truth. He dreamt of how she slipped just past his grasp and into the darkness below. Link could remember the moment with perfect clarity. It had been a question of centimeters. She was just too far, he had just failed. If he hadn’t been hurt, if he hadn’t succumbed to the pain in his arm, he could have caught her hand. They would have still been falling, but he would have had her .
Link’s chest surged with anger and shame. He pictured Ganondorf, the man who had done this to them. He recalled the Demon King’s face. The ancient, desiccated face contorted with a vicious, mocking smile as the two Hylians fell.
Link froze.
He recalled Ganondorf’s face.
Link saw his sadistic smirk, his teeth visible through wizened muscle and skin. His eyes glowing with strange power.
And, set in gold upon his forehead, Link saw the secret stone.
His mouth was dry. An awful plan, an awful wish, began to build in his heart even as he tried to suppress it.
To swallow a secret stone is to become an immortal dragon.
Link stood over the vanquished Demon King. He reached down. His hands were shaking. He was exhausted and bloodied, yes. More than that, though, he had to admit that he was scared.
The golden jewelry broke away with surprising ease. Link clasped the cold, bare stone in his hand. He thought it would be warm.
Another man might have waited, considered. It was the weightest decision he would ever make, after all.
To become an immortal dragon is to lose oneself.
Link, though, knew could not hesitate. The only way he had ever learned to confront fear was to ride directly at it.
With the same heart that stared down Guardians, that leapt from the Sky Islands, that entered Hyrule Castle’s keep alone, Link placed his palm to his mouth and swallowed.
The children of Hateno Village grew into a world of peace. War was over. Food was abundant. The best researchers in the world pored over the ruins of the Zonai, eventually adapting their incredible technology into advances in medicine, agriculture, and transportation. Hyrule healed from both Calamity and Upheaval with incredible speed.
Above this rebuilt land, two golden-haired dragons sailed through the clouds.
There were many legends about them. Some said they were lovers from many years ago. The man had tended the woman’s grave until he, too, passed— but the Goddess Hylia was so moved by their devotion that she renewed them as immortal dragons.
Others said they were one soul, split in two. The two halves were damned to be separated across time, and thus the only way for the two to be truly reunited was to become immortal.
Still others claimed they were a princess and a knight— the final Princess and Knight of the old Kingdom of Hyrule, in fact. As reward for their heroic sacrifices, Hylia had rewarded them with an eternity watching flourish the people for whom they had suffered.
These stories were often contradictory, of course, so which one a person adhered to was a question of what they saw in their heart.
Seeing either of the two caused great excitement in the village, but the real show was the Dragons’ Dance.
The two would collide in the sky above and twirl around each other, locking tails and claws. Pulses of light would fill the air and fall to the ground. If the golden orbs struck farmers’ fields, those fields would be bountiful for the rest of the year. If they found a person, the lights were known to cure illness. As they fell, young people raced to catch them, as it was reported they would lead to love.
The dragons would stay entwined, sometimes for hours, until they came apart again and went separate ways in the heavens. They would always soon come back, however. No matter which version of the legend you believed, this much was true: even though they had the rest of time, the two could not stay apart for long.
Link’s vision tunneled. He swayed on his feet. He was distantly aware that he may lose his balance and that he was still astride the Light Dragon and therefore still far, far above the ground. He quickly sat down to thwart the risk.
He was scared of how tempting it was. He was scared of how easily it would stitch up the dread that had haunted him ever since he realized the Light Dragon’s identity.
To become an immortal dragon
An eternity— an eternity— with Zelda. They had talked about the rest of their lives, but— if it worked— this was more than they could have ever dreamt of. And it would work— he was sitting atop living proof of the efficacy and permanence of the transformation.
Is to lose oneself. Lose what makes you you .
But that was really the dilemma, wasn’t it? It was another facet of the same question he had brought with him into the sky today.
Would she even know who he was? Would he even know who she was? That was the horrible danger that lurked behind the Zonai’s words: lose oneself . After the transformation, could he even really be said to still be Link? When he and the Light Dragon crossed paths, would their years of friendship and struggle mean… anything? Or would they be total strangers again?
He had never seen the Light Dragon interact with the others that occasionally navigated Hyrule’s skies. Would she attack him? Would they drive each other away? That would be the cruelest irony of all: if they sacrificed everything to save each other, even their own minds— but then, in the ignorance they created, they condemned each other and themselves to unending isolation.
But what if it all mattered? What if, even with their hearts erased, they found each other again? The legend said their souls were bound to an ancient hero and goddess, and bound to each other. Those souls would persist— even if memories and bodies were gone. Surely that prophecy, that destiny, was a magic even more powerful than the secret stones of the Zonai.
It wasn’t the lifetime of fealty to the Princess— and then the Queen— of Hyrule Castle he had envisioned before the war. It wasn’t the warm hearth in a shared home in Hateno they had envisioned after.
Rather it was, in many ways, more beautiful.
They would never lose each other again.
What about Hyrule? a voice questioned him.
What about Hyrule, indeed.
What if there was no peace? War would be over for a time, of course. But what hubris would it be to say, with certainty, that it would be done forever — or even for the rest of Link’s life, however long that was? They thought defeating Calamity Ganon would end the darkness, after all, and yet here they were just a few years later.
We rely on your knight.
He is so very dedicated. And he refuses to back down from any challenge… His heart is good and true.
I can see that you have absolute faith in him.
You are exactly as Zelda said.
Zelda’s magically imparted memories were as clear as if he had lived them himself. Each new one he discovered had been a new joy, a new promise that he would find her. Then, when he learned the truth, those recollections had become pain.
Link… you must find me.
But he had! He had done it far sooner than he’d realized, before he even knew who the Light Dragon really was. She had been speaking to him. Her last words before her transformation— her last words when she was truly Zelda— and she had been speaking to him.
Protect them all!
He had heard her words, but as Link sat high in the air and contemplated his future, they took on new meaning.
Zelda knew exactly what the result of her action would be. She knew what it would mean to consume the secret stone.
To lose oneself.
He knew her. He knew— and he had seen— that she had weighed every possibility before she chose this: the loneliest, the most awful, and the only option. She knew what it would mean for her. She knew the terrible price.
But those final words told him that she also knew what it would mean for him .
She knew him, too. She knew what losing her would do to him. She knew that, in all meaningful ways, her consuming the secret stone was the end of his oath.
And, so, in her last moment, she had given him a new one.
Protect them all!
Protect those people endangered by the Demon King, yes. But that wasn’t what she had said.
All.
It was a heavy word, carefully chosen. It carried the same gravitas of “forever”.
Of “immortal”.
His new charge was an impossible one. He had already failed, in some regards. So many had already died to both Calamity and Demon King, and it was naïve to think the losses were over. Protecting them all was utterly beyond Link’s capability.
But she knew that, if she asked him, he would try.
More than that, all did not stop when the Demon King was defeated. Whatever came next— rebuilding, disaster, peace, war— there would always be someone in need of protection. So Zelda saw fit that— although she would not be there— her appointed knight would be, with every day that he had left.
She had given him his most difficult task: to go on without her. To bring her dream— their dream— to the future. To the people. To them all .
He never could refuse her.
Perhaps there would come a day when he was very old. He could keep the stone with him, and then join her in the sky.
For now, though, there was work to do. There was a new pledge, although a very old one.
The cold was stinging his cheek once more, and Link realized that he was crying again. He took a deep, collecting breath.
“Yes. I will.” She would not understand him— could not understand him— but it felt important to give voice to this new conviction. He looked back down, and saw Kakariko Village starting to slip away from them. He would need to leave now if he had any hope of reaching it tonight.
“I promise that I’ll be back. To tell you about everything. I promise, Zelda.”
The entire way to the ground, he refused to look back at her. It would have been too difficult.
Besides, he knew she was there.
What could a single day mean when measured against eternity? Can immortality be truly said to change?
She had seen so many people. She had seen so many lifetimes begin, live, and end.
Yet, as she watched the man and his sword— her sword— descend into the night of Hyrule, she could not shake the feeling that today had been important. That he was important. She was surprised to encounter a new feeling— one she could not remember, even across her eons.
She hoped he would come back.