Chapter Text
The light that swallowed Link’s vision was searing, like fire poured straight into his eyes. He squeezed them closed, desperate for escape, but it was already too late. The source of his pain wasn’t the brightness anymore, but the pressure swelling inside his skull.
At first, it was only a trickle: stray images, half-formed feelings. Then a few scenes played out before his eyes, clear enough to believe they were his own.
A childhood friend pressing a horse’s harness into his hands, hesitant but smiling. He felt love.
An otherworldly woman with fiery orange hair rising from a crouching stance, her radiance rivaling the goddess’. He felt relief.
They followed one another as though telling a story — a beginning, an ending. His story.
But then—
The salt sting of sea air against his face. A dozen eyes, some strange and some familiar, watched as he boarded a pirate ship. Not the same friend. Not the same world. He felt determination, but it wasn’t his.
The order broke. More images crashed in, with no sort of order, until the trickle became a flood, hammering into every corner of his mind. His head throbbed with the weight of it — memories colliding, breaking apart, reforming faster than thought could keep pace.
Flashes. Sensations. A hundred lives at once.
Plummeting through empty sky.
Rolling in the dirt.
The thrum of four paws racing across the grass.
A beautiful ocarina song.
A giant fish in the sky.
A nose stretching into a snout–
The bite of electricity convulsing every muscle.
A blade sliding between his ribs.
All at once, he experienced entire lifetimes. Several deaths. Some gentle, some less so. None his to linger on.
At some point, he was certain he felt his own body rot—skin tightening over bone, flesh giving way to earth, broken, golden armor weighing his bones down all the while. He almost gagged, but then another memory crashed in, merciless, sweeping the horror away before he could even comprehend it.
There was a reason, he realized, that the veil cutting souls off from their previous lives existed. It was protection, sure, but there was so much more than that.
It was mercy.
A mercy that he had surrendered. Supposedly, the greater good demanded it.
Always for the greater good, right?
Eventually, the light faded, but the sickening headache didn’t. Link collapsed before he even realized he had control of his senses again, both hands clawing at his hair. He clutched his head as if the vessel truly could burst from the overflow of information, and only his hands could hold it together.
“Link!”
Zelda’s voice cut through the haze, sharp and desperate and painfully loud. She was at his side in an instant, her breathing nearly as ragged as Link’s own. Her hands hovered worriedly over Link’s form. He curled into a vaguely Hylian-shaped ball, less Hero than wounded animal. Hylia’s sacrificial lamb, he thought, the bitter words curling inwardly toward his heart.
“Oh gods, Link, hold on!” Zelda’s voice shook. Terrified, exhausted. “I’m so sorry…”
Wordlessly, he raised a hand in a stop gesture. He sandwiched his head between his arms; he needed his hands, but he still had to hold himself together. No use to anyone broken into pieces.
Silence fell. Link could feel the weight of Zelda’s gaze as she hovered, her hands uncertain, still afraid to touch. Ten minutes ago, he would’ve felt embarrassed. Now, all he could do was hope against hope that those hands wouldn’t glow with any more divine magic. Just the thought made his stomach churn.
“Can I get you anything? Some water, or— Oh!”
A tiny gasp escaped Zelda when Link extended a hand, pressing his index finger gently against her lips. A small part of his mind (or perhaps several small parts of several minds) recoiled at the sheer audacity behind the gesture.
She could execute him, for all he cared. Right now, he would welcome it, as long as it meant the world would be quiet.