Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For someone with a reputation so extraordinary, this ‘Link’ person's house looked pretty normal to her. 

Zelda quickly closed the door behind her to deter any anxious glances from the townsfolk of Suthorn Village and stepped further inside. The house was just one large room with standard amenities tucked into each corner like separate regions on a map. The kitchen, a narrow table stove with a cooking skillet and a small stack of clean dishes, was to her immediate left. To her right, a storage area of sorts—a few ceramic spice pots and a sturdy, double-door wardrobe stood tall against the wall. A rather adorable-looking stuffed owl nestled beside the wardrobe had her second-guessing if she was in the right house for a moment, but she recognized the green hat hanging off a bedpost in the northeastern part of the room and took another step forwardf.

The bedchamber (if she could even call it that) was separated from the main floor by a squat, raised platform. The walls were bare, the scant furnishings dull, save for a large, robust houseplant she only knew to be low maintenance because she possessed one of her own. As far as she could tell, there was nothing exceptional about the house at all. Except, maybe, the size of the cobweb high in the back corner near a gray-stone hearth.

Where were the weapon mounts? The wooden target dummies? Instructive posters detailing combat moves and battle strategy? She knew Suthorn didn't have their own army, but the panicked villagers had made him sound like some kind of soldier. 

This didn’t look anything like the barracks back in Hyrule Castle Town. Impa had allowed her to view them as a part of the special tour she received for her sixteenth birthday. She'd begged and begged for months to be shown all the secret passages throughout the castle and surrounding town, which included a hidden tunnel through a well beneath the barracks. The outlandish wish had only been granted, Zelda suspected, in the hopes she might stop seeking them out on her own, as they often led to restricted areas of the town and beyond. And it had pacified her…for a fortnight or so. She had a sneaking suspicion a few corridors had been purposefully left out.

Like the one she'd used to escape the castle dungeons with Tri. 

A chill ran down her spine. She pulled the swordsman's cloak tighter around her and climbed the two steps up to the bedroom. Fatigue tugged at her eyes at the sight of a fluffy pillow, but she plopped herself down in the wooden chair beside the bed and sighed. It would be improper for a princess to sleep in a stranger's unmade bed, no matter how inviting it looked.

A curious thing to neglect, she thought, for someone who seemed so organized. 

Guards were required to make their beds upon rising every morning. Rhoam, the guard often posted outside her rooms, had told her that when she inquired about his daily schedule. She’d believed him to be kind, as close to a friend as she could have, the way he indulged her curious questions about life outside the confines of regality. But she had witnessed the fickleness of his favor, of all the guard's favor, when they hauled her out of the throne room at the command of that phony king and threw her in the dungeons. Didn’t they know her at all? How could they believe she was the one responsible for the rift in the castle?

"Zelda?" Tri's bell-like voice drew her back from the sink hole rapidly forming in her head. She sighed. She could not give into despair. She didn't have the time. 

Zelda turned her attention to the desk next to the bed where she found a small candle, a half-empty cup of water, a stack of books, and a clear bag filled with candy. Candy. Her mouth watered. The kitchen staff had to lock the cupboards at night when she was younger so she didn't gorge herself sick on confections after the rest of the castle went to bed. She still snuck sweets every now and again, but she was better disciplined and only took as much as she could so that the theft remained unnoticed. 

They called her wisdom's daughter, after all.

This wasn't her kitchen, though. It wasn't even Link's. That was over her shoulder in the front left corner of the house. She swallowed thickly and forced her eyes to the stack of books, attentively scanning the titles. 

"Have you found anything that might be helpful?" Tri said.

"Not yet."

"Do you know what you are looking for?"

She huffed and slumped back into the chair. She was fairly certain there wasn't a text in existence that could realistically give her what she needed. Her castle contained the most extensive library in all of Hyrule and she'd never come across any books on mysterious echo magic, or guides on closing monstrous rifts, or what to do if your father has been replaced with an imposter. 

Her eyes flickered up to the tiny star hovering beside her head. She was apparently the only person who could see them, like they were some kind of golden guardian angel. Or a demon. She had yet to decide if it was a good thing or not. 

"Could you search the wardrobe over there for me?" she said, pointing across the room.

Tri let out a curious two-tone whistle.

"For a sword or a shield…I don't really know. Anything that looks like something a hero might use."

"Why do you require a weapon?" Tri drifted in front of her face. "I have already given you the Tri Rod."

She curled her fingers around the wand in her right hand and felt it hum with power, as if trying to anticipate her pending command. If she lifted it now, she could summon any of the items or monsters she'd made a copy of with the strange magic. 

Echoes, Tri called them. 

It was certainly a useful artifact, but she'd heard the stories from the guards. Terrible beasts made of oil and rot occasionally emerged from the greedy blackness of the rifts, as noxious as they were savage. There were bound to be some lurking inside the large rift just outside of the village. It was wise to be prepared…even if she didn’t know what such a state entailed. 

Zelda sighed again. She’d never been permitted to fight, never been allowed outside the safety of Castle Town’s walls. She didn’t know the first thing about defending herself. There was a bodyguard at her side almost every hour of the day. Her? Battle monsters? Nevermind the way the world inside the rift twisted a person. How was she supposed to prepare for that? People who managed to return after falling came back wrong. Sick in their minds or their hearts. Would the wand protect her from that? Would it keep her safe? Or was it only as strong as the person who wielded it? She had no idea how it even worked. 

Something coiled unpleasantly in her belly. Heat crept up her neck and behind her ears, causing her pulse to beat like a war drum. She'd felt this way inside that crystal cage. Helpless. Forced to do nothing but wait to be rescued for a week while the blue monster deliberated what to do with her. And then the swordsman—Link, she learned his name from the villagers—had come along and still she could do nothing but watch. Watch him fight, her fate in the hands of a person she didn't even know!

At least he'd looked like a hero. Brave and fast and strong…until a rift yawned open under his feet and gobbled him up, too. A goner, for sure.

Tri said no one can escape the rifts on their own. 

Since then, she’d escaped one dungeon only to be thrown into another by her own people. She’d been chased by rifts, nearly drowned in a canal, and trekked the entire way to Suthorn Village on foot only to discover the town desperately needed help. A woman had fallen into a nearby rift that was growing larger and larger by the hour, the same rift that blocked the house Impa instructed Zelda to travel to before fleeing the dungeons. 

And to complicate matters further, Tri's friends—the mysterious beings apparently responsible for mending rifts all across Hyrule—were also missing. Granted, she hadn't even known Tri and their friends existed before yesterday, but that was neither here nor there because she was the only one who could even see them. Tri had no one else to ask for help, and the task required entering and investigating the aforementioned rift.

"Zelda?" 

Magic crackled at the end of the Tri Rod. She was summoning something without meaning to. Zelda shot up from the chair to prevent the echo from forming on the desk, and her elbow caught the cup of water. It tipped over the edge and instantly shattered around her feet, water splattering over the front of her robes as a copy of the miserable bed from the dungeons appeared directly atop Link's beside her.

"Shit!" she hissed, her eyes darting between the beds to the shattered cup to the water soaking through to her shins. She'd broken into his house and now she was breaking things. "Well, this is just great."

Tri had floated up to the top of the stack and appeared to be studying it, their entire body tilting back and forth with an intense curiosity, as if scrutinizing the design.

"Is there something wrong with the echo?" she asked dryly.

Tri looked at her this time and gave another tilt.

"What is 'shit'?" 

Zelda's stomach plummeted. The curse sounded positively absurd in Tri's musical voice, but it was a word she'd been scolded for using many, many times before. A byproduct of her temper, which she'd been told was very unbecoming of a princess. A future queen.

"You can't tell anyone I said that."

Tri tilted their entire body to the side, causing the three triangles bobbing behind them to ripple. 

"Who am I going to tell? No one else can see me." 

It was a good thing, she decided. 

"I only said it because I was angry. It's…a problem."

"What is 'angry'?"

"That’s hard to explain." She squatted down and carefully began picking up the larger shards of the broken cup. Gradually, piece by piece, her anger cooled. It was an accident. Just an accident. Nothing to lose herself over.

When she finally looked up, Tri was still waiting. They’d done this a few times already, incapable of reading nonverbal clues, insistent on receiving an answer. Like a mystical, floating toddler. 

Impa once described anger like a pot of boiling water, but she wasn't sure the metaphor would make sense for Tri. It hardly made sense to her. 

"Sometimes, when you are tired or hurt or…soaking wet," she gestured to the front of her robes and made a face, "those things sort of…build on top of each other."

"Like the echoes?"

"Sure, yeah, like the echoes. I can only stack so many before the magic snaps, right?"

"Right."

"So,"—she waved the Tri Rod to dismiss the dungeon bed in a flash of light—"anger is how people relieve the build up. Sometimes. I usually end up yelling, or saying things I shouldn't say."

Tri considered this for a moment. 

"Like 'shit'?"

She sighed.

There was a broom in the kitchen corner. Zelda trotted over to it, catching a glimpse of the dishes on the table as she passed. Everything was in a pair: two plates, two bowls, two spoons…all except the cups. The broken one's twin sat alone and…unblemished. 

She didn't even have to think before aiming the Tri Rod. 

Magic like a hundred twinkling stars surrounded the cup and produced an exact replica directly beside it. She picked it up by the handle and inspected it in the light. It was perfect. If Link walked through the front door right now, he would be none the wiser his original had been broken. 

The copy would disappear eventually, but just the sight of it filled her with an odd, satisfied warmth. The magic was useful. Clever, like her. She could fix what was broken, be a problem-solver, if only for a little while. Until she figured out how to help Tri find their friends and mended the rift to get into the house that was hopefully more helpful than this one.

If she was really clever with the echoes, she wouldn’t have to fight at all. 

She glanced across the empty house to Tri still hovering around the bed. They didn't seem capable of much emotion, but the way Tri had asked her to investigate the rift felt urgent. You don't have to understand loneliness to feel it. There was never only one star in the sky whenever she gazed up…they needed to find their friends and she couldn't go home until she found a way to refute the imposters. 

She was the only one who could do anything right now. 

Zelda made her way back over to the mess with the broom and swept up the rest of the pieces. She set the replica cup on the desk and turned to face Tri.

"Let's head to the rift."

Though their expression was unchanging, eyes and mouth fixed like ink stains on cloth, she could tell by the single descending tone they were confused. Outwardly, it didn't appear as if she'd found anything of value inside Link's house at all. 

"Yeah, there is nothing here that can help us. But like you said, I have the Tri Rod and the echoes. I'm—" Ready felt like a stretch. She adjusted the cloak around her shoulders and gave Tri a firm nod. "—capable. Let's do this."

Chapter Text

Zelda entered the rift with eight monster echoes. They fought for her, reducing her role in each encounter to that of nimble avoidance, which she was perfectly alright with. 

She gained a few more navigating the bizarre reality that lay within. A 'still world', Tri had called it. She'd never seen anything like it. Not even in her nightmares. An endless nebula of shadow and distorted splinters from the piece of Hyrule the rift consumed. Segments of Suthorn Forest grew in reverse, rivers flowed vertically, and dirt roads tapered off into an oblivion that always seemed to be watching her. 

There were people here, too. Their bodies petrified and suspended in the air as if ensnared in some invisible web. Tri claimed they would be saved if the rift was mended with their magic. She'd found the missing Suthorn woman and Minister Lefte, but there had been no sign of General Wright or her father.

Link, on the other hand, found her.

When she'd first spotted him, he'd been standing on the other side of an enormous chamber deep within the stilled ruins. Even though his back was to her, she could tell he wasn't frozen like the others. She’d been so flooded with relief, she didn't notice the wisps of darkness seeping out of the seams of his tunic like smoke until she got close and he turned around.

She’d used every single echo she had to fend him off, but it was the ignizols that saved her. 

She dropped to her knees against the hard chamber floor as the last of the swordsman's shadow faded away within her echo's fire. The blazing torches on the top of ignizol’s heads receded to the size of an innocent candle flame once again and they all turned and began hopping idly, waiting for her next command. 

"T-thank you," she gasped between breaths.

"Echoes cannot speak," Tri said.

"It's…the…nice thing…to do."

"What do you mean by 'nice thing to do'?" 

"Not right now…please." 

She hung her head and continued gulping for air until her lungs no longer burned. She'd never moved like that before in her entire life; dodging and leaping and rolling out of the way of each slash of his sword. He'd stalked her all around the room, swinging after her with such brutal force, he’d wedged the blade into the stone pillars scattered across the space more than once. 

Despite his ruthlessness, his movements were strangely disjointed, like his limbs weren't his own. It was probably the only reason she was able to outrun him long enough for the echoes to take him down. 

Wiping the sweat from her brow, Zelda pushed back onto her heels and dismissed the three ignizols. The horrible, helpless feeling from inside the crystal had finally begun to ease as she made her way through the rift. She’d been growing more comfortable using the Tri Rod, and it felt good solving the various puzzles through the ruins while her echoes protected her. She’d actually felt confident when she entered the room.

But that was gone now. He'd carved away at it with every swipe, every narrow miss of his blade. The echoes weren’t designed for such close, rapid combat. If he’d managed to corner her, there would have been nothing she could have done to stop him from running her through.

Skies above, he'd hunted her. The monsters in the still world were drawn to her, but they became disinterested in the search if she hid long enough or if her echoes distracted them. The swordsman hadn’t relented his assault once. No matter what she threw at him or how desperately she’d pleaded. 

Perhaps she’d misjudged him. She’d assumed he had been trying to rescue her when he confronted the blue monster, but then she'd witnessed her own guards turncoat. People she'd known her entire life, who'd grown up with her inside the castle, were the very same to lock her in its dungeons. 

Maybe Link had tricked the entire village into thinking he was good. 

An arrow soared through her memory, cracking the wall of rosy glass inches away from her. She gasped and pressed her hand to her chest, her heart racing beneath her fingers. He had shot at her!

"What's this?" Tri called to her from somewhere in the chamber.

Zelda dragged her gaze up to find them hovering over something glistening near the lingering ignizol fires on the floor. 

It was a sword. The sword. The one she’d gotten to know intimately given the number of times it had swung toward her. The blade pulled loose from its sheath as she grasped the hilt and stood. She inspected the ornately twisted steel beneath her fingers, rotating it carefully to the light. 

‘Link’ was carved just below the guard. 

Those soulless red eyes flared bright in her mind and she gasped, lifting the sword up reflexively. 

And then the world erupted in light. 

The Tri Rod disappeared from her hand and a compact shield that appeared out of nothing claimed its place. The sword commanded her focus in the other, a strong pulse under her fingers emitting waves of energy that sent blue sorcery surging up her arm. It stained her skin like ink. Her clothing changed, the cloak and travel robes Impa had given her replaced with a belted sapphire tunic and trousers. Magic rippled along the surface of her body like fire, but she did not burn. 

She felt powerful. 

If Tri’s magic was like warm starlight, this power was the moon. Full and wonderful and ice blue. The fatigue from the fight was gone, her muscles rejuvenated and strong. It felt like she could run a hundred miles, like she could cleave one of the pillars she’d ducked behind clean in two. The blade’s magic was so potent, so readily available to her that it practically sang in her hand.

“Do you hear that?” Tri asked, remarkably unfazed by her transformation.

Zelda tilted her ear. It hadn’t been the hum of magic she’d heard, but a voice. Someone was singing, or rather, as she listened closer, humming the familiar melody of a lullaby. It was the same one Impa used to sing to her as a child. An old song of the Royal Family.

She whipped around, darting her eyes about the chamber for the source. The magic must amplify her senses because she could see every crack in the stonework, could smell the minerals in the air, felt the stillness all around her. 

There was no one inside the room.

And still, the humming continued, so close it was almost as if the person was whispering in her ear.

“Hello?” she called.

The sound abruptly stopped. She wasn’t sure why it felt right, but she instinctively adjusted her hold into a two-handed grip.

“Hello?” the voice answered carefully.

“Who’s there?” she shot back.

No answer.

“I know you’re there.” Somehow, she could feel her fear outside of herself, hissing against the blue flame magic like oil on a hot pan. It was trying to get in, to reach her, but the blade’s magic blocked it. She gripped the sword tighter.

“I could hear you humming the lullaby. You better come out!” 

A sharp inhale and then,“You can really hear me?” 

“I have a sword!” Zelda pivoted slowly.

“A sword? It…it actually worked?”

“A big one!” She winced as soon as the words left her lips. 

“I can’t see you…” Somehow, she could tell the voice was moving around and she stiffened. 

“Can you see me?” the voice asked. 

“If I could, I wouldn’t be demanding you to show yourself, now would I?” she snapped.

A chuckle. “So, you really have my sword?”

The world slanted under her feet. “Link?”

“The one and only, but…how do you know my name?”

The question made her cheeks flush. The answer felt strange on her tongue, as if the villager’s admiration and affection would seem like her own, which it most certainly wasn’t, so she hesitated. 

She glanced down at the blade gleaming white-hot in her hands. “It’s…uh…on the hilt.”

“Oh. Right.” 

“Where are you?” Zelda asked quickly. 

“I don’t know. Somewhere in the still world. I’ve been wandering around for what feels like weeks—”

“Twenty-four hours,” Tri cut him off.

“W-what?” he sputtered.

“You’ve been in the still world for approximately twenty-four hours.”

A small smile quirked her lip. 

“Who’s that?”

“That’s Tri. Wait, you said you’re in the still world? I’m in the still world. Can you come to me?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t recognize the pieces of Hyrule where I am and I could see where you are through that copy’s eyes. It doesn’t look like anything around me.”

“Copy? That wasn’t you?”

“Of course not,” he responded quickly, his tone sounding hurt.

Zelda straightened and lowered the blade slightly. “But you can see me?”

“I could, until you beat the copy. Now it’s just your voice in my head…I’m really sorry. I tried to do everything I could to hold it back, but it’s strong magic.”

“Hold it back?”

“Yeah. It felt like there was a tether between me and the…other me.”

“A dark echo,” Tri interjected.

“When I saw the dark echo start to go after you, I pulled back on the tether. It slowed it down but…”

That explained the disjointed movements. Zelda shivered. A dark version of Link was out to get her as well, like the imposters in the castle who wore her father, Minister Lefte, and General’s Wright’s faces.

“I saw you used the ignizols in the grass to burn the shadow up. That was really smart,” Link said. 

It was more of a coincidence on her part, but she didn’t admit that. It could have gone very badly if there were more flammable objects in the chamber. The doors in and out of the room had been barricaded with shadow until the swordsman disappeared. 

“Did I hurt you?” Zelda asked.

“No! Not at all. Besides, if you had, I would’ve understood. You do what you have to in order to complete the mission, you know? It’s not like that dark me was messing around.”

She bit her lip. You do what you have to. It sounded like something a soldier would say. A hero would say. Another feeling began to fizzle against the blue flame surrounding her, but she refused to look at it. 

She wanted to ask about his house. Why it didn’t look so like she imagined it would, but admitting she’d broken into it felt even more mortifying than revealing how she’d learned his name.

“I’m glad you were able to break out of that crystal,” he said. “I was worried you were still trapped in there.”

Worried. He was running around a still world, trapped in the dark and alone, and he was worried about her. It should bring her comfort, at least she’d been rescued by a decent person, but strangely, she was just…irritated. 

“You shot an arrow at me,” she countered.

He chuckled again, “Not one of my better plans, but it worked.”

“What if it had gone through? You could have killed me, you know. “ she said in a voice oddly reminiscent of Impa’s. The blue fire hissed again. More feelings rejected by the magic. Her anger was let through just fine, though. 

“Sure. But…I didn’t.” His tone sounded like he’d been on the other side of a mistake before. And with his immaculate reputation in town, she’d wager he’d easily been forgiven. The villagers probably wouldn’t bat an eye if they heard he’d fired an arrow at the Royal Princess.

Before she could say anything more, the light in the sword suddenly flickered. She held it up and watched the flames begin to shiver more rapidly, as if something invisible was trying to snuff them out. 

“I’m not sure what’s happening…”she told him.

“What did you say? Your voice is kind of muffled all of sudden,” Link said.

“I...I think the sword is going out.”

“Going out?” he said, voice growing urgent.

“You have to come find me,” she sputtered and looked up from the sword. “I-I don’t know how to use this.”

“It’s a good weapon. It’ll protect you,” he said quickly. His voice was distant now, too. Like he was shouting at her from across the room instead of standing directly beside her. “When you get out of the still world, find Lueberry. He’ll help.”

“What do you mean? Who’s Lueberry?”

“He’s–” Link’s voice cut off as the magic went out completely.

“Link?” She took a step forward and the wall of feelings the magic had been keeping at bay rushed toward her. She felt everything climb inside her, bringing back the heat in her neck, the tightness in her chest, and a new empty feeling deep in the pit of her stomach. Shadows crept back onto the walls around her like vines, the isolation of the still world once again an embrace she could not escape. 

The tunic and shield were gone, the Tri Rod back in her hand. His sword remained in the other, dull and suddenly heavy. 

“Link?” She tried to shout louder this time, but her voice came out small. Too small. 

And she hated it.

Chapter Text

Zelda should sleep. If she laid down right now, she probably would. Her body felt heavy enough, and Lueberry did say she could stay as long as she needed. But instead, she paced back and forth in front of the Sword of Might and the Tri Rod, both propped up against the bed, and nibbled on the corner of another chocolate scone.

Link and Impa had unknowingly been pointing her in the same direction. The house Impa marked on the map, the one that had been blocked by the giant rift she and Tri mended just north of Suthorn Village, turned out to be Lueberry’s. And he was Impa’s older brother and Link’s weaponsmith, as well as a self-proclaimed rift researcher and a surprisingly decent baker. When the old Sheikah sent her downstairs to rest with a generous serving of warm scones and tea, he likely wasn’t expecting she’d return with an empty plate, but she liked to eat when she was thinking. She also couldn’t remember the last time she had a proper meal. The blue monster barely fed her. 

Her eyes settled on the Tri Rod. Her week-long capture felt like a lifetime ago. She’d walked further, run faster, and seen more of the Hyrule than she ever dreamed she would. She’d fought monsters of surface and shadow, a dark swordsman, and the giant stone talus lurking deep inside the still world ruins. It was hard to believe all that happened to her in such a short time—all she’d faced. Survived.  

Minister Lefte certainly had a hard time believing it all.

Zelda and Tri had found her father’s magistrate just outside the mended rift. She was thankfully unscathed and thanks to Tri, spared any serious side effects from the petrification of the still world, albeit a little confused as to how she’d ended up in a forest when she last remembered the castle. She also hadn’t recognized Zelda when she first approached, Link’s cloak and the travel robes a far cry from the pretty dresses she usually wore. 

Skies, she missed the feeling of silk. 

Zelda’s eyes moved to the sword. After she revealed herself and explained everything that had occurred since the rift opened in the throne room, Minister Lefte claimed she was surprised. Not about the rift or the imposters or a talking sword. No, in all of that, she was surprised to hear about Zelda’s abilities. 

It was an innocent comment—a casual one—and yet it had followed Zelda the entire way to Lueberry’s house and remained in her shadow as she and Minster Lefte told Lueberry everything. It quickly became obvious Lueberry shared a bond with Link that ran deeper than business, his reaction when he learned Link remained in the still world one of deep concern. Earnest and loud. Familial. When he calmed down, he spoke highly of Link’s capabilities and character, just like everyone else in the village, and Minister Lefte’s word grew taller in her shadow. 

Surprised.

“Are you going to try to speak to him again?” Tri asked, drifting idly over her shoulder.

There were small orbs of blue magic in the deeper parts of the ruins. Sometimes the monsters released a burst of them into the air like spores when they were defeated, other times they just floated out from the walls like glowing cerulean flecks of dust. The sword responded when she touched them, vibrating in its sheath at her side like a bell. The more she collected, the stronger the buzzing grew and the blade radiated with energy. 

Link was right. It had protected her. It granted her swiftness and strength she did not otherwise possess, even with the Tri Rod. The talus had hunted her the same way the other Link had. Unrelenting and focused. She’d used most of the sword’s energy in the fight, slashing at its exposed core after her echo magic wrenched it loose from the stone cages on its body. 

Who knows how the fight would have gone without the weapon. 

When the talus was finally gone, she called out to Link through the still-lit sword, but he didn’t respond. She grabbed a few orbs before Tri and their friend’s mended the rift, but had become so swept up in their constellation of golden alchemy, and then they’d found Minister Lefte, and then Lueberry….and she hadn’t tried again. 

Her gaze drifted back and forth between Tri and the sword a few times. An assurance of Link’s safety would be a kindness to bestow upon Lueberry. A way to thank him for his hospitality…

It ignited the second it touched her hand. Like the magic, or the someone inside it, had been waiting.

“Hello?” she whispered, not wanting to draw the attention of Minister Lefte and Lueberry upstairs.

“Princess? Is that you?” Link answered.

She set down what was left of the scone and sat on the bed. “It’s me. I’m here. Well, not here. There. I’m out of the still world.” 

“It’s good to hear your voice again.”

She scoffed, averting her eyes even though she was alone in the room. “Lueberry will be glad to know you're alright.”

“That’s one way of phrasing it. There are monsters everywhere. I’ve been running since the last time we spoke.” 

That explained why he didn’t answer her before. She hadn’t considered he had his own battles to fight wherever he was. Now without his sword. 

“So you made it to Lueberry’s?” he continued.  

“Yeah. I came here right after we mended the rift. He’s…nice.”

“He’s a good man.” He was shaking his head reassuringly. She could just…tell. “Wait, did you say you mended the rift?”

“Well, technically Tri and their friends did.”

The magic was Tri’s. She’d put it together at some point in the ruins when she noticed the triangles floating behind them disappeared depending on how many, or what kind of echo she summoned. Tri’s magic. Not hers. She was just the one pointing the wand. A conduit.

She rotated the sword in her lap slowly. “But I…helped.”

“This Tri person can mend rifts?”

“They’re more like a”—’Zelda glanced at them—“a star? A floating, fairy-star?” Tri chimed approvingly “They can make echoes of things and teleport to waypoints and heal rifts.”

“So…the rift you were in is gone now?”

“Yes.”

“And the people inside?”

She blinked. “They’re okay.”

“Like okay-okay? They don’t seem sick or…or changed?” It was like his voice took a step closer. Her spine straightened a little.

“Completely fine.”

“That’s good news…that’s really good news.”

Lueberry told Zelda Link had made it his mission to fight rift monsters and rescue people who had been stolen away. Without Tri’s magic to heal them though, he’d probably seen his fair share of sickness. 

“Do you think Tri could come find me?”

She blinked, stammering a little, “W-what?”

“If Tri came and found me, we could try to close more rifts. The one I’m in is massive. I’ve never seen one this size before.”

“You want us to come to you?”

“Yeah, well, just Tri. Do they think they can find me?”

Her heart sank. Anyone looking in would have them switch places. He was the hero with the skills and the courage and the reputation, while she…she had been the only help available at the time…

But Tri had called her special after the rift was mended. The word materialized in her shadow next to the other, small but eager as a seedling to grow. It had felt good helping the people of Suthorn. To navigate the unknown, like one giant hidden passage, and helping Tri heal the rift. And she was still available to help, still had nowhere to go... 

Her eyes flickered up to Tri floating in front of her. Listening. Waiting.

“What about me?” Zelda asked, the question pointed at both of them. At everyone. 

Tri rotated slightly and let out a curious note.

“I can handle the rifts,” Link assured her. “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a bit of an expert.”

“You don’t say,” she said in a flat tone. 

“Shouldn’t you be getting back to the castle? To the King?”

She was suddenly back in the throne room, the imposter with her father’s face glaring at her, a hint of wicked triumph in his crimson eyes as he ordered the guards to lock her up. 

“My father’s been stolen away.” 

“What?”

“I can’t go back.” She shook her head a few times.

“Then…you can stay with Lueberry. He’ll gladly take you in.”

There had been no admission of surprise when she told Lueberry Link had confronted the blue monster; no shock when he learned Link gave her his sword and, in the last moments of their strange connection, instructed her to seek out the Sheikah for help instead of requesting any for himself. They all assumed the best of him, without hesitation. The details of his endeavors anticipated. Unsurprising.

Her reputation looked different. And it would continue to…until she gives people a reason to think otherwise of her. She never thought she’d want one, but that word had attached itself to her. That hidden, belittling vexation of a word…

Surprised.

She wanted to flatten it under her boot.

“I can close another one,” she declared, rising to stand.

“You–what?”

“Another rift. Tri says two more large ones appeared. I’ll close them both,” she spoke the oath to the phantom throne room, to the guards gripping her arms too tight. The grinning imposter. 

“Princess, the rifts are dangerous. There are monsters in here that make that dark version of me look like a joke.”

“I know, I fought one.” 

“You fought one?”

“Yeah, a big stone guy. It was easy,” she shrugged. “And my name is Zelda, not princess.”

“Easy,” he repeated. Unconvinced. It made heat prickle across her skin. She tightened her grip on the hilt and dug her heels into the carpet. 

“I bet I can close the rifts—”

“What are you—” he started to interrupt, but she persisted.

“—before you can find me.” An old game. A child’s, though the stakes had never been quite as high when she’d played with Impa in the castle.

A silence fell between them. Zelda shifted her weight nervously between her feet. If only she could see his face. Was he confused? Horrified? Silently mocking her? Trying to figure out the best way turn her down? 

“Fine.”

“Fine?” She lifted her eyebrows. 

“Fine,” he repeated. Her stomach fluttered. She could practically see the smirk on his lips and nearly matched it with one of her own but the magic shimmered a warning. 

“Is there anything around you?” she asked quickly, before he could change his mind.

“What?” 

“Anything that will tell me when I’m in the same place in the still world as you.”

A pause. He was looking around.

“There are birds.”

“Birds?”

“Yeah. Carved in stone.”

She had a feeling he was being purposely vague. Like Impa had been during the hidden passages tour. She rolled her eyes. “Really helpful.”

“I try,” he chuckled once and then he was gone. 

Shadows slid back into place on the walls, the sword dull and quiet in her hand. Even though she wasn’t hungry, she picked up the half-eaten scone from the plate and took a bite before repeating his acceptance softly to herself with a smile:

“Fine.”

Chapter Text

She first noticed the poster on her way back through Suthorn Village. 

Lueberry had given her some rupees and recommended she stock up on supplies from the shop in town before heading off to the other rifts. It was a generous gift—the money and the advice—and she promised to pay him back as soon as she could. She’d never traveled before and hadn’t considered building up an inventory as she prepared to leave his house. People usually came to her. 

The village was calmer as she moved through it. No more desperate pleas for help, or nervous glances toward the forest where the rift had been. The townsfolk just watched quietly as she passed through. A few even smile in her direction. Pride swelled in her chest. 

A sudden inspiration to check on the woman from the rift sent her wandering through the streets and she gathered more of those lingering, but settled glances and smiles like bright tulips in a garden of her tending. 

When Zelda finally located the woman, her husband, who had been an emotional wreck over his wife’s disappearance, shook her hand so enthusiastically that her shoulder ached. 

“I am glad to hear you are feeling well,” Zelda said to the woman when he finally relented his grip.

“It was the strangest experience. I remember sinking into the darkness,” the woman said, patting her husband’s arm reassuringly as he began to weep softly at her side. “And then I just woke up in the forest.”

Zelda lifted her eyebrows. “You can’t recall anything about being in the rift?” 

“Nothing at all.” The woman shook her head. “Why? Did you…did you see me while you were inside?”

The image of how she’d looked overlayed her face; bulging, vacant eyes, skin the color of winter dusk, a mouth fixed in a permanent, soundless scream—

“I didn’t see anyone inside,” Zelda lied.

The woman looked relieved. “My husband said you were seen entering the rift through a portal of starlight. I presume that was you?” She looked directly at Tri.

A soft jingle of bells echoed as Tri nodded with their entire body and the woman smiled. Lueberry and Minister Lefte could see Tri now as well, apparently the only lingering side effect from petrification for those healed by Tri’s magic. 

“We didn’t know what to do,” the husband said slowly, brows wrinkled with confusion by the half of the exchange he was unable to see. “With Link gone, I mean. He always seems to know when a rift is about to open nearby and evacuates the area to keep people from being stolen away. We had no idea this rift was coming until it was too late.” 

A muscle pulled tight in Zelda’s jaw. She was grateful for the shadow of the hood, even though it was his.

“I was happy to help.” She said, clenching her teeth to keep her tone even. 

“I’m afraid my husband couldn’t recall your name when he told me someone had gone into the rift after me,” the woman said, a weary, apologetic smile tugging at her lips. “Miss…”

Zelda opened her mouth to answer, but her eyes caught the wings of the Royal seal behind them. A large notice from the crown was nailed to the shop door, but instead of the neat lines of text that usually accompanied one of her father’s proclamations, there is a drawing. A portrait.

It couldn’t be….it was impossible.

“Will you excuse me?” Zelda blurted quickly. The couple glanced at each other before nodding and thanking her.

Zelda rushed past them, the world tunneled rapidly in around her. An unsuspecting patron stepped directly into her path, distracted by whatever drink they'd just purchased from the shop. It splattered berry red all over the ground when she accidentally clipped their shoulder with her own. 

The patron cried out, but their words were lost to the climbing whooshing in her ears as she continued to the door. 

No, no, no…

“Is that—” Tri began to ask, but she ripped the parchment off the nail, blurted an apology to the disgruntled patron, and bolted away from the shop down the street. 

The sound of Tri’s jostling bells beside her only magnified her rising panic. Her breath quickened and she yanked the hood down tight around her face, ducking away from curious glances. They’d all been looking at her before, but she’d thought….she’d thought—

She burst into the forest and sprinted until she was surrounded by nothing but trees. Only then did she dare pull the poster away from her heaving chest, a crude sketch of her own face staring back at her from under bold text:

PRINCESS ZELDA

WANTED FOR ATTEMPTED REGICIDE.

EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.

IF SPOTTED, PLEASE SEND WORD TO CASTLE TOWN IMMEDIATELY.    

Well, people were talking about her. Just not in the way she hoped they would. 

“I’m a fugitive?” she gasped. 

“What is ‘fugitive?’” 

“It’s not good!” Zelda cried, dropping her arms in distress only to lift them again to take a closer look. It was the worst portrait she’d ever seen. The eyes were crooked, her hair entirely the wrong shade of yellow, and her nose—her nose took up more than half her face!  

“I don’t really look like this, do I?” She whined, slapping the center of the page with the back of one hand. 

“The diadem is accurate.”

She fluttered her fingers up from her nose to touch the gold headpiece across her forehead. She knew the curves of the half-moon motifs around the ruby gemstone better than the lines in her own hand. It was her mother’s. She’d worn it every day since she departed the living world. 

She won’t take it off. 

“I can’t believe this,” she growled and glared down at the poster once more, focusing on the text. Dangerous. Despite all her efforts in Surthorn, the only people who knew her true identity were Lueberry and Minister Lefte.  But, given the circumstances at the castle, the both of them had planned to lay low until Zelda mended the larger rifts. This poster was the only active credit to her name. Not heroic or capable, but criminal.

They’d accused her of regicide. The sight of the word alone made her sick. She would never dream of harming her father. But the imposter. Oh, that horrible, monstrous phony…

She shrieked so loud it burned her throat and tore the poster into a dozen tiny pieces.

—

It was sweltering in her disguise under the Gerudo sun. Dohna said it was smart to keep her skin covered–-it was the first mistake non-Geurdo often made when they marched onto the sand—but the color of Link’s cloak worked against her. Within a minute of teleporting out of the shaded streets in Gerudo Town, the dark fabric began absorbing the sunlight around the oasis. Her robes were already clinging unpleasantly to her skin and she relented, ripping the hood away from her face.

It's not like she needed to hide at the moment. She’d given her name by accident to the Gerudo Chief when Dohna presented her, but thankfully, there were no wanted posters in Gerudo Town. Yet. It had become the perfect opportunity to start building a reputation to challenge the lies the imposters were spreading back in Suthorn and presumably, Hyrule Castle Town. The group of warriors living deep within the desert either didn’t know who Princess Zelda of Hyrule was, or, more likely, they didn’t care. 

There were much bigger problems in the desert. 

Rifts had swallowed up several sacred Gerudo sites, including their holy Sanctum. Monsters poured out of the blackness in waves; beasts that slithered and screamed and spat roaring vortexes of wind across the sand. Their presence had quickly choked off the Gerudo’s access to important resources and left many of Dohna’s soldiers injured or stolen away. 

Still, despite the dire circumstances, Dohna’s mother Seera, chief of the Gerudo, and her loyal attendant, Facette, were hesitant to accept Zelda’s aid. Facette, in particular, had spoken out strongly against Zelda’s interference.  After the chief dismissed them, Dohna sent word for Zelda to meet her at the oasis. 

A breeze kissed her face, the air pleasantly cooled by the surface of the crystal blue water beside her. She turned into it and sighed, admiring the vibrantly colored lilies that freckle the glassy surface. 

“Zelda?” Tri floated up beside her, the gold surface of their face almost blinding white in the sunlight.

“What is it, Tri?”

“Why was Facette angry?”

Zelda squinted under her hand at Tri. “What do you mean?”

“Back in Chief Seera’s chamber, she yelled at Dohna. I do not understand why she is so angry when we are trying to help.”

“Well, she’s not really angry,” Zelda corrected. 

“But you said yelling is anger. Yelling, or—” Their voice was suddenly louder and higher pitched, as if trying to  replicate Zelda’s frustrated shout inside Link’s house. “—'shit!”

“Shh!” Zelda stumbled back a few steps back, glancing nervously at people scattered around the oasis. Thankfully, no one looked up. She spotted Dohna near merchant tents on the other side of the water with a small audience of soldiers.

”I told you not to repeat that word,” she hissed.

“You told me not to tell anyone you said it.”

“I only said it because I was angry,” Zelda groaned, starting to move in Dohna’s direction.

“But why is Facette angry?”

“Like I said, she’s not really angry. She’s…scared.”

Tri waited.

Zelda let out a sigh. “Her and the chief. They are both worried about the rifts and their people’s safety. Sometimes when people are scared, they can say or do things they don’t mean. Or their words come out differently than they mean them to.”

Tri eyed her for a long moment and Zelda thought it might be over, but it was never that simple. It hadn’t been simple since they met. 

“Are you ‘scared’?”

“W-What?” Zelda sputtered.

“When you yelled back in Suthorn and ripped up that poster of your giant nose—”

“—I thought you said it didn’t look like—”

“—was that ‘angry’ or ‘scared’?”

“I’m not scared.” Her hand touched something cold. She blinked down at the blue steel sword, the vibration of a few orbs worth of energy humming under her fingers. 

She released it quickly. 

“Besides, this isn’t about me. We…we have to help Dohna.”

Tri let out a single, descending tone. “But how can we help if they won’t grant us access to the Sanctum so we can enter the rift?”

“Let me worry about that, okay?” 

“That…that cloak!” 

Zelda’s stomach dropped. One of the soldiers that had surrounded Dohna now stood in front of Zelda, eyes wide with shock. They took a quick step forward to inspect her exposed face and it took all of her willpower not to cover her nose. Oh, why had she taken off the hood! 

But, the soldier had said cloak. Not nose, or diadem, or crooked eyes. This had nothing to do with her at all. 

“Apologies for my intensity.” Something like disappointment flickered across the woman’s face and she took a quick step back. Zelda wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or offended. “You reminded me of someone else.”

Don’t say it.

“You see,” the soldier continued, “I nearly got pulled into a rift a long time ago. A swordsman wearing a very similar cloak rescued me.”

Of course he was known all the way out here.

“He took out wave after wave of monsters as they swarmed from the rift. It was quite the sight.”

“That sounds like Link,” Tri said in her ear.  

“You don’t say,” Zelda muttered, answering them both.

“He’s actually the reason I decided to become a soldier. I wanted to be strong like him someday.” 

Like him. Like him. 

Zelda offered the soldier a hollow smile and she left. The heat had begun to sting her cheeks, sweat beading across her brow. Dohna caught her eye and the mix of recognition and relief that spread across the captain’s face eased the angry knot twisted in Zelda’s chest.

It was nice to be looked at this way. 

Dohna rushed forward and took her hands. “You got my message.”

For some reason, Zelda could only shake her head.

“Let’s talk over here,” she gestured toward the water’s edge. “I have an idea of how to prove to my mother and Facette you can be trusted to mend the giant rift in the Sanctum.”

She smiled, confident and trusting, and led Zelda toward the shade.

Chapter Text

The dark echo of Link dropped to its knees in front of her in the sand. 

Zelda’s shoulders sagged with relief and she braced herself against the wall beside her with one hand, Tri Rod still pointed at the imposter in the other. The shadow swordsman, or archer this time, had been peppering her with arrows across the room, maintaining just enough of a distance to avoid her echoes as well as render the sword completely useless. 

She’d been the one doing the chasing this time—which felt infinitely better than being chased—even though she still needed to dive behind pillars to avoid the arrows, three at a time. At least she had known to expect a fight when she stepped into the room and all the doors snapped shut like iron jaws. 

The imposter glared up at her through glowing crimson eyes as she steadied her breath. Its face was strangely calm despite the inevitability of defeat. Despite how skillfully she’d turned its own strategy against it. 

It had quickly become obvious the imposter didn’t have any interest in close combat like before.  It barely bothered with accuracy, loosing arrows that whizzed high over her head or several feet from her shoulder. It had planned to wait her out, remaining just enough of a threat so that she needed to stay on her toes, and when she didn't have the strength to dodge anymore, that’s when it would line up the kill shot. She knew the tactic well. 

So she’d tried another. 

She dodged and lunged and scurried, pulling the imposter's focus in so tight on her that it hadn’t realized she’d been guiding it into a corner. It had nowhere to go when she suddenly sprinted into range and flung the Tri Rod’s magic like a whip. Frozen in her grip, she’d dragged the imposter into the path of her twirling peahat echo and held it there until the bow fell from its hand in a spray of violet mist. 

The current of energy held strong from the tip of the Tri Rod and Zelda took a moment to study Link’s features up close. He didn’t look like he was much older than her, the youth in his face beginning to give way to sharper angles. His body was lean, but strong under his tunic, shoulder-length hair slightly askew from the fight under his cap. 

A flush crawled over her cheeks. Why hadn’t anyone told her? Warned her? 

He was handsome.  

Unable to stop herself, she leaned forward and tried to picture the real color of his eyes. Sky blue? Or maybe green, like the lush forests surrounding his village? There was a faint splattering of freckles across his nose, but instead of brown, they shimmered with the same iridescence sheen as the rifts, tiny windows into the dark matter that had stolen his face. 

The imposter smiled.

Zelda jolted back. It didn't move, still trapped in her magic, but the darkness poured out of the crown of its head, coating Link’s body entirely in rot. It was weak, unable to hold Link’s likeness beyond his shape any longer and still, it had smiled at her. It smiled at her still through the eddy of black where the face should be. Like it saw something amusing in her. Not a viable threat in spite of the cunning that had bested it, but a joke. 

Words that had been gathering in her shadow towered over her—surprised, fugitive, not him, joke.  

Anger simmered hot under her skin. Without breaking eye contact, she lowered the Tri Rod and curled her fingers around the hilt of Link’s sword. 

“Princess?” Link’s voice sounded in her ear as soon as it ignited in her hand. The imposter, finally free of the Tri Rod’s magically binding grip, still didn’t move. Even as she raised the sword high, it just glared at her and grinned.

“Hold on, I’m about to take you out,” she declared.

“No, wait—”he was shouting, but she’d already swung. 

The darkness hissed as the white-hot blade sliced through the imposter. A sizable blaze of blue flame erupted where the sword struck the sand, scattering the dark matter and the shadows she hadn’t realized were all around her away from the light. They escaped up walls, slithering along the crackles and crevices in the sandstone all the way up to the safety of the ceiling.

“Princess!” Link gasped, voice strained like he was struggling with something. 

What was it he had said back in the other still world? Zelda tilted her head, almost mesmerized by the shadows as they began to run along the ceiling above her, like droplets of dark rain sliding down a windowpane. Something about a line? A tether had connected him to his shadow self. Something he could grip. He’d used it to hold the imposter back from unleashing the full strength of its attack on Zelda.

“There’s more…than one,” Link got out, grunting with a level of effort she could feel in her teeth. The shadows collected on the other end of the ceiling and began to drip down the wall to the floor. 

“Link…” Zelda shifted the sword into the two-handed grip. 

Three dark archers emerged from the pool of pulsing violet matter on the ground. The oil coating each of them drained away, revealing Link’s handsome face again, eyes not blue or green, but hellfire. Their limbs jerked against his hold, puppets testing the strength of each string. 

Energy hummed beneath her fingers, strength dwindling with every second that ticked by. She would lose his power, his voice in a minute or two. 

“You need to attack quickly…don’t let them surround you.” The strain in his voice doubled as the imposters begin to stalk toward her, flashing three identical smiles. 

“How?” she whispered. 

“Use…the shield.”

“Zelda?” Tri chirped almost wearily from beside her.

She took a step back, very much aware of the corner she’d just used to her advantage now behind her. Emotion crackled against the blue flames engulfing her, but she did her best to ignore their shape. She couldn’t face what awaited her on the other side of the magic. It would petrify her.

If it was let inside her…that would be the end. 

She needed to listen to Link. To the voice of the real hero in her ear. 

“How?” she repeated under her breath, bracing herself behind the shield. 

“Deflect the arrows. The closer you get, the harder it will be to aim at you.”  

“I can try to draw their fire,” Tri offered. Zelda flitted her eyes to them appreciatively. Tri face was unchanged, but they released a quick, almost reassuring two-note chime. 

“You ready?” Link asked. 

Zelda nodded and glared back at the imposters, rotating the blade in her left hand. 

“Now!” Link commanded and the archer closest to her abruptly halted. The venomous smile hardened into a grimace as it fought against Link’s hold. It was the only window she would get. Tri whizzed around her defensively, an angry golden hornet, triangles gleaming bright and ready to summon echoes as soon as the wand was back in her hand.

She blew out a breath, dug her heels into the sand, and exploded toward the archers.

—

The Bow of Might clattered hard-earned to her feet. She winced and reached over to palm her shoulder, fingers immediately warm and damp. She was lucky it was the only injury she sustained during the second fight—grazed by an arrow during that wild first charge. The archers wanted nothing to do with Tri, their arrows always pointed at Zelda, but the little star-being still managed to buzz around them enough to prove a nuisance. 

It was Link’s speed and reflexes channeled into her body by the sword’s magic that saved her, as did his strength and his voice. 

There was only one archer left when the sword’s energy faded, and Tri was eager. Zelda barely needed to lift the Tri Rod for their magic to surge forward and freeze the imposter mid-shot. Tri let out a tune that sounded strangely like triumph as she summoned a giant peahat and it tore the frozen shadow to pieces.

A flurry of tiny blue orbs drifted past her, released into the air when the imposters imploded into nothingness. Wiping the blood off her fingers on her robe first, Zelda reached for them carefully and took up the sword.

“Are you alright?” Link immediately asked.

She glanced at her shoulder. The wound stung, but the dark of his cloak absorbed the color of her blood. A relief. She always hated the sight of it. 

Even his cloak was helpful.

“I just need to make a smoothie and I’ll feel better,” she muttered. 

“I tried to warn you about the other echoes, but I can’t reach you until the sword is activated. I’m sorry.”

It was always a whiplash with him. She went from feeling triumphant and clever one minute, to incapable and stupid the next. It was her fault for not grabbing the sword sooner, so desperate to best the dark version of him that she hadn’t thought the imposter might have a trick up its sleeve as well. 

“I’ve been trying to reach you, you know,” she snapped. 

Link chuckled. Like her ire was amusing. Why was it funny whenever she tried to be serious? 

“I used the sword a few times since we last spoke.”

“I’ve been kind of busy,” he quipped and then, a little lighter. “We made a bet, didn’t we?” 

She blinked. Giant statues filled the Gerudo Sanctum. She’d been able to make copies and used them to open locked doors and clear obstacles blocking her path forward through the still world. One of the statues depicted a blue hawk. A bird. Was this the still world he was lost in? Was he trying to find her before she found the last of Tri’s friends? 

“Oh yeah, how’s that going for you?” She said carefully, glancing at the door behind her.

“I’ve been looking for the king.”

Her heart dropped. She hadn’t even thought about her father since fleeing to Suthorn. What kind of hero did that make her? The petrified faces of the stolen flashed before her eyes and her imagination makes quick work of what her father probably looked like. What kind of daughter did that make her?

If the sword wasn’t activated, the image would probably drop her to her knees.

The anger inside her fizzled out completely, leaving a hollow, empty pit in her stomach. He was so…good. She shifted her eyes to the sword. She’d begun to think she might see a reflection in him after mending the Suthorn rift, and helping the Gerudo, and taking down the archers, but with a single sentence, he’d proven just how foolish the fantasy had been. He was dauntless and unflinchingly focused and just so good. 

“What kind of smoothie are you going to make?” There was a hint of longing in the gentleness of his voice as he changed the subject. The bag of candy on his desk dropped into the dark of her head. She’d found a few edible things trapped in the rifts, but not much. Food in the still world was a matter of chance. 

He was giving her another window, a way to lessen the weight of her self-loathing, but all she could think about was how many chocolate scones she had eaten in Lueberry’s basement and the fact he’d mentioned they were Link’s favorite.

“I have a rift to close,” she said softly, positioning the sword against the mouth of its sheath. “I’ll talk to you later?”

“O-okay,” he says. “Be careful, Princess.”

There wasn’t enough energy left to correct him in the sword. In her. The magic blinked out and she closed her eyes and just let the shame swallow her.

Chapter Text

Lueberry called them crystals.

He pinched one between his knobby fingers and lifted it up to the light. Zelda had found them in and around the rifts, drawn to the same strange markings he carefully inspected as if he were reading a map. 

“You mentioned you used these to make Link’s weapons?” Zelda asked, cupping her mug of tea with both hands.

He nodded, peering through the large spectacles balanced on the end of his crooked nose at the weapons on the floor beside her. “The crystals repel whatever the monsters are made of. Like oil and water. Crafted into a weapon, they are very effective at vanquishing them.”

“So…it’s a ‘might’ crystal?”

“Precisely,” he replied, beaming at her before losing himself once again in the stone’s tiny labyrinth. 

A satisfied smile tugged at her lips and she dipped her head to conceal it, inhaling the scent of lavender and mint leaves. They fell into an easy quiet, Lueberry studying each of the crystals she brought him, while Zelda worked the stiffness out her fingers against the warmth of her mug. Dohna had warned a sudden parting with the Gerudo sun might prove a shock to the system and sure enough, as soon as Zelda teleported to Lueberry’s house, the shadow of dusk halfway across the sky, a chill struck deep into her core. She’d shivered from head to toe and gazed longingly back west before knocking on Lueberry’s door. 

The second rift Tri scouted lay in the opposite direction, a full day’s journey beyond Suthorn without any waypoints. According to Impa’s map, the road she needed to follow brought her dangerously close to Castle Town. The cover of night might’ve actually worked to her advantage if she’d decided to keep going, but she was tired and cold and she didn’t love the idea of navigating an unfamiliar region in the dark. 

Plus, she’d wanted to pay back a little of the debt she owned Lueberry. Impa had once mentioned they were important things to settle, and while he hadn’t requested she do anything of the sort in exchange for the rupees he’d lent her, or his ongoing hospitality, she’d never had a debt before and the novelty was enticing. 

She’d given him the crystals thinking they would settle her up, but it had been the look on the old Sheikah’s face when she held out the Bow of Might that revealed what he valued most. When she told him she had once again spoken with Link, his relief could’ve filled a dozen purses. 

“Are you able to use the crystals to make the weapons stronger?” Tri asked, floating lazily back and forth near the small fire, as if trying to warm themself as well.

Lueberry nodded.“I imagine that is why Link gave them to you, Princess. We had hoped taking care of the blue monster would stop the rifts, but they’ve kept coming.” His thick eyebrows wrinkled with concentration. “I will continue my research. We need to prepare the weapons for whatever is to come.”

“Does he have anything else left to fight with?” Tri asked curiously. Zelda pressed her lips together and sunk a little lower into her seat. Link mentioned he’d fought swarms of monsters wherever he was in the still world. The desert rifts had been filled with claws and teeth, but she’d had Tri’s magic and Link’s sword and an eventual way out of the rift once she located all of Tri’s friends. Link was trapped and short-handed—even more so now without the bow. 

“Aye. Bombs.” Lueberry chuckled, a mischievous twinkle in his eye that reminded her of Impa. She'd had a similar look right before she swiftly disabled the guards that cornered them in the castle dungeons.

“But I have a feeling those will require enhancing as well,” he added.

Her eyes drifted to the plate of scones Lueberry had put out with the tea between them. Chocolate. Link’s favorite. She hasn't been able to bring herself to take one.

Trapped, short-handed, and probably very, very hungry.

Foolish. It was positively foolish of him not to keep at least one sensible weapon to defend himself. What exactly was he planning to do with a bomb, blow up every encroaching threat in the still world? 

“Worry not, my child.” She blinked and glanced up at him. If anyone else called her that, she would’ve probably had a different reaction, but his familiar gentleness quieted the fire blooming in her chest. “Link is as scrappy as he is lionhearted. He was fighting monsters long before I learned of his pledge and forged the sword for him.”

Oh. He thought she was worried about Link. Because Link would be worried about her if their roles were reversed. Just like he was worried about finding her father, while she had been focused on mending the rift. She nodded quickly and smiled as if her distress had instantly reduced with the information instead of multiplying. 

Lueberry gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze and turned his attention back to the fire. Her smile dropped off her face and she numbly watched as he lifted up the kettle to pour himself some more tea and then pointed the spout in Tri’s direction.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some?”

“I don’t have a mouth,” Tri replied flatly. 

The Sheikah clicked his tongue. “Ah, I suppose that would be necessary.” 

If she were in a better mood, she’d laugh.

Instead, she declined the offer when Lueberry pointed the spout in her direction and took a long sip from her mug. Hearing about Link before he wielded the Sword of Might rotated her thoughts to her own life prior to all of this. The pretty dresses she loved to wear and the self-serving thrill of hidden passages and the walls she pretended to loathe, but kept her safe and sheltered from the blight slowly spreading across her kingdom…

She took another sip.“Has Link just always fought monsters? Does he want to be a soldier someday?”

Lueberry returned the kettle to the fire.“Has anyone told you Link was stolen away when he was young?”

She blinked. “No.”

“Several years back, he was among a group of children who were swallowed up near the woods.” He glanced over his shoulder to the window on the wall. Moonlight streaked into the room through the slotted wooden blinds. “The rift appeared out of nowhere. We all believed they were lost…”

It was one of the most horrifying things she had learned about the rifts. Up until recently, they almost exclusively targeted children. It made them seem malign, not just some natural-occurring tragedy like an earthquake or a bad storm, but something sentient and sinister. Like there really was something looking back at her from the dark.

“But somehow, they returned. Every last one. A miracle of the greatest kind,” Lueberry said, pulling his eyes away from the window to look at her again. His eyes twinkled in a different way and he had to blink a few times to clear it.

“Do you know how it happened? Was it…?” She glanced up at Tri who shook their body back and forth gently and let out a note as if to say, ‘that wasn’t me’.

“Like I said, a miracle. The still world changed them, as it does all those unfortunate enough to be touched by such terrible darkness and live, but they were home and unscathed and we celebrated.” 

“Changed? Like how you can see me now?” Tri asked.

“The change afflicted upon me after falling into the rift has been a blessing, thanks to you, Tri. This was different. Worse. Some of the children lost things in there as well. Or, rather, things were taken from them.”

“I was told it made people sick?” Zelda said, her mind filtering through the information she’d been given over their years. Vague words like “sick” and “wrong”.

“Sure, some have had their health drained from them, but I believe the still world likes to steal actual pieces of a person if it can. One of your senses, the color of your hair; if you are trapped long enough, it eats your memories."

Zelda shivered. 

Tri chimed curiously. “Did it change Link or take from him?” 

“I think both. He went in with a boy’s heart and came out not with darkness inside it, but fire. I am told he began training shortly after.”

“What did he lose?” 

Lueberry looked at her with a mixture of surprise and confusion. The question had escaped her lips before she realized how intrusive it was and she instantly began fumbling with the threads of an apology. It wasn’t something she needed to know about him; wasn’t something she was entitled to know. 

Lueberry’s eyes dropped to the floor—to the sword—and his expression shifted again. An epiphany like a sunrise on his face.

“His voice, my dear,” Lueberry told her. “Link is unable to speak.”

She nearly dropped her mug. “What?” 

“Not a single word since that fateful day. These conversations you’ve been having with him through the sword…they are the first he’s had out loud in years.” His eyes twinkled again, voice unsteady until he cleared his throat and added, “Well, sort of.”

You can really hear me? 

At the time, she’d assumed the shock in his voice had been a twin to her own over the bizarre nature of their connection. And perhaps it had played a part in it, but there had also been a disproportionate intensity behind his words she hadn’t been able to place. Until now.

She’d shut him out in the desert rift. Told him she’d speak to him again later and then never drew the sword. Her echoes had made quick work of the mole-creature hoarding the last of Tri’s friends. Had he waited for her to reach out? Was he waiting for her still?

“I think a part of him believes if he can save enough people from being stolen away like he was, his voice will return to him,” Lueberry shook his head gently. 

“Like a debt?” She asked and her eyes drifted to the weapons on the floor. The blade was ready. Radiant and blue.

“One of his own making,” Lueberry sighed heavily, like it was a point he’d tried to make many times before. And then suddenly, with the same cat-like speed Impa had showcased on the dungeon, he scooped up the sword and the bow. “But that is enough talk for tonight.” 

Zelda’s eyes snapped up. He tucked both weapons under one arm before outstretching the other toward her torn cloak sleeve, palm facing up. “I can stitch that for you.”

“But I—”

“Give it here,” he insisted with measured authority. 

He was older, but she was the princess. She most certainly didn’t have to listen to him, but something in her decided she ought to. She stood, shrugged the cloak off her shoulders, and handed it to him without further protest. 

“There are some clean clothes in the dresser downstairs. Take whatever you need and leave those on the stairs after you’ve changed. You can sleep in the bed again.”

Another non-offer. Her exhaustion suddenly tripled at the promise of rest and she nodded.

“You need to sleep.”

She nodded again.

Lueberry made a face. “You are just like him, you know. Link doesn’t like to rest, either. But no one is at their best when they are tired.” 

“‘You do what you have to in order to complete the mission,’” Zelda recited softly. 

Lueberry chuckled, “Did Link tell you that?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded, set the weapons and the cloak down next to the crystals, and began to pack up the tea. “You can stay as long as you like, but I’ll have everything ready for you in the morning.” 

Something inside her relaxed a little. He hadn’t assumed the words were her own creed, but he believed she would want to leave at first light. It was a far cry from the accolades that followed Link all the way to the desert, but it was a start.

“Take the scones with you, Princess.” Lueberry handed her a small plate and a candle. “Nothing worse than an empty stomach.”

The plate and the candle were light in her hands as she turned to descend the stairs, her thoughts stacking on top of each other like an endless bridge of echo beds. 

Focusing on the rifts didn’t mean she didn’t care about her father. Mending them would ultimately save him when she found the right one. Link had his own self-imposed debt. The ‘why’ under all that good. Something he’d convinced himself needed to be done to restore his voice, though she wasn’t sure the rifts, or whatever created them, had any interest in relinquishing whatever it took.

Her robes bounced off her knees as she hurried down the stairs. As soon as she hit the floor, she started pacing, a scone half-eaten by the time she made her third pass. She could find more crystals and continue to stop by with updates on Link, but it wouldn’t be enough to change how the world saw her. It wouldn’t be enough to repay everything Lueberry had freely given her. All Link had given her.

Unless…

His cloak, his sword, his bow, his favorite food—she was going to continue to use these gifts to mend the rifts, restore her father to the throne, and help Tri find their friends so they could continue mending the rifts like they’d done for ages. She would do all that with all she’d been given, and she was going to be the one to save Link.

She smiled to herself and gave a twirl in the candlelight. 

“What is this, Zelda?” Tri asked, mimicking her movement, their music a bright glissando. 

“This is confidence, Tri. It’s good.” She realized, for the first time since she broke out of that crystal, she was grinning. She twirled again. 

The imposter the castle would have to make her wanted posters far more menacing to convince anyone she was not the stuff of fairy tales and legends when she was through. Princess Zelda: Hyrule’s favorite hero's hero.

She’d use Tri’s magic to get his voice back, too. Relieve him of his debt. 

And just like that, she wasn’t so tired anymore.

Chapter Text

“And Hylians actually enjoy music?” Tri drifted up and down beside her, golden triangles trailing behind them like the long tail of a kite. 

“Most of the time,” Zelda replied, admiring the new addition glittering at the end of the line briefly. It had suddenly appeared after they cleared another small rift on the way to Jabul Waters. Tri claimed that in all the ages they had been mending rifts, their magic had never increased, so the addition of the fourth triangle puzzled them, too. As much as they were capable of being puzzled.

Zelda, on the other hand, was delighted. She quickly discovered she could use more echoes simultaneously now, as well as copy stronger monsters that required a greater amount of magic to bind to her will.

It meant they were getting stronger. 

“It was bad,” Tri continued matter-of-factly, drawing Zelda’s gaze back from the triangle. 

The song, if it could even be called one, played by Dradd and Kushara in the plaza outside Lord Jabu Jabu’s den echoed faintly in her ears. They’d almost stopped ringing. 

“It doesn’t usually sound like that. Musicians traditionally play their instruments together. In harmony,” she told Tri.

“It was horrible,” Tri persisted. 

“I’m sure they feel terrible enough without any additional criticism from us.” 

Tri was quiet, but she’d learned by now that meant there was a question brewing. She inhaled deeply and prepared her patience while her eyes traced the path of the river beside her guiding them north. 

Clear blue water cascaded down the climbing foothills and rocky slopes of the Jabul Water’s upper region. The water occasionally collected into sparkling lakes abundant with fish with small islets covered in lush green vegetation, but the outflows of rivers and streams extended like veins all the way down to the sea. A thriving Hylian fishing settlement was sandwiched there between the two Zora villages. 

Well, usually it thrived.

Right now, the entire region was in chaos because of the massive rift festering over the den of the fish-god that safeguarded these waters. 

Well, usually safeguarded. 

The rift had apparently driven Lord Jabu Jabu into madness. He’d been on a violent rampage for almost a week, terrorizing Zora and Hylians alike. In order to tackle the problem at the root, Tri and Zelda knew they needed to access the rift, but the entrance was somewhere behind the sealed door to Lord Jabu Jabu’s den, which could only be opened when the leaders of the two Zora clans played a ceremonial song together. 

Together being the key requisite.

Their dissonant playing had offended Lord Jabu Jabu so profoundly that he swallowed members of their respective courts before taking his rage north. Dradd and Kushara had rushed upstream after him before Zelda and Tri could offer their solution.

“Because that would be…rude?” Tri said.

Zelda stopped dead.

”Yes . That’s right. Wow, Tri! You're learning!” She smiled and eyed the fourth triangle. Perhaps it was a mark of more than just magical growth.

“They were rude to each other,” Tri turned their body back in the direction of the plaza. 

“Yeah, they were,” she agreed, glancing over her shoulder. From the sounds of it, the squabble wasn’t the first between the chiefs, but it had proven persistent. Each claimed to have been deeply and irrevocably insulted by the other. Something to do with the music which, by design, was meant to unite them. 

She turned and moved to take a step, but Tri was directly in front of her face. 

“Is this ‘anger’?”

She had known it was too good to be true.

“What do you mean?”

The music in Tri’s voice slid into a low octave. “‘That no-talent Kushara will finally bow down to my superior skills. Heh!’” It was a surprisingly good impression of Dradd. 

Then, shifting up into a higher octave for the Sea Zora’s chief, “‘Dradd, that tuneless buffoon…its like he lives to provoke me!’” Though Kushara’s voice was more delicate, making her naturally seem more refined than the brutish Dradd, Tri nailed the undercurrent of judgement in her elegant speech.

Both of them had shouted at the other in the plaza, bickering over who would be the one to save their courtier first and head starts. It was the most childish thing she’d ever seen.

She chuckled behind her hand. “I can see why you’d think it is anger, but this is different.”

Tri deflated a little. “Different?”

“Sure, it's…well,” Zelda made a show of lifting her eyebrows a few times and smirked.

“Do you have something in your eye?”

A puff of hard air fluttered her lip. Non-verbal communication was still too advanced. “And I thought we were making such progress.” 

She moved past Tri and continued along the riverbank. The soft jingle of Tri’s flight followed close behind her. 

“It’s ‘denial’,” she told Tri without looking back.

“‘Denial’',” Tri repeated the word slowly, as if sampling something exotic. Decadent. “And ‘denial’ is…” 

They zoomed ahead of her and turned. The twin ink blots resembling eyes on the smooth gold surface of Tri’s face didn’t move, but a wrinkle appeared above them and proceeded to wiggle.

“Are…are you trying to raise your eyebrows?”

“Is it working?” Tri did it again and Zelda clapped her hands together.

“That’s perfect.”

The wrinkle disappeared. “I still don’t understand what it means.”

“All you need to know is that Kushara and Dradd care about each other. Very much,” Zelda reassured Tri as they came upon the rocky face of the final slope before the River Zora’s village. “Behind all the bickering and the name-calling and the lack of cooperation are two individuals who…” Romantic love was a can of worms Zelda didn’t want to open, so she stuck to what they’d already covered, "who just want to play in harmony once again.”

“I hope they do. ‘Denial’ sounds terrible.”

“That it does,” she agreed and rolled up the sleeves of Link’s cloak. “Alright, I think four beds stacked should get me up this. Let’s go try to calm a wrathful god.”

—

They didn’t manage to calm Lord Jabu Jabu down. 

Zelda and the chiefs end up chasing him all over Jabul Waters. When they finally had him cornered inside his den, after Kushara and Dradd ceased their quarreling and agreed to play together to open the door for the good of their shared dominion, Zelda decided she was done trying.

Instead, she did what she assumed Link would do if he were in this situation. 

She fought a god.

And, praise the skies, because she didn’t know how the Zora would react to the accusations against her if she actually did kill their guardian deity, it turned out to be an echo.

Her final arrow struck it right between the eyes. She silently thanked Link for his exceptional aim as they blazed crimson—the same terrible shade of red as all the imposters—and then the dark matter burst through the mimic’s scales.

From the shore where she’d summoned her echoes to fight and fired the Bow of Might, Zelda eyed the small swarm of blue flames hovering over top of the water where the echo had been. Link hadn’t called out to her when the magic ignited, but she only had enough energy to take the one shot before it burned off her skin. She wasn’t a strong swimmer, but she could doggy paddle over to them or ride a floating tile out and back to gather up the energy…

The sound of the chief’s shared relief turned her back to the orbs. They’d talk soon, she told herself. Soon, she and Tri would enter the rift where there will be plenty of monsters, and she could gather up enough orbs to light the sword. Soon, she’d be able to tell Link all about what she’d done, and what she decided back at Lueberry’s she was going to do. 

As she tuned, Tri’s fourth triangle caught some light from the iron sconces lit along the walls and for a second, she saw the same bright shape in different formation. It gleamed in the bottom left of the three triangle symbol, something sacred and immemorial and as a part of her as the beating heart in her chest. 

Zelda blinked rapidly and the image was gone, the shape just the end of the trail rippling gently behind Tri. Link. She had been thinking about what she was going to say to him…

Right. What she’d done, what she planned to do. Oh, and that he didn’t need to worry about her taking care of herself. He could keep his bombs.

Dradd wept freely, a chubby, webbed hand clasped over the shoulder of the River Zora that had been swallowed by the echo. 

“Hey, Boss!” the returned Zora patted him affectionately. “Looks like you and Kushara patched things up?” 

It was hard to tell with the scales, but there could’ve been the hint of a blush creeping over Dradd’s green face. Zelda glanced at Tri and wiggled her eyebrows. The soft ring of music they offered her was almost like laughter. 

“We couldn’t have done it without Zelda here,” Kushara added. She stood beside her returned Zora, not touching, but close. It was fascinating to observe the differences between the two chiefs side by side and yet, when they had played together— really played together—the music had had a perfect symmetry. She’d heard a story once about two fish, one white and one black, that swam around each other eternally, bringing balance to the realm. She didn’t think the story was about the Zora, but watching them now, she wondered if it could be.  

Zelda lowered Link’s hood and smiled. It was risky to give her name in Jabul Waters. Unlike in the desert, she’d spotted postings from the throne in the Hylian town when she arrived. But the only way she knew how to change a bad reputation was to forge a different one. And, if she really found herself in a bind, she could always teleport back to the desert. After she’d mended the final rift there, the Gerudo, who hadn’t recognized the royalty behind the name ‘Zelda’ when she’d first given it, chanted her name and vowed to destroy any poorly illustrated documents that tried to sully it.

The Zora didn’t seem to recognize the name, either. It was a pattern she was beginning to notice and disliked immensely. How was she supposed to preside over a kingdom that barely knew her? The domains of Hyrule were independent sovereigns, but the Royal family was meant to be the heart and the shield that protected them. Could she ask people to trust her whenever she ascended if they didn’t even know her? 

Thankfully, no one in Jabul Waters seemed to know Link, either. A delightful first, and another thing she planned to share with him when next they spoke. 

She glanced over her shoulder at the water, but the blue flames were gone. Her free hand found the pommel of the sword at her hip. It hummed faintly. Not enough to glow, but an assurance it could. It would. 

Soon. 

Chapter Text

The key to the final room within the Jabul Ruins still world lay smooth and cold in her hand. Final keys felt different, as if they’d been created to inform the wielder as much as aid them. A solid iron reminder that a locked door was an opportunity to turn back or forge ahead.

They kept things in just as much as they kept people out.

It whispered both a promise and a warning to Zelda as she held it, but neither were the reason behind her hesitation before the thick door. 

She laid her free hand on the pommel of the sword. Magic vibrated under her fingers, a tuning fork struck by her touch. She’d ignited the sword and drawn the bow, entering room after room inside the flooded labyrinth, expecting a dark version of Link to step out of the shadows and test her. But the imposter never showed, and the only sound that echoed in her ear was the crackling of blue sorcery. 

Soon hadn’t come. She and Link still hadn’t spoken since the desert. 

“Are you ready, Zelda?” Tri asked from beside her. Their light was a golden constant against the darkness in the ruins. This still world had been a shadowland. Torches struggled to hold a flame in damp caverns. Many were filled almost entirely with black water. She had needed to bind herself to lamp-headed tanglers to navigate the winding tunnels before she ran out of air. And whenever they found a room that wasn’t flooded, Tri filled it with questions about the colorful curses she muttered under her breath (though, evidently not quietly enough) for making such an impractical birthday request. She should have asked for formal swimming lessons instead of that stupid tour. 

Without the Tri Rod to help her, she barely managed to stay afloat on her own. Link apparently could swim, the skill shared with her whenever she used the sword’s magic underwater, but the power had a time limit, as did her lungs, and it was difficult to swim with a sword in hand. Plus, she’d come upon several dead ends that turned out to be puzzles only Tri’s magic could solve. Thanks to the fourth triangle, she could keep herself from drowning, light up a cavern, and solve an environmental puzzle simultaneously. 

Zelda glanced over her shoulder at the door she’d entered through. Part of her wanted to work her way back to see if there was a room she missed, one that might contain his dark echo. Not for the fight, but for the tether. There were just…important things she needed to tell him. The plan to rescue him, her intention to heal him with Tri’s magic, if she could. She…she needed to have an update to give to Lueberry the next time she stopped by his house.

How was she supposed to do any of that if Link was…

She snapped her head around, away from the door and the thought, and narrowed her eyes back on the key. He was fine. He was strong. Probably somewhere in his still world, busy fighting in his own dark. She’d told him she could handle mending the rifts on her own and had proven it twice. She didn’t need to worry about him doing his job; couldn’t be angry he was leaving her to do her own. 

Only, she told him she would talk to him later and she….she was a woman of her word. She didn’t want him thinking otherwise—for the sake of her reputation. 

Yes. That was it. 

“Zelda?” Tri repeated. 

“I got this.” She slid the key into the lock at the center of the door and opened it. 

On the other side was an unassuming room. The small space was illuminated by three glass lamps that revealed no doors other than the one she stood in. Vines crept down the walls from roots buried in the cracks of the ceiling, sharply-tipped leaves pointing like fingers toward a dark pit in the very center of the floor. 

As she peered over the edge inside, she couldn’t help but notice the sides were jagged, as if the floor had crumbled away. Or been carved out.

Her insides went cold. A chill from her waterlogged robes.

Yes. That was it.

“Let’s go free your friends,” she said, gripping the Tri Rod in both hands. 

And then she jumped.

—

The Sword of Might clattered against the floor. The blue flames immediately winked off her skin at the loss of contact and Zelda dropped to her knees, her fingers splayed against the grimy stones while she gagged and gasped for breath. The monster she was fighting writhed in an opposite agony a few yards away, the gills along the side of its neck flexing wide in the absence of water. The glowing pustules along its spine were already beginning to regenerate despite the deep gash along its scales, but Zelda couldn’t bring herself to do anything else but force air into her screaming lungs.

She’d nearly drowned that time.

The pit in the floor had spit her into a cave completely submerged in water and darkness. After the initial shock to her senses—blind and choking and sinking fast—-she’d summoned a tangler to halt her rapid descent and used the small radius of light from its lamp to quickly scan for the surface or any source of air. 

But she hadn’t been alone. 

Two lights appeared in the darkness. Zelda had eyed them curiously, trying to discern if they were part of another puzzle or a possible exit, but then they blinked . First the left and then the right. Then both together, as if finally, fully adjusted to the dark. 

Not lights. Eyes. 

The spine of a massive creature lit up behind them, revealing a long body of iridescent scales with a row of fins on either side like the oars of a giant ship. It immediately surged after her, or rather, after the tangler and its lamp. She’d released herself just in time to avoid the long, serrated teeth as they clamped down over her echo and thrashed, shredding the magic apart. The darkness had seemed to pacify the monster for a brief moment, but then it turned sharply and slithered after the only other source of light in the cavern.

Tri.  

She shouted (as much as one could shout underwater) and summoned another tangler. The monster circled back and attacked with the same ferocity, not only hungry for the light, but angry with it. And when the echo was gone, it turned and went after Tri again. 

When it came for the tangler a third time, her lungs ready to explode, Zelda drew the sword and slashed. She had been hoping to daze it long enough so she could use the lamp to find some air, but the attack did something to the cavern. The bizarre sacks along the monster’s spine had all burst when she struck it, and the water suddenly drained away as if someone pulled a plug in the floor. Zelda could breath and gather herself, but only until the glowing blisters restored themselves. Then the room flooded once again. 

Three times she’d lured it with a tangler, activated the sword, and swung. Three times the room had drained and she gasped for breath and prayed the creature would disintegrate and fade away, only to watch it rally and attempt to eat her light and drown her again.

“Zelda, you have to get up. The water is coming,” Tri told her.

Her hair was plastered against the sides of her face and neck as she dry heaved onto the floor. The creature roared victoriously and dark water began to swirl around her hands before she could even look up. She fumbled for the hilt of the sword to stop it from being swept away and staggered to her feet.

“Attack it now!” Tri exclaimed over the rush of water, but the thrum of power was weak beneath her fingers. There was barely enough energy for one final attack, and in a minute, she would need to swim and see more than she needed to fight. 

Water was already up to her knees, the creature wriggling further away in the rising tide. Her heart thundered in her chest, hands trembling even as she gripped the sword in one hand and the Tri Rod in the other, trying to figure out her next move. If she attacked now and it regenerated again, she wouldn’t have anymore power left. She could use her aquatic echoes to swim, but they hadn’t been effective in damaging the monster. They only made it angry. 

The current lifted her feet off the ground and she sheathed the sword, struggling to remain afloat on her own. Tri flew away from her to prevent the monster from coming near her, but their absence plunged her into darkness. All she could hear was the sound of running water and the echo of her panicked breathing.

Calm yourself, she commanded, clamping her mouth shut to force the air through her nose. 

She lifted her hand up above her head, trying to gauge how much time she had and her knuckles cracked against stone. The ceiling was already right there, not even a foot over her head. She had ten seconds of air left, maybe less. 

Calm yourself! she commanded again, but her voice shook even in her head. And without the sword’s power activated, nothing could stop her fear from grabbing hold of her. It consumed her just like the water was. Just like the dark.  

Zelda couldn’t stop it. The water was around her neck and she screamed, a pathetic, horrible sound that bounced off the ceiling above her, amplifying her awareness of what little space she had left. 

She was going to die here.

“Help! Please! Someone help me.” She began to slam the heel of her palms against the ceiling. In between each hit, she saw a flash of rosy glass in her mind’s eye. How long had she pounded her fists against the cage blue monster had trapped her in? How long had it taken for her voice to give out then? 

Water splashed in her face. She was back where she’d started. Helpless and pleading, just like inside that crystal, and then in the castle dungeons, and then in the darkness of that first rift.  Before Link found her. Before he’d helped her. Saved her.

“Link!” His name erupted from her lips just as the water swallowed her completely. He couldn’t hear her, not without the sword activated, but if she used the power to call out for him, she wouldn't have enough energy left for the attack she needed to drain the cave again. 

In the distance, Tri was doing their best to avoid the monster, their fight two blurred spots of light dancing around each other. 

If the dragon swallowed Tri, would she be able to use the echo magic anymore? 

What should I do? What would he do! Zelda put her hand on the sword and hesitated again. What if he didn’t respond? How would he help her even if he did? He didn’t have a tether to monsters, just his copies, and the only thing he had left to give her according to Lueberry were those ridiculous bombs! She couldn’t even light one underwater if she tried—

Her fear relented for a moment, like the first long gap between a flash of lightning and a thunderclap in a terrible storm. 

She couldn’t use a bomb. 

But a bomb fish. 

She immediately pointed the wand across the water toward the dancing lights and cast the echo magic. At first nothing appeared after the initial flash of starlight, but then, an ink black fish appeared around the bright red flash of its rounded belly. She’d copied it in one of the caves without any intention of ever using it given how volatile the attack was. A dynamite stick with fins, powerful enough to bring down entire walls of stone.

It pulsed against the dark, alarmingly bright and fire red, quickly catching the attention of one of the distant lights. The monster slithered through the water toward the bomb fish and Zelda threw out her arms, frantically flapping to try and propel her exhausted body in the opposite direction. 

Jaws yawned wide out of the darkness around the bomb fish, the cavity of its mouth and throat illuminated by the rhythmic strum of light. A pinprick of gold zipped past the monster and collided into Zelda’s chest, pushing her even further away. 

Those two massive eyes fixed on her and bulged wide, drawn to Tri’s glow. Zelda watched the fins lift high, preparing to dive toward them. She curled her body in a tight ball around Tri and pressed her hands against either side of her head. 

And then the seams between its scales flared scarlet, a fire lit deep within its gut, and the monster exploded from inside out. 

Chapter Text

“You can’t march into Castle Town, announce the king is a fraud, and expect everyone to just believe you outright,” Minister Lefte pinched the bridge of her nose below her glasses and sighed heavily. Her frustration was pointed at General Wright, but felt by everyone. So much so that Zelda, Lueberry, and Tri had all individually gravitated to opposite sides of the room, leaving her to stand alone in the debate with the returned general of the King’s guard. He’d been healed when they mended the Jabul Waters rift and demonstrated just how unfazed he was by the petrification by sprinting the entire way to Lueberry’s and attempting to rally everyone to storm the castle.  

The two had been bickering back and forth for the better part of an hour. Things were almost back to normal. Almost.

“It’s the truth!” General Wright roared back, a proud grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, as if those three simple words plugged all the holes Minster Lefte had astutely identified in his logic. The general had always been an overly confident man. He walked into every room with unwavering conviction. Every step he took was heavy-heeled, every word he spoke a declaration. She supposed that’s what made him a good soldier—a good leader. No one wanted to follow a coward into battle.

But it made him a bit of a pain in the ass to work alongside.

“Yes, we know that, but to the people of Castle Town and to your guards, the king never went missing. We never went missing,” Minister Lefte pressed.

“My guards will know it’s the real me,” the general scoffed. 

“Will they? Because they threw the real Zelda in the dungeons on the order of the fake king. What is to stop them from believing the fraud when they declare us the imposters and tossing us behind bars? Or worse, they’ll just kill us on the spot! They’ve already called for the Princess' execution.” 

Zelda’s wince went unnoticed in the frenzy of advancing arguments and counterarguments. The reminder of it all stung, like a nearly-healed cut had been reopened inside her. She pulled the wool blanket Lueberry had given her tight around her shoulders and glanced across the room to the fire where Link’s cloak, her travel robes, and boots were hung to dry. She’d been soaked to the bone when they showed up at Lueberry’s. The silk pajamas Dohna had gifted her before she left Gerudo Town were soft and dry against her skin, but they were impractical for what was to come.

She’d always known the road would lead her back to the castle. Known she would need to face whatever monster that had usurped her father and the soldiers who had turned on her; all the people who had so easily believed the lies. The argument between General Wright and Minister Lefte was over the ‘when’ and ‘how’ it would be faced. Not ‘if’. There was no refuting the moment was finally upon her. 

She’d only hoped to return different from what they all remembered; nothing but fire in her heart and an impressive reputation of valiant acts billowing behind her shoulders like a cape. A cloak of her own making. 

But all that was behind her were words. Words she’d unwillingly collected along the way; words that had proven as impossible to outrun as her own shadow because they lived in it. Sure, they’d shrunk in the light of her rising confidence, which had been radiant and bright over her head when she’d entered the last rift. But then her sun had set—it always did. And with it her shadow had grown again, the words sprouting from the darkness.  

Though her bomb fish worked and Tri’s friends were freed to mend the rift, she’d been unable to shake the fear that had claimed her in that final submerged cavern—the fear that had reclaimed her. 

The horrible sound of her own scream echoed in her head and she shuttered. She’d faced plenty of dangers since fleeing the castle, sure, but she’d faced them all with help. Armed with the things she needed—magic and steel and enough experience to fill an adventure book or two—all she’d proven when she finally faced it on her own was that she was still afraid. That helpless feeling she thought she’d gotten rid of wasn’t gone. Only buried. 

She had been scared when she’d left the castle and she remained scared upon her return. 

Unchanged. 

Her eyes shifted to General Wright as he stomped his feet and gestured wildly to the wall, presumably pointing at the castle in the west. Her castle. Her home. It shouldn’t frighten her more than jumping into shimmering black rifts, or battling monsters made of oil and shadow, but it did. 

And no one wanted to follow a coward. 

Lueberry hobbled over to where she sat and refilled her tea without asking if she wanted more. Warmth leached through the cup into her fingers, pleasant and welcomed, though not enough to touch the persistent chill deep inside her.

She tried to offer him a grateful smile, but her lips only twitched. 

“So, despite mopping up those rifts, there’s still no sign of the king…or Link?”  He asked softly, probably so not to disrupt the general and the minister’s quarreling. His face looked tired. No, heavier. Worried. 

Zelda’s pulse sputtered and then quickened once more. She knew what he was going to ask before he spoke.

“Did you at least speak to him again?”

He’d come to collect a debt, gentle and humble-hearted, and she was empty-handed. She had no comfort to offer him, no way to repay his kindness—to ease his distress. 

The concern in his eyes was so earnest. she knew the truth would shatter him like glass on a stone floor. It was wrong, she knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t bear anymore disappointment. Her own was intolerable.

“He’s doing all right. He,”—she lowered her gaze and blew on her tea, buying an extra few seconds to come up with something that would give the lie a spine—”he can’t wait to have a chocolate scone.”

The old Sheikah let out a chuckle and shook his head, some of the weight disappearing from his face. “I am not surprised. He loves sweets. He’ll never accept money from the people he helps, you know. But a plate of warm cookies, cold ones, even…I’m fairly certain I heard he recently pruned his neighbor’s entire garden with his sword for a bag of candy.”

Part of her wanted to tell him it was true. That she’d seen the bag on Link’s desk, been tempted by the vibrantly colored sweets herself, but the admission died on her tongue.

How could they be so alike, and yet so different? Fear wasn’t anywhere in Link’s reputation. His sword’s magic didn’t even allow it.

“I am surprised he didn’t give you the Bombs of Might. Though, it sounds like you made out just fine with your own,” Lueberry added and gave her a wink.

Coward. Liar. More words in her shadow. 

General Wright suddenly let out an indignant wail that made the both of them jump.

“As Hyrule’s general, I cannot stand idly by!” he shouted.

“What is it you intend to do, then?” Minister Lefte cried back, equally incensed, and stomped her foot for added measure.

“Take action, obviously!” The general looked at Zelda expectantly, as if she shared the same level of conviction, and it took everything inside her not to shrink away. “I am going to expose the true identities of those imposters tainting our beloved castle!” 

Then he punched the air with his fist and held it there as he rushed out the door. “Chaaaaaarge!”

“Wait! General Wright! For the love of—” Minster Lefte groaned.

The likelihood she would be able to stop him even if she managed to catch him was slim, but she still hurried out the door. Zelda suspected it was because two voices raised against the imposter on the throne were better than one, but the minister's points had still been valid. They would also lose the element of surprise once General Wright marched onto the cobblestones, an element that felt important to have if she and Tri were going to access the rift in the heavily guarded throne room.

It was something Link probably would’ve pointed out to the group before it was too late. 

Lueberry turned to her slowly. “So, I’m guessing you’ll be wanting to head to the castle too, then?”

All she could do was nod. What she wanted was to run to her rooms, lock the door, and sleep in her own bed for weeks, but she couldn’t do that. Not yet. Not with her father and Link still missing. Not when there was an imposter on her father’s throne and a large rift festering underneath it. Other people could see Tri now, but their magic hummed in her hands alone. 

She was still the only one who could help. For now. 

She was going to find Link. And then… then she would step back and let Tri fight beside the real hero. The one they deserved, not the last resort they were left with.

“Those fakes are after your head, Princess, so please proceed with the utmost caution.” He’d retrieved Link’s cloak and her clothing in the time she’d spent lost in her thoughts. When he handled them to her, they were warm in her arms and the cloak was folded neatly on top so the design stitched in robin's egg blue thread was exposed.

Lueberry lingered for a breath and ran a wrinkled hand over it. It was the similar pattern as the carvings on the Might crystals.

“If it's not too much trouble…” When he finally looked up at her, it wasn’t pride or affection that glimmered in his eyes. It was something like guilt, but for what she couldn’t figure out. “Bring my boy home, yes?”

–

At first it looked as if there were flower petals falling from the sky around Castle Town. The cherry blossoms in the courtyard shed their petals every spring, an event she looked forward to each year, but spring wasn’t for months. Summer was just starting to fade when she’d been captured by the blue monster. She couldn't have possibly been gone that long. 

Extending her hand out in front of her, one of the petals floated onto her hand just as a scream pierced the eerie quiet from beyond the towering stone walls. 

It wasn’t a flower petal. It was ash. Flameless, violet ash.

A rift was burning through Castle Town. 

Chapter Text

Zelda sprinted across the bridge that arched over the swollen moat surrounding Castle Town as fast as her legs would carry her. No guards were stationed at the central gatehouse door, something she’d never seen before, but as she stumbled into the main street of the village, she quickly understood what had drawn them away from their post. 

A colossal rift was pouring out of the maw of Hyrule Castle. It flowed down the stone steps and dispersed like flood water over the streets and buildings of the surrounding Castle Town. No fires burned, but the air quickly grew thick with smoke, flecked with embers that peeled away from the searing edges of the hungry void. When it finally paused its spread, the glistening blackness covered the entirety of the castle, as well as the courtyard and half the businesses and homes that once surrounded it.

Tri wordlessly shot up into the sky, presumably to scout for a possible entrance into the still world. Black clouds mirrored the rift up above, choking out the light from the midday sun until only red-tinted freckles showed through in a kind of macabre starry night. Dark tendrils mimicked the jagged fissures of the rift on the surface below, reaching across the paling sky toward the rest of Hyrule like greedy fingers dipped in ink.

The parts of the town that hadn’t been stolen away were eerily faded, as if the color were being drained out of the world. The rift pulsed like a diseased artery, spitting out purple orbs that morphed into shiny, onyx-coated darknuts, spear-wielding moblins, and chittering crawtulas that stalked up and down the streets, in search of living things to drag back into the darkness. 

A scream echoed somewhere in the distance and Zelda’s hand jumped to the sword. She drew it but didn’t ignite the blade, the wand crackling with energy in her other hand. She wouldn’t know which weapon to use until the threat revealed itself. 

Suddenly, General Wright kicked open one of the shop doors to Zelda’s right and emerged with a woman in his arms. He shouted behind him and two soldiers quickly appeared, the arms of an unconscious man slung across each of their shoulders. The scream echoed again, somewhere deeper within the ruined city, and the general barked a command that freed one of the soldiers to take the dazed woman from him. He pointed to the exit beyond where Zelda stood, not even flinching an acknowledgment at the sight of her, and took off running in the direction of scream. 

She watched him disappear as the guards approached her quickly. 

“You should evacuate immediately, miss,” one of them told her, adjusting his hold around the waist of the unconscious man slumped against him. “We do not know if the rift will continue to spread and there are monsters everywhere. Our King…our king has been…”

Skies above, Zelda thought as the soldier’s voice tapered off. The general had been right, his soldiers actually believed him. Or, perhaps the rift hadn’t given them much of a choice. 

“...Compromised,” the other soldier finished and the voice made Zelda’s stomach turn. It was Rhoam. The guard from outside her room. Her friend, or so she’d thought. There was no shock in Rhoam’s milky green eyes as he took her in. He was focused on General Wright’s orders and nothing more. She remained unrecognizable with Link’s cloak on. 

With a sword in her hand.

The memory of Rhoam’s grip on her arm ached like a fresh bruise lived there. She wanted to tear back the hood and reveal herself to him, to make sure he knew it was her who was about to rush toward the blackness they were escaping from, but her eyes burned with tears she did not want to share. She’d pictured this moment a dozen times in her head, and she was never crying in it.

“Princess!” Someone shouted and she turned. Out of the corner of her eye, Rhoam’s outline went stiff. 

Minister Lefte came running toward her out of another building partially claim by the rift. When she stopped in front of Zelda, her glasses were askew and thick pieces of her colbat blue hair, normally worn in a neat bun at the very top of her head, were frayed around her blotchy red face. A child no older than seven was tucked into her side, tiny hands grasped so tightly into her robes that their knuckles were white.

“Princess,” Minister Lefte repeated breathlessly, “I’m so glad you’re here. As soon as the general and I arrived the rift just…” her voice trailed off as she glanced over at the soldiers staring at them. 

Staring at Zelda. 

The red blotches spread down the minister’s neck.

“What are the two of you just standing there for!” she shouted, sounding an awful lot like General Wright. Rhoam and the other soldier snapped to attention. 

With a stark gentleness from the tone she’d just used, the minister urged the child to let go of her robes and ushered them over to Rhoam who set the woman down and took the child’s hand.

Minister Lefte shot her gaze back up to him and adjusted her glasses. “You get these people out of the city. Immediately!” 

The soldiers gave a unified grunt and hurried out the gatehouse without another word. Rhoam cast a lingering glance over his shoulder at Zelda before they disappeared over the bend of the bridge. She hastily wiped the tears from her cheeks with the side of her palm and tipped her chin up so the dying light caught her face. 

Before she or Minister Lefte could say anything more, Tri whizzed down from the sky and bobbed up and down between them.

“We need to get underground,” they said and for the first time, they sounded urgent. “Beneath the town. Do you know how we can, Lefte?”

The fact they were on a first name basis amused Zelda more than it should, especially given the circumstances. 

Minster Lefte, who didn’t seem to mind, cupped the bottom of her face for a moment, eyebrows furrowed in thought. She glanced back at the house she’d come from. 

“If I recall, there’s an underground passage somewhere near this house…”

Zelda gasped. She knew exactly what passage Minister Lefte was talking about. The well near the barracks. Her tour request hadn’t been completely impractical after all. 

“We’ll take it from here,” Zelda nodded, sheathing Link’s sword.

The minister reached out and touched Zelda’s shoulder and then the top of Tri’s head, her eyes shut tight as she whispered something in old Hylian. Zelda had seen it done for soldiers, reserved for those sent away on distant and dangerous missions. 

A prayer for safety. 

“Please be careful, you two,” the minister said when she was done. Then she turned on her heel and hurried down one of the streets toward more voices shouting for help. 

It was surprising, if she could turn the word back on the minister. She had no armor, no sword or shield, and yet she ran toward the danger, not away. 

Briefly, Zelda wondered what the inside of Minister Lefte’s chambers looked like. 

The barracks were gone, lost to a thick outstretched vein of rift, but the well remained. With two hands curled over the rounded stone mouth, Zelda peered over the edge into the darkness and tried to shove down the frost spreading up her chest. She needed to go inside, needed to jump down into the dark, but it was so like the pit in the floor of the still world. The one that dropped her into her worst nightmare. 

The chill spread down her arms and legs, preparing to freeze her to the spot. 

“Zelda?” Tri drifted in front of her, the warmth of their light soft against her cheek.

“I’m alright,” she said quickly, ignoring the tremble in her hands as she hoisted herself up and over and then down. If Minister Lefte and General Wright were forging ahead, so would she. They were counting on her. Her father was counting on her. Lueberry. Impa. 

Link. 

There was water at the bottom. It splashed up around her upon impact and a strangled cry crawled up her throat and echoed off the damp walls of the inner well. When she didn’t sink and the air continued to draw easily into her as she gasped for it, an off-key ring of laughter bubbled past her lips. It was shallow. Barely up to her ankles. 

“Er…”

Zelda looked up to find a guard was watching her cautiously. Impa had told her they sometimes stationed guards down here, but the reason escaped her. Training?

“I was napping—working—here at the bottom of the well, and…” he stammered. 

His voice died off when they both spotted the rift in the back of the space where the ladder up into the barracks should be. 

Napping. He’d been napping while people were shouting for help and a rift was slowly creeping up behind him. He was a meter away from being swallowed up, another petrified face staring vacantly at her while she navigated the still world. Another life on her shoulders when they could have easily escaped. 

Something tilted violently inside Zelda. She threw back her hood and recognition flashed bright over the man’s face. He stuttered between the motions of taking a knee and a defensive stance, trying to decide which version of her was standing before; the princess or the criminal.

“Get OUT of here!” The words erupted out of her and the guard jumped, abandoning any formality in favor of the wall, his spine pressed too-straight against it. 

“That’s an order!” she hollered again and the three words seemed to click because there was a splash as he jumped into the small pool and made for the ladder.

He slipped a few times on the rungs, but eventually disappeared out of sight through the well. 

“You are shaking,” Tri said conversationally after a moment.

Zelda’s chest heaved with breath. “I am.”

“You shouted at him.”

“I did.”

A pensive note sounded and then, “Is this ‘anger’ ?”S She scoffed and flashed a withering look that went completely unappreciated. Non-verbal communication strikes again, she thought miserably. 

“Yes,” she lied. She wasn’t going to explain fear when she had no time for it. When she didn’t want to claim it.

“Will anger help us with what we need to do?”

General Wright always seemed angry, maybe that was the trick.

“Sure,” she shrugged.

Tri considered her and then the rift on the other end of the room before exclaiming in a tone that was both loud and flat: 

“SHIT!” 

The word ricocheted off the walls around them. Zelda eyes nearly bulged out of her skull. 

“Tri, I told you not to repeat—” she hissed, but Tri cut her off. 

“No, you said ‘anger’ is yelling or ‘shit’.”

“Yes, but—” 

“And you just confirmed this is ‘anger’.”

“I did, but that’s not how the word is even—”

“If it will aid us, I want to be angry, too,” Tri said with a surprising edge of finality that gave Zelda pause. 

Conviction. General Wright was having an effect upon everyone.

Quiet settled between them, the only sound the faint sizzle of the rifts edge burning hot against the world. The truth was, she wanted it to be anger; wished it could be that simple and straightforward. And It did help, even though it was completely ridiculous. 

“Just this once, okay?” She set her jaw. 

Tri hummed, sounding pleased with themself. 

As they approached the rift and the small ripple of light began to take shape on the darkness, Zelda drew the sword again for good measure. She just needed the magic to keep the fear at bay until she was through. Then she would be inside and there would be no path but forward. 

As the blue flames crawled along her skin, the white-hot blade in her grasp, the cold in her chest melted into the floor and away from her body. She sighed. She could do this. She had to do this. One last time. And then it would be over. 

For good measure, she glanced over at Tri and added, “Shit!”

“Well, excuse me, Princess!” Link replied in her head. 

Chapter Text

Zelda nearly dropped the sword.

“Link!”

Laughter echoed in her ear and the sound did something to her stomach, even through the blue flame magic. 

“It’s been a minute,” he answered. 

A smile she couldn’t stop spread over her lips. She stuck out her hip and tried her best to sound irritated. “Where have you been?’

“Oh, you know, around.”

“Don’t be fresh. I’ve,”—she slapped her free hand over her eyes and silently cursed herself—“Lueberry has been worried about you.”

He chuckled again and the knot in her stomach twisted tighter. “Well…you can tell Lueberry I’m fine. Just starving.”

She momentarily debated pulling out a smoothie and slurping loudly for him to hear. At least what she told the old Shiekah before she left wasn’t a lie anymore. It was as she’d said: Link was hungry, but intact. Enough to be coy about it. 

The truth had just been told out of order.

“So, you’ve just been busy fighting monsters?” she asked.

“A few.” His voice was too casual for her liking. It felt like when the kitchen staff added sugar to cover up a dish gone wrong. She was about to call it out when he let out a heavy puff of air and added, “There have been more of them recently. And I’ve seen him.”

“Him?” 

“The blue monster.”

Tri made a noise beside her. The sword’s magic rippled, fear testing the barrier from the other side. How was that possible? Link’s blade had gone straight through him, his body eroding out of existence around it until he was nothing more than a cloud of smoke.

“Did you fight him?”

“No, he got away.”

Zelda glanced down at the rift in front of her and felt her body shift into a ready stance as if talking about the blue monster might summon him out of the darkness. It pulsed in front of her, fumes drifting off the scorched edge in wisps of deep, sickly indigo. She tilted her head. It looked identical to the smoke the blue monster had disintegrated into. 

“Link…do you think he’s the one making the rifts?” 

“It would make sense. He’s been causing problems for a long time,” Link growled in her ear.

Something the blue monster said all those weeks ago suddenly drifted up from the very bottom of her memory. The words had been muffled by the crystal cage around her and then forgotten in the chaos when she broke free, but the blue monster had uttered something then when he turned around to face Link. Something that made it feel like less of an encounter and more like a reunion.

So, it’s you again.

“You've faced him before,” she remarked slowly, “Lueberry said the Might weapons were made for the blue monster specifically.”

“More or less,” he said wryly.

Odd way to answer, Zelda thought.  

“And you haven’t beaten him?” Tri interjected. Zelda’s eyes flew open at the harsh shape of the question behind Tri’s innocently flat tone. 

Link let out a snort and with a narrowed abhorrence, he said, “He’s like a cockroach.”

He sighed again and Zelda felt the weight of it in her chest—in her marrow . It was an odd intensity for someone she’d only come face-to-face with once before, even with the kidnapping. 

“Anyway,” Link continued before she could reflect on it any further, “I've been chasing him down for a while…wherever I am.”

She had yet to step into the still world, but she had a pretty confident guess as to what she’d find inside. “Does it look like a castle around you?” 

“I don’t know…I’ve never actually been inside one,” he admitted.

Zelda blinked. “You’ve never been inside Hyrule Castle?”

“I’ve been to Castle Town once or twice, but the guards don’t allow people on the steps, let alone through the front door without good reason.” 

She understood her life had always been heavily protected. It was part of the title and she’d been branded a wanderer at a young age. There were guards outside her chambers; vigilant eyes posted down every hall; shadows lining the fortress walls on the rare occasion she was permitted outside to stroll somewhere other than the inner gardens. She’d always assumed they were there to keep her in, not keep others away. 

Like Link said, visitors to the grand hall were rare. It had always been that way so she didn’t think to question it, but now having traveled without that hyper-protection, she could see the excess. No wonder the greater Hyrule didn't know her. They hadn’t been given the chance. 

“Are you back in the castle?” Link’s question interrupted her thoughts. 

“Yes. Well, no. A huge rift suddenly opened up and the entire castle and more than half of Castle Town has been stolen away.”

“Castle Town is…” His voice was suddenly hollow and distant. “and all those people…they’re….” 

His personal mission, according to Lueberry, was to prevent this exact thing from happening. Not the rifts themselves, but the loss. His aid could only reach so far, especially now that he himself was lost in one. It was a failure to him once people fell inside. 

He still didn’t know what Tri’s magic could do for those stolen away.

Her heart lurched. “Don’t worry. When Tri mends the rift, the people trapped inside are saved.”

She heard him loose a breath. “Do they come back…wrong?”

“The magic heals them,” she said firmly, glancing up at Tri who released a bright tone-note chirp.

“That’s amazing.”

“It is. I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a bit of an expert.”

He laughed. Loud and lovely and unchained. The sound made the flame barrier around her hiss. She held up her arm and watched the magic ripple, like a puddle in the rain. Something was trying to get through and strangely, she wanted to let it in. Wanted to feel whatever that delightful laugh would do to her, but if she did, she would lose the connection to Link. 

“So just worry about yourself…we’ve got it under control here. Okay?” she said. 

He hesitated and she wished she could see his face. Was he relieved? Skeptical? Was he realizing the potential implications of the power for himself? It had been her plan to tell him before, but now she wasn’t so sure. What if too much time had passed to restore his voice? What if it didn’t work? 

“Okay,” was all he said.

She sighed and quickly rerouted the conversation back to her original question. “Are you sure you don’t see anything around you that might look like it belongs to a castle? A tower spire or a banner, perhaps?”

“I told you before, the only thing I’ve noticed that stands out are—”

“Birds carved in stone, I know.” Zelda rolled her eyes and the magic shivered against her skin. The pulse of energy beneath her fingers was faint. A dying hum. She’d been so relieved to hear his voice, she hadn’t paid any mind to the energy that made their connection possible. The light was almost completely gone from the blade. 

“Shit–I mean, shoot.” She winced and Tri made a justified sound beside her. She held up her hand to stop them without looking. “Sorry, sorry, the magic it’s going out.”

Link chuckled. “Oh, okay. I guess–”

“Wait!’ She glanced down at the rift, Tri’s portal still a ripple of gold against inky black. “Just just hold on a minute, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

“Where am I going to—”Link began, but the magic died and he was cut off. 

Her stomach fluttered and she sheathed the sword quickly. Without pausing, she leapt forward through the bright threshold into the consumed side of the space. The rungs welded into the wall were just where she remembered. She climbed up and threw open the hatch door into the barracks. 

The world pressed in around her, everything dusty grey and stilled. A few petrified soldiers were suspended in the air, but she didn’t give herself the opportunity to recognize their faces. She made for the door and stepped outside.

Even though she’d anticipated it, her pulse quickened at the sight of the fallen city. Fragments of Castle Town floated around her in the infinite void: the marble fountain from the main square with water frozen mid-cascade, the gatehouse lookout towers lying horizontal, houses turned inside out. And everywhere in between shadows prowled the ruins. Echo monsters and within them, the blue orbs she needed.

Using the Tri’s magic, she quickly moved from piece to piece in a determined advance. The Sword of Might, though dulled without enough energy to light, proved effective as she swung at the creatures alongside her echoes. It didn’t take long for the blade to sing in her hand once again. 

“Link?” she called as the blue magic flickered across her skin.

“What, no more cursing?” he responded. 

She sighed. “I am sorry about that. I know it’s not proper, I…”

“You won’t catch me clutching my pearls over it,” he said quickly. “Don’t worry. It’s cute.”

Her lips quirked. Cute. 

Just then, a black shadow dove into the ground before her and began to shift. 

“Hold on,” she told him, gripping the sword between her hands, “monsters.”

“Be careful—” he started, but she extinguished the sword and pointed the returned Tri Rod in her other hand in one fluid motion. She didn’t want to use up any of the energy fighting if she didn’t need to. The shadow had formed into not one but two moblins, and still her echo peahat made quick work of them. She gathered energy they released before activating the sword once more.

“I’m back,” she declared and began to make her way toward the castle in the distance.

“That was quick. What was it?”

“Moblins. Two of them,” she said.

“The ones with the swords?”

“Spears.”

“Oh, I hate those. They always screech after they throw their weapons.”

She chuckled. “Speaking of screeching, have you encountered a…oh, what had Dohna called them…a ReDead?”

“Are those the ones that shriek so loud you can feel it in your teeth?”

It was a wildly accurate description. “The very same.”

“Hate those, too.”

She had to relinquish the sword to make a staircase of table echoes to get onto the roof of one of the shops. From there, she accessed a stretch of fortress walkway cobblestones that lead up to the castle steps.

“Can you hear me?” she said once the sword was back in her hand.

“Still here,” he replied. She noticed he sounded short-winded this time. 

“On the move?”

“Always.” She could feel the grin on his lips. For a second, it was almost like they were striding up the stairs together. 

To her right, the cherry blossom trees she so loved were still, branches frozen midway through a sway, probably from the force of the rift pouring out of the castle’s front door. 

“I meant to ask before…but have you seen my father?” She drew her eyes away from the trees and prepared to step inside the castle. 

“No.” He sounded so defeated. It made her regret even asking. “I’m sorry, I haven’t.”

“It’s alright. I have a idea where I might find him, but I wanted to be…” her voice trailed off. 

“You okay?” 

The question bounced around the inside of her skull. Two simple words and yet they felt impossible to reconcile as she stood in the doorway of the castle. All the vibrancy had been striped out of the entrance hall. The brightness of the marble floor dulled, her family’s banners, usually lustrous shades of crimson and gold, blanched; even the stone walls were colorless, the blueish tint bled from the granite. Soldiers hovered high over her head in the vaulted ceiling. She couldn’t see their faces, but their hands were fixed in painful angles of shock. Oil dripped down from the boots halfway to her before drifting back up to the source in a slow, circular loop. Nightmarish ambience. 

“Princess?”

“I’m inside the castle…and it’s just…a lot. I’m alright.” She shook her head and started for the grand staircase, but her knee wobbled underneath her.

“You sure?” Link pressed, “You don’t have to be, you know. It’s—”

“I said I’m alright,” she said firmly. 

He seemed to have gotten the hint because he didn’t try to circle back. Instead, he asked, “You mentioned there were two rifts before, is this one the second?”

“No, it’s the third.”

He laughed. “You’ve been busy. I didn’t feel any new tethers, so I assumed you were caught up in something else.”

“Yeah, a dark version of you didn’t find me in Jabul Waters.” 

She left out how she’d had wanted one to, if only to draw his attention in that terrible place. 

“Jabul Waters? Never been.”

It explained his lack of reputation there. She smirked. “I know.”

“You…what?”

“Magic is going out, just a second,” She extinguished the sword and chucked. 

She’d been so distracted by his voice, she hadn’t noticed Tri stopped following her. The warmth of their light was markedly absent from her cheek. 

Zelda spun around to find them floating near the door she’d passed through, unchanging face angled up at the ceiling. Their trail of triangles was tucked underneath them like a tail. 

“What’s the matter?” she asked, quickly backtracking to where they hovered.

Tri looked down at her. “Something about this feels even worse than what we’ve dealt with before.”

She glanced between Tri and the sword and her heart sank with guilt. “Tri?”

“Zelda, let's be extra careful.” Tri let out a ring of music and drifted down directly in front of her face. Was it actual worry she saw twinkling in their light? She didn’t think they were capable of emotion, but she felt it—she could feel their distress radiating against her face. 

“Shit?” Tri offered, titling their body to the side. Anger. To help. 

Zelda smiled and nodded. “Shit.”

—

Her father was suspended in the very center of the throne room. His eyes glowed white, his mouth fixed open in a cry, one hand outstretched in a permanent reach for help. An unbearable cold blossomed in her chest. Like she’d swallowed a snowstorm.  Fear and grief and shame whirled inside her. 

She grabbed the sword and ignited it, letting the blue flames melt the feelings away. 

“I found my father,” she whispered.

“Oh.” Link’s voice was soft. Careful. “Princess…I’m…”

“Don’t worry, Zelda.” Tri floated up beside her and gave a confident dip. “Once we mend the rift, he’ll be back to normal.” 

Zelda pressed her lips together and nodded, ignoring the emotion crackling outside of the magic surrounding her. All she felt at the sight of him now was determination. 

“Hey Link, can you do me a favor?” She tore her eyes away from her father’s face. 

“Sure,” he replied.

“Just call me Zelda.”

“You got it.”

The Hyrule Castle throne sat empty and quiet in the back of the room, just as it had been right before the rift that started this mess erupted and swallowed half the room and spit out the imposters. She reached out and stroked the velvet tuff along one of the arms. She’d never imagined herself seated upon it even though it was her destiny. It was her father’s chair. As a part of his royal image as his crown. Would they let her change it when she became Queen? Turn it into something that felt more like her—she’d always been partial to the color purple. She tried to picture a violet throne and quickly let the idea go. She’d had her fill of purple between all the rifts and still worlds where the darkness was tinted with the color. 

Maybe she would make it blue. Blue was nice. A champion’s color. A hero’s. 

Would they switch out the fabric or would they need to remove the entire chair? Could it even be moved? Zelda reached out to test her weight against the arm. It was likely bolted to the floor—

It shifted.

A seam in the floor appeared next to her boot. She gasped. 

“What is it?” Link exclaimed. 

“Hold on a second, I need the Tri Rod.” 

“What? Wait—” Zelda extinguished the sword and cast the echo magic around the throne, moving it aside as if it was a simple kitchen stool. The magic revealed a trap door where the throne had sat. And through the trap door, which she threw open in fervor, a ladder leading down. 

A secret passage. 

She grinned. “I KNEW IT!”

Chapter Text

The passage under the throne, which had not been included in Impa’s grand tour, led way down into the bowels of the castle still world.

Zelda and Link connected through the sword’s magic as frequently as possible. Silence was suddenly a grueling, heavy thing to carry whenever she needed Tri’s magic to solve a puzzle, or when the sword’s energy ran low. Imposters of Royal guards patrolled many of the rooms she wandered into, and it was easier to sneak around them rather than provoke their attention. A smart strategy, but it also limited the amount of blue flames she could gather. 

Link seemed to prefer direct encounters, fending off monsters with whatever it was he had left to wield. Surprisingly, he didn’t use the bombs, or at least, she assumed he didn’t based on his breathing. She caught herself stopping to listen a few times, her own breath held while she marveled at the evenness of his. 

There were a few occurrences when they fought at the same time. Together, but not. She imagined his back pressed to hers, their movements a mirror image as they lunged in unison toward their respective targets and swung.

This is nice, she’d caught herself thinking several times. True, Tri had been with her and their company and magic was a comfort in the dark, but fighting with Link felt different. Like the final keys felt different. Like they were supposed to be doing this together.

She wondered if he felt the same.

When the hard-earned final key was in place, she drew the sword and called out through the searing blade.

“I’m here,” she told him. 

“I almost had him,” he answered breathlessly. They had been separated for a longer stretch this time. The golden-armored trooper she fought to get into the room with the chest containing the final key had given her enough power to reach him, but she’d needed to be thoughtful about using it. As much as she craved to hear his voice,  she required his strength for whatever was waiting on the other side of the door the key unlocked. Final fights had called upon sword and sorcery.

She narrowed her eyes. “The blue monster?” 

“Yeah, but he took off again. He wants nothing to do with me. I don’t get it,” he growled bitterly. “Where are you now?”

“I’m at the end. About to step inside.”

“Nice work.”

She dipped her smile down against the fold of his cloak at her throat.

“You got this. Keep your head even and your guard up. Tri, you’ve got her back?”

“Always,” Tri said with a confident chime. They hovered close to her shoulder, their golden light mixing with the blue flames that shimmered there. For a moment, the sleeve of her tunic showed emerald green. Like Link’s.  

Zelda drew in a breath through her nose and pushed against the heavy door. It opened up into a large circular room. A large empty circular room.  It was sparsely furnished, only iron torches along the walls and a stone altar on the far side of the room caught her eye. Another puzzle, perhaps? 

“What do you see?” Link asked.

“There’s…nothing here,” she told him, tilting her head. Tri zipped forward and flew along the perimeter. When they returned, a bright hum confirmed what she’d said. 

She slowly made her way into the room, eyes fixing on the lonely altar. It was bare, no offerings for her to search or candle to light adorning its surface. Her family’s coat of arms was carved into the wall behind it; a cluster of triangles above the outline of a sacred loftwing. Legend had it, the knights of old used to ride them instead of horses. Her eyes traced over the familiar curve of wings, imaging as she always did whenever she gazed upon it, what it must’ve been to take to the sky. To fly high and free above the clouds like a…

“Link?”

“Yeah?”

“When you said all you saw in your still word were birds carved in stone…what exactly did you mean?”

He sighed heavily. “I dunno. Just a bird with its wings spread open.” She could see him miming the description irritably with his arms, clearly tired of the question that only served as a reminder of how lost he was.

Her heart raced. “Was there ever a symbol above the bird? Three triangles joined together?”

“I think so? Maybe, why?”

She let out an exasperated huff. “Because that sounds a lot like the crest of the Royal Family. My f amily.” 

“Huh…I guess it does kind of look like that.”

“Link,” she groaned.

“What? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the rest of Hyrule doesn’t exactly look like Castle Town,” he asserted defensively. “The only time we see your family’s crest is on a notice from the crown and we’re usually more preoccupied with what it says than the symbol pressed into the wax seal.”

The comment made something sizzle against the blue flame magic, but she could examine whatever feeling it was later. “ Okay, fine, but you are only further proving my point. Do you know what this means?”

“Not really.” 

She grinned triumphantly. “It means you are somewhere in this rift!”

He paused, the pieces taking time to click into place. When they did, he sucked in a loud breath. “You think so?”

“Like you said, it’s the only place that would have our crest everywhere! I’m in a giant circular room with an altar. I had to use a big key to get inside…does that sound familiar to you?”

“No,” his voice deflated a little. “I haven’t been able to use many keys.”

Obtaining many of them had required Tri’s magic. It made sense.

“That’s okay. Let me…here, I’ll go back into the main corridor and…” She whirled around to face the exit, but the door was shut. Sealed with ribbons of glistening black ink. 

“Oh, my dear daughter, you’ve done well to make it here,” a voice said from behind her.

When she turned back around, the imposters of her father, Minister Lefte, and General Wright stood in the center of the room. Their eyes flashing bright crimson as they beheld her, dark fumes drifting from under their feet around them as they fed on the shadows to maintain their shape. She held the sword out in front of her, hands shifting into the two-handed grip. 

“You are not my father,” she growled. 

“You’ve worked tirelessly to mend quite a few rifts...” All of their mouths moved in unison as the voice addressed her, speaking as one. 

“Not your…wait, are you speaking to someone?” Link asked, his voice growing more urgent in her ear. 

“I find that vexing.” The imposters’ faces darkened, identical rotting smiles spreading across their lips.

Suddenly, all three of the imposters imploded into pulsing black energy that soared up into the ceiling. They rapidly drew in the shadows along the walls, gathering into a swirling black storm above her head. From it, a long, dual-headed spear flew out and embedded itself into the center of the room. The weapon needed no introduction. She knew it well. The blue monster had held it to her throat before it trapped her in the crystal. 

He wants nothing to do with me. I don’t get it, Link had said.

The blue monster hadn’t been running from Link. He had been coming for her. 

—

He declared himself Ganon, the king of the demons, but he was an imposter. A copy with glowing red eyes and wisps of darkness that gave him away when they slipped out of the gaps in his vicious armor. Just like the rest of them. 

And Zelda knew how to fight imposters. 

He moved impossibly fast like the real Ganon, twirling the spear into a lethal fan that shredded any echo she sent after him before lunging forward to strike. Zelda alternated between summoning echoes to attack and to block the menacing spear, and then switching to the sword whenever Ganon gave her enough of a window. 

Magic danced along her skin—blue, gold, blue, gold—Link’s voice a broken string of words in her ear. Words of confusion, then encouragement, then something else, but she was too busy trying not to die to stop and name it. 

When Ganon finally fell, there was gold on her fingers. 

She pointed the Tri Rod at him and he dropped to his knees with a wail and began disintegrating in front of her. The dark matter that shaped him pulled apart like the fraying web of a net, and the swarm of Tri’s friends trapped inside burst into the room. Shadows scattered along the walls, a hundred fireflies pulsing free and bright as they dispersed into a wide circle. They immediately began to spin, Tri conducting from the very center, until their light became one and everything bleached a pure, cleansing white.     

The rift was mended.

Zelda’s knees wobbled. She’d done it. It was over. She saved her father and the people of Castle Town and Link. Link! She whirled around, half expecting him to come running toward her. Would he even still be here, or was he already waiting for her on the other side? Could she embrace him? Would that be proper?  

She scoffed to herself. She’d faced the Gerudo sun and fought the echo of a fish god and purged the castle of the invasive blight that had stolen her father’s face. No one could hold it against her if she broke royal etiquette and hugged the hero who had talked her through most of it.

A smile tugged at her lips and her eyes shifted to Tri, expecting to see them bouncing bright with victory. But their light was strangely dim. Quiet. 

Zelda frowned. “What’s the matter?” 

A pensive flute-like song. Music not of celebration, but deep thought. “So, that blue monster was an echo?”

She nodded. “Yeah, but we beat it. We did it, Tri.”

Tri considered what she said and then tilted. That damned, curious tilt that meant a question was coming. What was there left to question? The mission was over, the last battle fought and won. Their lives were about to go back to normal.

“I wonder if that means there’s something else capable of using the same power I have?”

A sinking feeling began in the back of her skull. “What do you mean?” 

Tri titled in the other direction. “Do you think all the monsters that have been capturing me and my friends were echoes, too?”

“Maybe? Does it matter? We defeated them. Those rifts are gone.”

“But echoes are made. They don’t just exist and they must follow the will of the creator. That’s you, for my magic…but the imposters…” 

Zelda’s heart stopped and then started, drawing a hand to her chest. “You think something or someone is creating imposters of monsters and ordering them to go after your friends?”

“We’ve never been attacked like this before. Without wielders like you, our magic can only be used to heal.”

They were defenseless.

Her head was reeling. How long until another rift opened? How long until it spread? What then? Faces flashed before her eyes, the petrified people she had seen in the still worlds and the ones that would  inevitably come. Her father, Minister Lefte, General Wright, Impa, Lueberry. Dohna, the Zora clan chiefs, Link…

Link. She needed to talk to him. Her plan to step back…could he even command the Tri Rod? He was the one Tri needed…not her…

When the sword ignited in her hand, Link was shouting. He must've been shouting for a while. His voice was raw.

“—YOU HEAR ME? ZELDA? TRI? ANSWER ME!”

Her stomach dropped. “I’m here, Link! I hear you. What’s—”

“Something is coming!” he gasped. He was running. Sprinting. She could hear it in his breath, no longer measured and controlled. “Something is coming your way right now. I’m trying to—” 

Her eyes scanned the shadows around her. They were still. Lifeless. Under her fingers, the sword shuddered, its light nearly out. “What do you mean?” 

“GET HER OUT OF HERE, TRI!”

The sword went out.

Tri instantly flew over her head and began weaving the magic around her in. With the blade dark, her fear began to burrow back inside her, bringing not a frost, but ice. Pure ice filled her veins, spreading under her skin until her hands trembled with the feeling, sword in one hand, wand in the other. Her feet lifted off the ground and she shivered, shoulders caving in with dread. 

Tri’s magic was seconds away from teleporting her out of the room…

And then the world trembled with her. 

She didn’t think it was possible, but Tri’s magic faltered for a moment. Stalled. Zelda was stuck a few inches off the ground in the very center of the room as the wall behind the altar split down the middle and then cracked apart.

The room was plunged into a deeper kind of darkness. Every torch went out at the same time and two clawed hands emerged from the black space between the fissure. They curled around the stones and tore the wall back, a low growl echoing out of a shapeless thing hiding in the dark. 

No, it was the dark. 

The eyes she had felt watching her from the beyond of the rifts were staring at her now, and in them she saw a horrifying absence–of everything. No light, no life, only a sentient, ravening emptiness. 

One of the clawed hands began to reach toward her from across the room. She couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. Whether it was the hold of Tri’s magic or her fear she didn’t know, but her body was frozen. Petrified. She was staring into the reason behind the horror fixed on the faces of those stolen. The undeniable answer to Tri’s question. This thing was responsible for the rifts. It was controlling the imposters.

And it was glaring at her. Hungry for her.  

Then, with a flash of brilliant green, something paused the claw’s advance. It snapped against the bony knuckles of the shadow’s hand, a loud CRACK! booming throughout the cavernous room. 

CRACK! The fingers of the hand arched back in pain and the source of the attack paused in front of her just long enough for her to make out its shape.

His shape.

Link moved with unfathomable speed, there and then not, each strike against the creature only distinguishable by the darkness’ reaction to it. The claws retreated further and further back with each blow, shadows scattering in the velocity, until it drew completely in on itself and disappeared into the crack in the stone from which it had emerged. 

Link skidded to a halt, his body placed defensively between her and the wall before he spun around to face her. 

He was everything she imagined and more. The imposters had copied his face and mimicked his skill, but it couldn’t replicate the fierceness of his stare. Dark blonde bangs fell messy around his face, the long green cap balanced impossibly on the crown of his head. Dirt and grime marred his smooth skin, his tunic tattered and torn. He was filthy and brilliant and here. His chest heaved, eyes wide and…blue! Not like the sky, but a storm. And in his hand, a broken tree branch. 

Skies, he’s been defending himself with a stick.

Tri magic resumed, her vision freckled with frenzied light. Her body started to pull away from the ground again and she let out a strangled sound and thrust the Tri Rod out to Link, desperately craning to connect him to the magic so they could bring him with her. 

“Grab hold!” she cried.

Relief flooded his face. He rushed toward her, hand outstretched, reaching, his fingers barely a whisper from the light before something snapped down between them. Link recoiled behind the barrier, eyes wide with shock. The wall was glassy and pink and not a wall at all the way it completely surrounded him. A crystal cage. Just like the one she’d been trapped in.  

Link’s fists were against it, but he didn’t try to fight. His eyes shifted from shock to confusion to resignation in the span of a breath. He couldn’t reach her and she couldn’t stop Tri’s magic.

All she could do was watch as the light carried her away and the crystal dragged him back into the dark.

Chapter Text

Zelda couldn’t tell how long she’d been asleep. It had been light out when she laid down and it was light now, the sun shining bright behind her eyelids. Whatever time had lapsed since she collapsed against the soft mattress of her own bed, twenty minutes or twenty hours, she wanted to turn her face away from it. She wanted to bury deep into the dark of her pillow, far away from stilled worlds and monstrous shadows with claws and the horrible look in Link’s eyes when he realized he was beyond saving.

And then the sun made a noise. 

Not the sun—Tri. They must be hovering over her head. Their light had been a comfort in the wilds of Hyrule, but she didn’t need it now. She was home, with a solid roof over her head instead of an open sky and tree branches. Her father was back on the throne and working to undo the damaging untruths the imposters had spread about her. 

She was about to grab fistfuls of her comforter and pull it over her head when a familiar voice spoke softly somewhere beside her. 

“Master Tri.” Impa. Zelda released a breath, but kept her eyes closed, rendered still by surprise and relief. “I find it interesting that I can see you now, where I was not able to before.”

They had found Impa petrified in the dungeons while navigating the castle still world. She’d been detained and imprisoned shortly after helping Zelda flee, her experiences documented in the small journal in her cell. Impa had recorded the rumors passed between the guards, most notably the talk of rifts being mended across Hyrule. She’d assumed it was Zelda’s doing. 

Her beloved nursemaid; the woman who fit her in pretty dresses and tutored her on royal etiquette and chided her when her manners were lacking. She believed Zelda was the source of the extraordinary news. There had been no note of surprise, no question if she was capable—only a persistent worry for her safety. Just like whenever Lueberry spoke for Link. 

Part of her wanted to leap up and throw her arms around the Sheikah for her confidence in Zelda, but a weight sat heavy on her chest and held her to the bed. The aftermath of everything that had occurred was waiting for her on the other side of her eyelids. An unexpected journey soured in the end by failure. A childish bet she’d won and lost, with debts she failed to repay. Words in her shadow. She didn’t feel ready to face any of it. Didn’t want to, not yet.

“So now that I can see you,” Impa continued speaking to Tri, oblivious to Zelda’s wakeful state, “I can say this to your face: thank you for everything.”

Tri let out a curious note. “I’ve been wondering for a while…What does ‘thank you’ mean? Everyone keeps saying it to Zelda.”

She almost laughed and blew her cover. Of course they responded to gratitude with a question. The two of them had covered quite a bit in their short time together: anger, fugitive, scared, denial…but someone else would be fielding all of Tri’s questions soon enough.

She couldn’t put her finger on how that made her feel.

“Oh! Well, it’s an expression of gratitude,” Impa said, amusement brightening her tone. Not an ounce of irritation; endless patience where Zelda had next to none. Yes, it would be a good thing for Tri to learn from someone else. No matter how she felt about it. 

“I’ve been both happy and relieved that you have aided the princess,” Impa explained further. “So to express that feeling of gratitude, I say ‘thank you’.”

A brief silence followed which meant Tri was probably absorbing the information. Zelda’s cat, Louise, was purring somewhere close by. Probably in her favorite spot where the sun kissed the floor through her window most afternoons. 

Maybe she could will herself back to sleep while they were speaking? She spread her hands out against the silk of her sheets and tried to concentrate on the feel of it beneath her fingers. A callous on her thumb that hadn’t been there before quickly snagged the fabric.

“Hm. I’m only helping Zelda so that I can get rid of the rifts,” Tri said finally. Zelda’s world abruptly slanted a little underneath her even as Tri added, “But I’m glad you’re happy.” 

It stung, but it was true. Tri was only doing their job, paired with Zelda because she was available at the time and nothing more. They needed to make sure whatever stealing away their friends was stopped. Tri would have their pick of any soldier in her father’s army. Warriors braver and far more skilled than she would ever be. They would find that shadow monster and handle it quickly. Save Link.

And she was holding it all up pretending to sleep. 

Zelda opened her eyes. 

Impa smiled at her warmly. “Already waking up, then, Princess?” 

She pushed herself up onto her elbows as Impa hobbled the rest of the way over and sat on the edge of the bed. 

“You appear well, I’m glad to see it.” She patted Zelda’s foot through her comforter. “Tri told us everything. About how you faced extreme evil, putting yourself in peril. All to save us—to save your kingdom.”

Zelda snapped her eyes to Tri. They bobbed up and down gently, their music like the ripple of a wind chime. A fifth triangle Zelda hadn’t realized they’d gained caught the sunlight and flashed bright. 

“It was just a few rifts…it wasn’t…” Zelda mumbled, shaking her head. 

“You pushed yourself, Princess, but you are safe now,” Impa insisted.

Safe. She closed her eyes and let the word wrap around her. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the feeling out in the world. Jewels and gold and precious silks—this was the real luxury. One she’d never fully appreciated until it was stripped away from her. 

Skies, and she’d made a mockery of it, searching for hidden passages and secret rooms and purposely testing limits while people beyond the walls of her fortress lived in fear a rift might open up under their feet and swallow them whole. 

They’d had Link to ease their worries for a time, maybe not a feeling of safety but at least a glimpse of it. He was able to sense when the ground was about to blacken with a hungry void and rushed to save as many people as he could from being stolen away, from Suthorn to the desert. 

And how he was gone because of her. All because she had needed saving and been incapable of returning the favor. She didn’t deserve to feel safe. Not when he was…

Zelda lunged across the bed and threw her arms around Impa’s shoulders. The Sheikah let out a gasp that quickly dissolved into laughter, her hands patting Zelda’s back affectionately. Thankfully, it was easy for anyone to assume she’d been swept up in emotion over the words spoken, not the boy they made her think of.

When she finally pulled back, Impa took her face in her weathered hands.“I think about how small you once were...And I look at you now.” Her eyes shimmered again similar to Lueberry’s. “Oh, how you have grown.”

“Impa…” Zelda whispered. It was the Sheikh's job to raise her, to train her to be a suitable and refined leader. She didn’t have to love Zelda like this and yet, she did. Another luxury unappreciated for far too long. Never again. 

“Ah, there I go, getting myself all worked up again.” Impa released Zelda’s face and waved her hand between them. “I am so very overjoyed to see you again, Princess.”

“I’m really glad to see you, too, Impa. Thank you for helping me escape and for giving me the…” her voice trailed off as she glanced down at herself and blinked. Her travel robes were gone, replaced with an elegant nightgown. Her favorite one. Pink silk. She didn’t even remember changing when she’d stumbled into her room.

“…disguise,” she finished slowly. It fit the same, but felt different against her body. The material was too thin. Delicate. Better suited for wiping her nose than keeping her warm at night in the—

No. No. It was fine for her room. Perfect. 

“Well, my apologies for disturbing you so soon after waking, but I bring a message from the king,” Impa  admitted. At the mention of her father, Zelda straightened, her eyes fixing back on the Sheikah. Here it was. The aftermath. “He requests that you come to the throne room once you are fully rested.”

Impa rose to her feet slowly and took a long look around Zelda’s room. Zelda’s eyes followed hers. She’d guessed right, Louise was fast asleep in a square patch of sun on the rug. Her mother’s portrait gazed down upon them from the wall to her left. She absentmindedly touched the spot on her forehead where the diadem usually sat. It waited for her on the dresser directly below the portrait. Her stuffed horse watched her front atop another, taller dresser. The houseplant was—remarkably—still alive. A vibrant green like its twin in Link’s house. Low maintenance apparently included being stolen away by a rift.

She frowned slightly. An ordinary room that revealed nothing of what she’d gone through. What she’d done, for better or for worse. If she was going to step back, shouldn’t something remain, if only as a reminder of the things she wanted to keep? The expanded knowledge of her kingdom and its people, all the miles she’d walked, the memory of the magic she’d channeled?

“I will go on ahead. We’ll be waiting for you,” Impa said from beside her. Zelda nodded, but her eyes were still busy taking in the room. Searching. 

Finally, she spotted the Tri Rod and the Sword of Might leaning against the wall. The blade was dark. If she held it, no blue flame would ignite. She couldn’t check on him, wouldn’t know if the magic still worked until she found more—

Wrong. She wouldn’t be finding more of anything. Someone else would get the sword and the wand and everything else she’d gathered. Would the blue flame magic work even for someone else?

Selfishly…

She shook the ugly thoughts from her head and quickly rose to her feet to escape them. It had to work. She wanted it to, if only to learn he was alive. Her feet guided her over to her mother’s diadem and she retrieved it, hoping the feel of it against her skin might center her like it often did. 

In the mirror, she carefully placed it around her head and pushed her shoulders back to take herself in. Not much in her appearance had changed, save for a few bumps and bruises that would heal and fade. And yet, in delicate silk, in the comfort of her safe room, she barely recognized herself.

It’s temporary, she told herself, gathering her hair up behind her head and then letting it drop. Just a temporary side effect of unanticipated adventure.

She moved to her wardrobe and eyed her dresses. Nothing looked appealing. Appropriate. She turned on her heel to ask Impa what she thought, but the Sheikah was already gone from the room. Only Tri was looking at her and she was pretty sure she’d have better luck asking Louise what she thought.

How did one dress for a mission briefing? Whenever she’d been a part of the audience for returning soldiers, they’d always just kept their armor on when they knelt before her father. It would be smart to draw from what she knew. Clever. And no one could deny she hadn’t been that.

Wisdom’s daughter.

Her travel robes were still draped over her desk chair where she’d left them, Link’s cloak hanging on a nearby hook.

When she stood before the mirror and examined herself for the second time after changing back into the disguise that had served her well, she couldn’t help but notice her beloved bed in the reflection behind her. 

It was unmade.

Chapter Text

Her father wasn’t alone when Zelda entered the room. 

Everyone she’d expected to be there were in the usual spots. General Wright and Minister Lefte stood on either side of her father before the throne, while Impa was situated just off to the side in the shadow of one of the structural pillars. She’d once told Zelda she preferred it, the light filtering through the multiple windows in the large room a bit too harsh on her eyes.

The person Zelda hadn’t been expecting stood directly opposite of Impa in shadow as well. His weary gaze fixed on her through silver spectacles the moment she stepped onto the long red coronation rug.

Lueberry. 

Turns out, it hadn’t been twenty minutes or twenty hours that she’d slept, but two entire days. Enough time for her father to summon the Sheikah from Suthorn after someone informed him about the Might weapons and their creator.

Zelda couldn’t bring herself to look at Lueberry as her father recounted what had been discussed while she’d been asleep. While the rifts had been mended, peace could not be fully declared throughout Hyrule now that the shadow creature had revealed itself. There was work to be done, a growing momentum to permanently dispel the rifts instead of merely continuing to react to them. The proactive approach made sense to Zelda, having seen the devastation up close. 

Quietly, she wondered why that hadn't been the approach from the start. 

Golden light danced on her shoulder, Tri’s idling whistle in her ear. Perhaps they were the key. There was a lot she didn’t know about the world, a lot that she’d been sheltered from, but magic star-beings with the power to purge the darkness and restore the lost didn’t feel like something that could be hidden. People who returned from the rifts could see them, but what if that wasn’t always the case? Tri had seemed surprised Zelda could see them when they’d appeared to her in the dungeon cell. So what changed? And why? 

I’m only helping Zelda so that I can get rid of the rifts.

She started to frown and caught it, her lips settling into a tight line. She’d happened. The sudden disappearance of all his friends. Her ability to see Tri when no one else could. It was the only reason the Tri Rod had come to her. 

And now it was time to give it back.

Who would be assigned to the role now that she wasn’t the only one who could see them? A specialized squad within the guard or maybe General Wright himself? It was hard to picture him and Tri working together, but perhaps at this point the general’s conviction was what they needed.

“...and Link saved Zelda from this mysterious foe,” her attention snapped into place when her father mentioned Link’s name.

It was obvious who they would have nominated. 

“But then Link was captured!” Lueberry howled, stepping out of the shadow and into the light before the throne. Zelda could feel his eyes on her and she stared hard at the floor, her fingers white-knuckled around the pommel of the sword on her hip. The magic was quiet. Barely a whisper of the energy required to spark their connection.

The old man echoed her thoughts to the rest of the room. “Oh Link…I hope you are safe…”

There was so much anguish in the way he said Link’s name. A stark contrast to the way her father had uttered it moments before. She looked up and scanned the rest of the room, taking special care to avoid Lueberry’s eyes. No one else appeared terribly distressed over the loss of the swordsman. Like such a sacrifice was expected. Unsurprising. 

That final look that had been etched on Link's face before Tri’s magic whisked her away—a cold realization. 

Surrender.

You do what you have to in order to complete the mission, you know? 

She swayed where she stood. The sword turned into lead at her side, the bow a sharp burden along her spine. He’d given her his weapons and lent her the skill through the magic to wield them effectively. He had held back his imposters, shouted guidance and support…

He’d taken the stupid bet and it had led to his undoing. She should have just let Tri go to him when he asked, instead of getting stubborn and proud—

BAM!

The doors to the room flew open behind her.  Rhoam rushed forward in a blur of silver and red, his eyes lingering on Zelda for a heartbeat as he passed her to drop to a knee before her father. 

“Your Majesty!” There was a clank of metal as he knocked his fist against his armor-plated chest. Her father quickly signaled for him to rise.

“Large rifts are opening up all across Hyrule, again,” Rhoam reported. “Three of them at once this time…”

The room erupted in voices, evident by all the mouths moving and faces twisting with alarm, but all Zelda could hear was Tri. They tolled like a bell, sharp and sudden, and the sound stretched infinitely between her ears. Three more rifts. Three more still worlds on the map in her pocket, spreading like messy splotches of spilled black ink. Tri’s poor friends… her people…

How many were crying out for help right now? How many were already lost? 

She swallowed hard and tried to focus. Rhoam was listing off the affected regions: Eldin Volcano, Faron Wetlands, and Holy Mount Lanayru. Her father’s face paled, grey eyes shifting between the two Sheikah standing in shadow. 

“Those regions connect directly with the Prime Energy…” her father said in a grave tone. Both Sheikah went stiff. 

“With the what now?” General Wright barked.

“The Prime Energy—a source of power beyond our understanding, left behind by the goddesses,” he began to speak faster, his eyes dropping to search his outstretched hands as if reciting the words from an invisible text. “The knowledge of its existence has been passed down through the royal family since long ago. Those three regions connect to the three goddesses and, in turn, to the Prime Energy.”

In all the books Zelda had read, the one thing she’d been permitted to do freely inside the walls of the castle, she hadn’t come across anything that detailed an artifact left behind by the goddesses. Come to think of it, she hadn’t read much about the goddesses at all.

Her head began to spin as a heavy silence descended over the room. She saw an ink-splotched map, a hundred stars swallowed by endless night, Link’s storm blue eyes, a shadow with claws reaching for her—

The urge to run and bury herself under the covers of her bed welled up inside her once again, but her father’s gaze cemented her feet to the floor. He was just staring at her, his thick brows furrowed with…was that pity?  

Slowly, like someone was rotating her mindeye’s around on a pedestal, she realized it wasn’t just her father who was looking at her. Everyone was looking at her. Everyone in the room and beyond. She could feel all the eyes turning toward the castle in that moment—the people she’d given her name to in order to forge the reputation she so coveted, as well as those who had learned it after her father sent word to every corner of the realm to refute the lies. The king had proclaimed his daughter, the Princess of Hyrule, was the one mending rifts and saving those stolen away.

And now there were more rifts, a terrible threat, and a still missing swordsman...

That familiar heat crawled up her neck, her ears filled with the sound of her racing pulse. Trapped even though there was no crystal cage in sight. 

They’d summoned her here not to relieve her of her responsibilities like she’d thought, but to catch her up to speed so those responsibilities could be formalized. 

Perhaps there was such a thing as being too capable. 

—

Just a short while ago, Zelda had stared into her bedroom mirror with a sense of finality and farewell. She’d walked into the throne room fully prepared to turn in her weapons and step aside. The adventure was supposed to be over.

Now, she was back in front of the same mirror, sword still on her hip, Tri Rod clutched in her hands, and she was wearing not a dress for court, but ancestral vestments. 

For a quest. 

“I can’t believe you suggested I could be the priestess of legend,” she looked at Tri in the mirror with narrowed eyes. 

They bobbed up and down thoughtfully. “Everyone agreed.”

Yes, they had. Quickly. The group also promptly determined it was not a coincidence that the new rifts were targeting the regions connected to the goddesses. Something was after the Prime Energy. And in yet another important legend passed down through the Royal family that had been kept from her, a priestess and a hero were prophesied to appear to defend the Prime Energy if it was ever threatened by terrible evil. 

It was the sort of thing one might want to know before becoming a magic-wielding, temporary problem-solver. 

When it was all said and done, her father had tearfully admitted that he only ever wished for her to have a peaceful life. Zelda's eyes drifted up to the portrait of her mother on the wall. He had ordered the walls surrounding Castle Town be built the day after she died.

It had all been to protect her, the only family he had left, but it didn’t change the fact she would still be queen one day. How was she supposed to lead without embarrassing herself—or worse—when she’d been so left in the dark about something as important as the Prime Energy. It was information that she should know in preparation for her ascension. What if they hadn’t been able to rescue him from the rift? 

Zelda shook the dark thoughts from her head and pushed her shoulders back, inspecting the gold neckline of the sleeveless tunic. It was a handsome garment, even though her arms were cold despite having pulled the long, brown leather gloves up to her elbows. The most enticing part of the entire set was the pants. Sturdy, well-fit trousers that would make running and jumping and fighting substantially easier. 

A priestess. She hardly felt like a princess anymore. And she certainly didn’t feel like a hero, but that didn’t matter because it very clearly wasn’t the role she’d been assigned whenever the prophecy had been written. Despite all the monsters she’d fought, and the weapons-– Link’s weapons —she wielded, and the good she’d done wearing his cloak—she wasn’t the hero. 

And now he was missing because of her. Swallowed by a rift when he tried to rescue her, and captured by what felt like darkness itself when she’d needed help yet again. It was her responsibility to mend the rifts and find him. Otherwise, the equation was incomplete. Otherwise, her kingdom might…

What was she supposed to say when they’d all looked at her with hope in their eyes? No, thank you? She’d just managed to get the word ‘criminal’ out of her shadow, did she really want to replace it with ‘coward’? 

“Priestess,” she told her reflection firmly, holding the Tri Rod across her chest in an effort to appear righteous. Sanctified. 

“Are you angry?” Tri asked beside her.

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Your face. It looks angry. Like Facette looked angry when we first tried to gain access to the Gerudo Sanctum. Or, wait, that wasn’t anger, you said that was scar—“

“I’m not angry .” She waved her free hand to cut them off. “I’m trying to look priestess-like. You know….holy?”

A pause. 

Here it comes, she thought.

“Are you injured?”

“W-what?”

“I don’t see any holes.”

She rolled her eyes and groaned, turning away from the mirror. “I can’t do this with you right now. We have to get going.”

She took a step toward the door and a chill ran through her. Not even out of the castle and she was already afraid—

No. No. Her arms. The exposed skin. That was it. And she had a solution. Zelda turned and strode back to her bed. Link’s cloak laid across the top of it where she’d left it when Impa helped her change into the vestments. The Sheikah said she no longer needed a disguise, now that all of Hyrule was behind her. 

Counting on her.

But her arms were cold. She scooped the cloak up and threw it over her shoulder quickly, relishing in the familiar warmth against her skin. The cloak had protected her, like the sword and the boy who’d been inside it.

Maybe they could still speak. If she mended the rifts and found enough blue energy to light up the sword, perhaps the magic could still reach him wherever he was. It wouldn’t have been failure that she faced under the castle. The mission would still be on. She’d still have a chance to get it right.

“Mend the rifts. Find Link.” Zelda stuck out her jaw and gave a twirl so the cloak spun out around her like a fan. 

Tri mimicked her, the movement ringing like a bell. “Confidence.”

She nodded, “We can do this.”

“We can do this,” Tri repeated. 

And for good measure, because she didn’t know the next time she would be back, the last thing she did before leaving the room was make an echo of her bed. 

Chapter Text

Navigating wetlands sounded much more favorable than trekking up mountains covered in fire or ice, so Zelda had opted to head to the rift in Faron first. 

She’d been warned about an unforgiving terrain and electrical monsters, but other than the air being a little sticky between the sudden downpours of fresh rain, the wetlands themselves were fairly manageable. Then again, maybe anywhere would feel tame now that she’d wandered through still worlds. 

It was a gorgeous region, filled with tall, giant-leafed trees that waved at her in the breeze, bright fragrant flowers, and exotic birds that offered an ever-constant round of beautiful song. Many of the monsters certainly had sparks, but her echoes were strong and the recent addition of the platboom to her arsenal had proven effective in navigation and combat. The second she felt the hair on her arms start to lift in the current of an enemy generating a charge, she summoned the massive, spiked platform and squashed it. 

The most unforgiving part of the wetlands, Zelda discovered, resided not in the landscape or monsters, but with the primary residents of Faron: Deku Scrubs. 

They were tiny, plant-like forest sprites with big personalities and even bigger sweet tooths. She had initially appreciated the quirk, however, she quickly realized their candy wasn’t actually candy. The latest craze was a disgusting glob of spider web on the end of a stick. Or, in the case of particularly cheeky little tree-nut Zelda and Tri were currently eavesdropping on, the Tri Rod. 

The Deku had stolen the wand from Zelda after she and Tri mended a rift covering another Deku Scrub’s home. Apparently, the act made her a monster. No more rifts, or ‘dark thorns’ as the Dekus called them, no more cotton candy, aka spider webs on a stick. 

A swarm of angry Dekus had surrounded her and placed her under arrest.

“That’s the Deku Scrub who stole the Tri Rod!” Tri bellowed beside Zelda as she crouched just out of the thief's line of sight. It was so consumed by the repulsive treat, that even if it could hear Tri’s voice, it probably wouldn’t bother to look up. 

“They’re using it to eat cotton candy,” Tri continued. They loosed a horrified crescendo as the Deku began lapping away at the silk.

“Tri, I need you to know that is not cotton candy,” Zelda mumbled, her face twisted with disgust. 

“That is NOT a cotton-candy stick!” Tri wailed, their body bouncing up and down with a surprising level of agitation, “I can’t stand to watch this, Zelda. What should we do?”

Her lips twitched with a frown. The Deku had tossed a wooden stick through the prison bars to her as restitution for confiscating all of her belongings and surprisingly, she’d been able to use it to channel the echo magic and escape. They didn’t need the Tri Rod, but Tri was clearly distressed over the loss and disrespect of the artifact.

“It’s okay,” Zelda whispered, “I’ll handle this.”

Before she departed the castle, General Wright had given her some unsolicited advice about the different types of battle soldiers might face during a mission. No matter the nature of an encounter, he stressed the importance of setting the tone quickly—establishing dominance.

She didn’t want to fight the small Deku, but she also wanted it to think twice before it tried to imprison and steal from her, again. Being kind had gotten her arrested. Actually, from the moment she’d stepped into the wetlands, the Dekus had insulted and belittled her. 

She wasn’t entirely sure what a bumpkin was, but it didn’t sound like much of a compliment. 

She puffed out her chest and mustered the best impersonation of the general’s aggressive stride as she quickly approached the Deku.   

“Surprise, you little shit,” she growled. 

Tri let out an assertive chime and Zelda winced, covering the ear they were directly beside.

“It can’t hear you, Tri,” she hissed.

Undeterred, Tri buzzed forward and whizzed around the Deku Scrub like a hornet. “‘Shit ’ means we are very, very angry with you!”

She supposed it was her own fault. 

The Deku had frozen mid gobble. Its beady, yellow eyes shifted between Zelda and the door she’d come through before widening with understanding.

“You’re here to take this, aren’t you?” It finally said, holding up the web-covered Tri Rod. 

“The rod is special. It’s not for food!” Tri snapped. Their trail of triangles crackled with energy and Zelda quickly made sure the stick was pointed away from the Deku. 

“Zelda, tell the Deku Scrub to give it back,” Tri ordered. 

Someone else had apparently listened to General Wright. 

“I’m trying,” she spat back, waving her free hand so they would back away from the confused looking Deku. “Yes. You need to give that back. Now.”

The large leaves adorning its head flattened, but it didn’t look like an expression of fear or remorse.

It was sulking. 

She took back everything she had thought about the Zora chief’s feud. This was the most childish thing she’d ever seen. 

“Ok, ok, just a sec,” it heaved and then set to work, quickly eating the rest of the web off the Tri Rod. 

Her eye twitched. The fate of Hyrule was riding on how quickly she could mend the rifts and find Link so they could protect the Prime Energy. She didn’t have time for this nonsense. She needed to get her hands on a ridiculous membership card so the Dekus guarding the door to The Sweet Spot would let her inside where the access point to the large rift was. Hopefully, calling out to Link there would yield a response.

The first thing she’d done after leaving Castle Town was hunt down a rift. The three massive ones targeting the Prime Energy were the priority, but there were plenty of smaller ones scattered across Hyrule she and Tri could make quick work of. Tiny ponds of shimmering black ink spilled in the middle of a forest or over the side of a hill, each filled with monsters carrying the energy required to light up the Sword of Might. But when she finally gathered enough to use the magic, the blue flames that engulfed her were silent. 

The memory made her chest pull tight.

“I want the sword and the bow you took as well,” she demanded. The Deku grunted an understanding, absorbed in eating every last bit of the web strung between the coils of the Tri Rod. It nodded toward the corner where the Might weapons were casually leaning against the stone. 

At least it had been smart enough not to turn them into cotton candy sticks.

Zelda retrieved the weapons quickly. The sword hummed impatiently in her hands, but she didn’t want to waste energy when she knew her shouts would go unanswered. There was something different woven into the fabric of the larger rifts. People stolen away could be transported between those still worlds and they were the only locations Link’s imposters showed up. Communication had been inconsistent between them before, but they’d still been figuring out how the magic worked—how they worked with each other. Something changed in the castle rift. Their connection strengthened. Fortified. 

It would work in the Faron rift. It had to.  

And the sooner she found him, the sooner they could figure out how to face this mysterious evil together. 

The Deku belched loudly and extended the clean Tri Rod back to her with a sense of pride. Like it was a gift. “Whew, all right. Thanks for waiting.”

Manners. She would have never spoken to the Gerudo or the Zora in such a way, but maybe General Wright’s approach worked for the Dekus. It didn’t call her a bumpkin.

Zelda took the Tri Rod back carefully, her fingers curled around the end of the wand free of web remnants and spit. The Deku waddled past her toward the prison with zero sense of alarm or concern that the “monster” who mended their beloved dark thorns had escaped.

Did the goddess connected to this region even know who occupied her sacred lands? The Deku Scrub’s out of control sugar cravings had blinded them to the fact darkness was quickly overtaking their territory. They…they were consuming spider webs created by whatever nightmare was waiting inside the rift. And whereas the Gerudo and the Zora didn’t recognize her name when she’d given it to them, the Deku Scrubs didn’t bother to ask her for it. They didn’t even want help. They’d imprisoned her, albeit poorly, for clearing a small rift!

“Will you please clean that off, later?” Tri grimaced. 

“Yeah, I’ll do it now.” Zelda nodded and summoned a block of clear water and stuck the entire Tri Rod inside. 

Maybe the volcano would have been a better first choice.

—

The sword was bright in her hand. 

A massive blue piranha plant aggressively snapped its jaws at her from across the room. It couldn’t tear up its roots and move like the one she was searching for—the one that had swallowed the chest containing the final key—so as long as she gave it a wide berth, she would be fine. 

“I’m going to try again,” she told Tri as she drew the sword. They had been chasing the other plant monster all over the stilled wetlands for a while now, pausing occasionally so Zelda could ignite the sword and try to reach Link. This place had proven to be as obnoxious as the Deku Scrubs, a confusing maze of soggy forest and broken ruins coated in spider webs and shadow rot. A headache was starting to bloom in the base of her skull from the too-sweet smell in the air. They were close to the end, to what felt like the heart of this otherworld of festering eternal night. This was probably her last opportunity to use the magic outside of a fight. She’d hoped Link would be in her ear the second she jumped through Tri’s portal, but the sword had been quiet. 

Tri nodded and gave a quick spin—confidence. She smiled.

Lifting the sword up above her head, she watched the magic ripple a blue inferno down her arm, and shouted into the void:

“Link!” 

She held her breath and listened. 

Nothing. 

“Can you hear me?” Zelda thrust the sword higher, as if she was the metal spire on top of one of the castle towers begging for lightning to find her and strike. 

SNAP! The piranha swiveled on its stem and took another bite in her direction. Zelda narrowed her eyes at it before trying again.

“Link!” 

SNAP! SNAP!

She shut her eyes, trying to block out the sound, tuning her ear to the crackle of the flame magic. The Prime Energy was under siege and the prophecy said they vanquished evil together. 

SNAP! 

Any second.

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! 

“SHUT UP!” her voice cracked as the magic blinked off her skin with the release of the blade. It soared through the air and impaled the plant through its open jaws, nailing the monster to the stone behind it. It immediately withered black and then disintegrated into nothing but ash, leaving just the sword in the wall, dark and quiet. 

“‘Shut up?’” Tri repeated, drifting over to the wall.

“It means ‘be quiet’,” Zelda huffed.

“But…with anger?”

“With anger,” she confirmed. 

Tri floated around the embedded sword and released a long whistle. “I thought I would work that time.”

“Me, too.” She frowned, inspecting the blade. Her shoulders sagged with disappointment. “Heroes are supposed to show up when they are needed, you know?”

“Hm?” 

“Every storybook in the Royal library says so. The hero of the four swords, the hero with the power to transcend time, the brave hero of the sky…” She knew she was referencing fiction, but they were stories she’d been drawn to over and over again, and they were filled with messages that felt very relevant to her now. “In every single one, the hero always appears when the world needs them most, no matter what or how many hardships befall them.”

Tri considered this for a moment. “Maybe it’s not that moment?” 

Zelda tilted her head. “What do you mean?” 

“ ‘When the world needs the hero most’ . Maybe that moment isn’t upon us just yet.” Their tail of triangles waved like a hand gesturing to the still world around them. “This is only the first of the three rifts, right?” 

It was a fair point, far better than considering the alternative—that Link couldn’t answer. Her fingers curled around the hilt of the sword. The energy thrumming there was more than just a measure of available power. It was evidence of enduring vitality. He wasn’t holding a weapon when he spoke to her. He’d said her voice was in his head. 

It meant as long as the magic still worked, their connection remained. Link remained.

“There is still time,” Tri insisted.  

She sheathed the sword at her side, nodding slowly. Just because she’d wanted this to be the moment didn’t make it so. Tri was right. They had time. And she had a job to do. A part in this that she could do on her own. Even though she didn’t want to be.

“Okay.” She cleared her throat and lifted the Tri Rod. “Are you ready to get out of here?”

“Yes, please,” Tri nodded their entire body up and down enthusiastically.

Chapter Text

“So, after Tri and I finally catch and destroy the stupid plant that ate the chest with the key, we unlock the door, walk into the final room, and what do we find? Literally, the biggest spider I have ever seen in my entire life.” Zelda shivered at the memory of the massive creature emerging from a nest in the floor as the door slammed shut behind her. It had skittered high up the wall with its too many legs and fixed a massive, yellow eye set in the center of its back on her.

“It was disgusting,” Tri interjected.

“It started shooting globs of web and eggs at us!” Zelda turned her head away from the bright glow of the Sword of Might’s blade and stifled a gag.

“I think it was bigger than your house, Link,” Tri said.

Zelda’s eyes flew wide. 

“Come to think of it,” they continued, “wasn't there a big spider web in the corner there, too? By the fire…?”

Their voice tapered off as she began cutting her free hand back and forth in front of her neck urgently, teeth gritted against a cry of humiliation crawling up her throat.  

Tri tilted innocently. “What are you doing?”

She dropped the blade down to her side stiffly, unsure if the distance would even make a difference in what could be heard through the magic, and hissed, “He doesn’t know we’ve been in his house.”

“Is it bad we’ve been inside his house?”

“Yes,” she whined.

“Why?”

“Not now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll explain later,” she mumbled and hurried away from them toward where her horse, Tassie, was grazing. Tri still didn’t seem completely keen on the beast, so standing beside her would guarantee Zelda some much needed space for the remainder of the report. 

Tassie lifted her head up and nudged Zelda’s side eagerly, indifferent to the blue flames dancing over her skin. When she didn’t find any carrots in Zelda’s pockets—they’d disappeared when her clothing transformed—she blew out a disappointed puff of air and resumed her grazing. 

Zelda brought the sword back up in front of her. “Like I was saying, the monster started spitting webs and eggs everywhere. I’d rather listen to a chorus of ReDead than ever go through that again.” 

The sword hummed against her fingers but remained quiet, as it had for the remainder of the time they’d spent in Faron and the entire journey northwest to Eldin. Try as she might to embrace what Tri said, that Link’s lack of a response wasn’t an indication of anything certain, the idea of continuing to use his weapons without trying to speak to him didn’t sit right with her. Equally, having her hopes repeatedly dashed whenever she was met with silence wasn’t helpful, for her spirits either. 

So, in the shadow of the volcano, she’d decided she was going to start talking to Link—debriefing him, like the soldiers did her father and General Wright at certain points of a mission. She’d already told the sword about Prime Energy and the legends surrounding it. If Link was listening, the practice would keep him up to speed on their shared destiny until she found him. 

If he wasn’t listening…well, she wasn’t going to let herself consider that.

It was a solid plan. A clever solution. Wisdom’s daughter persevered. 

“Anyway, we eventually defeated it with a combination of fire and the sword. You were right. It’s a good weapon. It’s kept me safe. It's just…”

The metal was brilliant white. Molten starlight in her hand, but in his….would it have made a difference if he had been able to wield it against the shadow creature under the castle? She should have tossed it to him. Given it back. 

The magic flickered, warning her it was running low. Like before, she didn’t have time to despair. It was probably for the best. 

“Tri and their friends mended the rift, but before we left, one of the goddesses spoke to me,” she said hurriedly. “Farore. She said courage will be my salvation and gave me her sanction. I think we’ll need one from each of the goddesses to access the Prime Energy when the time comes.”

Another warning shiver of the blue flame power. She could always find more orbs and pick up where she left off, but she had momentum and the protection from any emotions that might stall the words she wanted to say in her throat once the magic was gone. She set her jaw and continued, her words hurried.

“We are heading to Eldin now, and if I recall correctly, the land is connected to the goddess Din. I’d…I’d really like to find you and give you back your sword. We are meant to do this together. The priestess and the hero, you know? It’s about time you show me just how good you are at handling rifts. Since you're such an expert and all.” She smiled to herself. “Although, I would say I’ve gotten pretty good at dealing with them my—oh.”

The magic was gone. Her skin was pink once again, the sapphire tunic fading away to reveal her ancestral vestments and gear. Tassie immediately perked up and started nudging her again, probably able to smell the carrots returned to her pocket. She drew in a breath, sheathed the sword, and quickly retrieved one for her.

“Good girl,”she cooed, “I’m going to need you to head to the village we just left.” They’d retrieved Tassie, a gift from Impa, from the ranch in the field to the west of Hyrule Castle. She’d eased the rest of the trip north to the mountains considerably, but a volcano was no place for a pony, so they would be sending her back to Kakariko to wait until they took care of the rift in Eldin. 

She patted Tassie’s back and the horse began to trot along the dirt road in the direction of the village, just visible through the line of trees to the south. Impa had ensured she was well-trained.

Tri drifted back to Zelda’s shoulder when Tassie was far enough away. 

“She doesn’t bite, you know.”

“She looks at me the same way she looks at the carrots,” Tri quipped. 

Zelda laughed and turned around to face the jagged incline of the red stone mountain. She could feel the faint kiss of heat against her skin, evidence of the deadly lava pools simmering beneath the rocks. “You know what this place is nicknamed in the texts back in the Hyrule Castle library?” 

Tri, still eying Tassie in the distance, chimed beside her. 

“Death Mountain.”

There was a twang, like someone dropped something heavy on a pianoforte. “Remind me again, why did we decide to come here next?”

Zelda giggled. “Well, for one, I absolutely hate being cold, and Mount Lanayru,”—she pointed to the white capped mountains stretching into the clouds to the east—“is covered in snow and ice. Climbing it used to be a trial of sorts for Hylian royals when they came of age.”

“Did you have to do it?”

She shook her head quickly. “Skies, no. You think my father would’ve allowed me to go after working so hard to keep me safe all these years? It’s a frozen wasteland. Besides, they got rid of the tradition a long, long time ago when the goddess stopped answering the prayers of the faithful.” Though, she supposed she would be completing some version of the trial after all when it came time to locate the rift there. Hopefully, Eldin contained an artifact or ingredient for a tonic that would keep her warm when the time came. “And despite the intimidating nickname, there are people who live on the Eldin Volcano that might need our help. No one lives on Mount Lanayru.”

Tri glided forward to inspect the vertical wall of the mountain. “Do…do you think the people here will be like the Deku Scrubs?” 

The bizarre residents of Faron had celebrated the purge of darkness from their region with minimal gratitude. She couldn’t recall if they’d ever asked her name when it was all over. They were too busy chasing the next sweet craze. Smoothies. 

“The Gorons?” Zelda set her hand on her hip. “I don’t think so. I hope not. I don’t want to hear the word ‘bumpkin’ ever again.”

—

“Dartson sure seems different from the leaders of the Gerudo and the Zora, huh?” Tri said, summarizing what Zelda was thinking rather succinctly. “I wonder where he went?”

The Gorons, thankfully, were nothing like the Deku Scrubs. Actually, they were the first people to collectively accept Zelda and Tri’s help outright. Within two minutes of arriving in their city, they brought her straight to the problem. Her people, at the behest of her father’s imposter, had exiled her. Suthorn Village wanted Link. The Gerudo (save for Dohna) required her to earn their trust first, while the Zora had been too busy squabbling amongst themselves to even hear her offer. And the Dekus had arrested her. 

It was the smoothest start she’d had yet. 

They’d quickly mended one of the smaller rifts that opened up in the middle of their city, saving several Gorons who had fallen inside, including their chief, Dartson. Zelda had initially hoped he’d be an ally, being young and new to an important role just like her, but when he emerged from the rift and his people looked to him, he’d practically run out of the room. 

“What is a ‘nugget’ of wisdom?” Tri asked.

Zelda sighed. “For once, I actually have no idea.” 

“Maybe the other Gorons will?” They turned and flicked a triangle in the direction of the group scattered across the room.

Zelda dragged her eyes away from the door Dartson disappeared through and took them in. They looked as perplexed as she felt. 

She made her way over to a Goron child, nearly as tall as she was, who was sobbing quietly in the corner over his still missing father. A few of the Goron Elders were unaccounted for as well despite the rift’s mending. 

“Sometimes people are transported when a rift steals them away. I bet your dad is just in another one somewhere here in Eldin,” she told him gently. 

The child stopped wailing and peered at her through watery black eyes. An older Goron who had been trying to console him looked at her as well.

“My friend has the power to mend rifts and heal the people who fall inside,” she smiled and nodded toward Tri. 

The child leaned to the side, peering around Zelda as if she might be concealing someone behind her. The older Goron looked confused. Heat prickled down Zelda’s spine. That’s right, neither of them had fallen in the rift. She didn’t want to lose their faith trying to explain the mythical star-being only some people could see so she smiled confidently and quickly added, “I’ll make sure your papa comes back soon, okay?” 

The child sniffled. The older Goron patted his shoulder reassuringly and turned to face her. More stone than man, the adult Goron loomed over her just  like the mountain had. 

“Ask him about the ‘nugget’,” Tri urged in her ear.

“Give me a second,” she hissed back. 

The Goron blinked. 

She forgot how much she’d loathed being the only person who could see them. Definitely, firmly, not a good thing.

“Excuse me if it’s a silly question, but I thought I overheard Dartson say something about a ‘nugget’ of wisdom? Is that a Goron artifact or…?”

“Hm,” the Goron grumbled, shaking his head slowly. “Ah, Zelda. Let’s see—I’ll try to give you the short version. Ever since he was little, he’s been sorta awkward. Lotta book smarts, not so much other smarts. Can’t say he’s a natural-born leader, but stuff like that takes time.” He scratched his head apologetically and Zelda pressed her lips into a thin line. Even though it wasn’t about her, she felt the criticism in her bones. He could just as easily be a Hylian soldier talking about her. 

“But,” the Goron continued before she could defend the value of ‘book smarts’, “he cares more than anyone I know. And that’s the heart of a great chief!”

His face was earnest, no hint of disloyalty in his tone. It had been an honest disclosure from someone who really seemed to know Dartson—from childhood, apparently. And despite practically fleeing the scene, this Goron still spoke highly of him; felt it was important for Zelda to walk away knowing the solid shape of their leader’s heart. 

They believed in him. Wanted her to believe in him. 

She was back in the throne room for a moment with the too-bright light through the windows and all those hope-filled eyes on her. 

Suddenly, the running made sense. 

“Yes, it is,” she told the old Goron. He smiled and she caught the release of relief in his broad shoulders. If Dartson was anything like her, asking for help when he needed it would be hard, but if it was offered…

Her hand tightened around the Tri Rod as she spun on her heel for the exit.

Chapter Text

“Dartson’s fretting again…” Tri declared. 

Thankfully, the Goron chief was too absorbed in his own self-loathing to hear them. Zelda watched quietly as he hunched over the stone slate in his hands, muttering unhelpful things about himself while he searched for the right motto to guide his next step forward. 

The ‘nuggets’ turned out to be pieces of advice Dartson’s father, the previous chief, left for him on a Goron scroll—a slab of hard volcanic rock. It contained fifty-six cleverly worded phrases etched into stone that Dartson consulted constantly, as if they were divine commandments. 

They’d found some of the missing Gorons in a monster burrow, including Elder Silv. Silv couldn’t remember anything about a shortcut to the crater where the giant rift was, like Dartson had hoped, but they’d cleared out a dangerous infestation of “dark” lizaflos that had turned out to be echoes. Dartson’s strategy of bringing down the stalactites wiped out more than half of them and earned him praise from Silv.

Unfortunately, Dartson didn’t hear any of it. All he seemed focused on was how inadequate he felt in his late father’s shadow. So beholden to the previous chief’s legacy—his reputation—that Dartson couldn’t see the beginnings of his own attempting to take root through the stones beneath his feet. He had the title and the nuggets and the support of his people and still, he questioned himself.

“What would dad do? Which motto is the best at a time like this?” Zelda heard him mumble, his eyes scanning up and down the slate. They already knew their next move. Silv said the other Goron Elder, Gol, might remember where the shortcut to the crater was, and Elder Gol had last been seen at the Rock-Roast Quarry. It was just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other to get there and yet, Dartson’s insecurity immobilized him. 

The last time this happened, Zelda and Tri had left him to his thoughts and he eventually caught up to them in the burrow. Giving him space felt reasonable once again, but something tugged at her watching him tarnish his well-earned success.

She knew the feeling well, like catching your reflection in a crooked mirror. Stare into it long enough and eventually, you start to wonder if the problem isn’t with how the mirror is hung, but the way you are standing. Even though you know it’s crooked. Even though you know how it can be fixed.

It was a bit painful to see it outside of herself. 

“Hey, chief?” Zelda relaxed her grip and lowered the Tri Rod slowly.

He didn’t look up.

“Dartson,” Zelda said firmly. The Goron glanced up from the slate, his face a mix of surprise and trepidation before it melted into a muted dread. She felt the echo of that fear in her own chest. Profound and ice cold. He was anticipating a lecture or a scolding, or even worse, the denunciation of his worth. 

She shivered and tugged the cloak tight around her.

“You are doing a good job,” she said earnestly and prayed the words would help ease the shared frost. Words she would love to have spoken to her without the caveat of surprise, or the reflection of a noted discompare. 

Elder Silv’s compliment had been presented the same as Minister Lefte’s after that first rift. A revelation of how little was thought of Dartson made rosy by commending what he’d achieved. Zelda remembered what it had felt like, how it made the mirror she saw herself in more crooked. How she’d questioned herself for days—weeks until…

You got this. Keep your head even and your guard up. Tri, you’ve got her back?

Link had believed in her and let her know it, and she’d gone on and faced Ganon’s imposter with a confidence she hadn’t known could shine from within her. Though it had been tough, she hadn’t felt scared during any point in the fight. She’d believed in herself and in her ability to take down an imposter and she hadn’t been alone. Tri on her shoulder, Link in her ear.

“I’ve got your back,” she added with a nod. The Goron blinked at her, his mouth falling open slightly. He held her gaze for a moment, a conflict raging behind his dark eyes, before he shifted them back down to the slate, and lost himself in the search for guidance once again. 

—

Elder Gol couldn’t remember the location of the shortcut to the crater, either. He told them it was part of a faded Goron custom, a path used by Gorons seeking the cleansing fire deep within the crater to assume the title of chief. Eventually, they determined it wasn’t a requirement to become chief and the tradition was abandoned, sort of like the trek up Mount Lanayru for her ancestors. The details had been claimed by time. 

“So the shortcut is related to the chiefs…But…that’s me now, isn't it? Or…Dad? Hmm…” Dartson scratched his head as he stood between the two Elders. Gorons of every size and shape lined the walls of the meeting room in silent anticipation of their chief’s plan to address the giant rift. 

It took every ounce of Zelda’s self control not to slap the slate out of Dartson’s hands when his eyes slid down to it. 

The entire scenario was strangely reminiscent of her present circumstances. A perfect example of what had troubled her about all the secrets her father had kept. This was what happened when the ones who held the secrets were gone before they could share the details. Or in Dartson’s case, when those who knew started to forget. 

They could have already cleared the rift if Dartson’s father had bothered to record the shortcut’s location instead of ‘don’t stop when it’s GO time!’, or ‘chew stuff before you do stuff!’.

Well, at least he’d written something down. 

My daughter. I have only and ever wished for a peaceful life for you…

Well-intentioned but fatally-flawed, just like the nuggets. Their fathers made their battles harder than they needed to be. Zelda had been wildly underprepared for practically everything in the world outside of Castle Town, and Dartson was set up to fail his people unless they could figure out another way around the poisonous gas surrounding the rift.

Just trust yourself! Her eyes fixed on his face, waiting for him to look back up. He’d been right about the stalactites in the lizalfos’ burrow, and knew what the stranded Gorons had needed to regain their strength in the quarry. 

“Oh! Dartson! Your father! That’s it! I remember now,” Silv declared and Dartson’s gaze snapped up from the slate. “Your father once said something about ‘blocking off the path in my room’.”

“Come to think of it, I reckon I heard him say something like that, too,” Elder Gol contributed, knocking his stony fist pensively under his chin. 

“‘Blocking off a path’? Like a secret—” Zelda started, but Dartson sprang forward, apparently very eager to use the vague clue to escape the room. 

“First I’ve heard of it—let’s go check it out!!” He sprinted to the staircase that led up to the second level, moving faster than should be possible for someone of his size. Zelda, the Elders, and the gathered Goron community watched him hurry all the way down the hall to the chambers at the back of the room.

“It’s up here, this way,” he shouted to Zelda and Tri before disappearing through the door.

“Dartson!” Elder Silv called after him a minute too late. “He also said something about a portrait…And he’s gone.”

Despite having knowledge that could potentially be helpful, the Elder made no effort to go after the young chief. Instead, he set to grooming his long, white beard, making sure the tapered ends came to a neat point.

Fresh irritation burned in her cheeks. “You know, you should write this down so you don’t forget.”

“I don’t think we’ll forget, again,” Elder Silv said confidently.

“It’s locked in,” Elder Gol tapped his finger against the side of his head. The sound echoed hollow.

A frown tugged at her lips. 

“Better yet,” she insisted, “when Dartson finds the shortcut, you should mark it on a map.”

“Oh, actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Elder Gol nodded. 

Elder Silv resumed his grooming. “A very wise suggestion, Princess.”

“Wisdom’s daughter,” she mumbled before hurrying upstairs after Dartson.

When they entered the chamber he’d disappeared into, Dartson stood before a large granite slab that covered the back wall from floor to ceiling. It was fixed with large iron nails, though a few had come loose and were scattered on the floor.

He turned around to face her, his eyes beaming with pride.

“It’s a portrait of my dad. Doesn’t he look impressive?” 

The Goron’s likeness was etched into stone rather than painted. Still, despite a lack of intricate detail, Zelda could determine a lot about the late Goron chief from it. His grin was wide and confident and there was immense strength in his posture. Two muscular arms crossed over his broad chest and on his wrists, he wore large pieces of armor thicker than Zelda’s waist. Briefly, she wondered if the portrait was life-size. He must have been like a living boulder. 

Dartson admired it the same way she admired the painting of her mother in her room. 

Zelda brushed her fingers against the diadem and nodded. 

“He made me promise I’d change the portrait one day,” Dartson straightened his spine, his voice suddenly several octaves deeper, “‘You’ll have to hang one of yourself when you’re chief’.” His shoulders dropped, voice returning to normal. “So proud. So sure I’d grow up like him.”

“Dartson,” Zelda said quietly. 

“But never mind that.” He shook his head quickly, the shimmer that had been gathering around his black eyes gone. “We gotta find the entrance to the shortcut.”

“Zelda,” Tri whizzed between them to pull their attention, oblivious to the grief lingering in the room. “Is ‘shortcut’ like a secret passage?” 

She nodded. “Yes.” 

“So it’s hidden somewhere in this room? Like the stairs under the throne?” They twirled slowly, golden face inspecting the walls and floor.

“That’s my guess. We should check to see if fixed objects can be moved first. Then, if that reveals nothing, we can start looking for switches. Sometimes a secret path can be revealed with a hidden button or a trigger. There is one in the castle library that opens when you pull a certain book from one of the shelves.” 

“You sure know a lot about shortcuts,” Dartson said.

Her stomach pulled tight as her eyes flitted to the sword on her hip. Her lips twitched with a smile. 

“I’m a bit of an expert.”

Chapter Text

Zelda found the shortcut to the crater when she pulled an iron screw loose and sent the beloved portrait of Dartson’s father crashing to the floor. 

She’d thought it might be a switch that, when pulled, would trigger a hidden mechanism in the wall that moved the portrait away like a door. It was just her luck that it turned out to be an ordinary screw. Apparently, the last one holding the giant slab in place. It broke into a hundred pieces the moment it hit the ground. 

So much for being an expert. 

She’d been so mortified she nearly vomited. The nausea only intensified when Tri, who Dartson could very much hear having been rescued by their magic from a rift, unceremoniously announced:

 “Oops.” 

Somehow, Dartson hadn’t been devastated by the loss. He’d referenced Nuggets of Wisdom, number 34: ‘A breakdown can lead to a breakthrough’ , and marched confidently over the rubble and into the “shortcut”. 

A passage filled with pools of lava. 

The bubbling, cherry-red lakes made maneuvering the caverns of the shortcut especially perilous. Zelda kept as far away from it as she could, curling her legs in tight whenever she needed to bind herself to a flying monster echo so it could carry her over gaps of rock too wide to jump. Sometimes, as if it were a living, spiteful thing, the lava would trumpet spouts of syrupy fire at her. 

Death Mountain should be its official name. How the Gorons had come to call this place home was beyond her.

Even in the spots where there wasn’t lava, the heat was oppressive. The Gerudo Desert with a hundred blazing suns in the sky. Zelda brought a hand up to wipe away the sweat beaded along her brow under the diadem. She’d removed the gloves of her ancestral vestments, arms bare and tingling in the too-hot air deep within the mountain. The hair on her left arm was completely singed, the entire limb inches away from being claimed a few rooms back by a wide lick of bright flame that forced her to tuck Link’s cloak away securely in her pack.

She hated the way her shoulders felt without it. 

A giant boulder was currently blocking their path forward. Dartson had tried to use his strength to shatter it, like he’d done the stalactites in the lizalfos borrow, but the stone was too massive to be moved by his fist alone. He’d hit it so hard the entire cavern had shook, but only a small vertical crack had formed where he’d struck. Zelda had tried to move it with the echo magic, but it was wedged too tight in the narrow doorway.

After a few moments of uncomfortably warm silence, Dartson moved to retrieve the slate. When his black eyes caught Zelda’s pointed gaze, he froze. 

“You can’t rely on the nuggets for everything,” she said, cocking her hip to the side. The sword bumped against her thigh with the motion and she paused, eying the smooth curve of the hilt. She could feel the hum of magic even through the sheath. The bow, as if echoing the call, thrummed across her spine. 

If not for the threat of unpredictable flames, his cloak would hang from her shoulders. Not nuggets, but...

It’s not the same, she told herself.

She swallowed hard, and forced her eyes back up to Dartson who was waiting for her to continue. “Your people look to you for guidance, not your father’s slate.”

He shifted it between his hands, as if measuring the weight. For a moment, she wondered if she overstepped, her tongue loosened by fatigue and dehydration. She should have summoned a water cube and dunked her head in it before she said anything.

Dartson looked up at her. “Zelda, we haven’t known each other very long, but this slate—it's like a road map from my father. So the idea of not having it around anymore makes me pretty nervous.”

“You are going to come across challenges and problems his advice won’t apply to. Your instincts are good ,” she blinked as the words left her lips and tried to determine where she was pointing them.

Not the same. Not the same. 

The Goron chief’s eyes drifted back down, but this time his gaze was not desperate or puzzled. No, there was resolve taking shape. She watched his fingers flex against the slate as he nodded a few times to himself. “With all we’ve done, I’ve realized there’s times when carvings on a rock aren’t enough.”

Tri gave a twirl.

He smiled. “I think you’ve helped me figure things out.”

“About time,” she pushed a sweaty piece of hair out of her face and tried to smile back.

—

It was the first time she’d wished someone else could come with her into a rift. Not because she was scared or nervous, but because of that crooked mirror. 

The Goron chief’s epiphany about the nuggets and needing to figure out how to lead his own way had changed the way he looked into his own. His steps now permanently held the authority she’d only seen glimpses of before, broad shoulders strong and self-assured. For a moment, after he wedged the slate into the crack in the boulder, it had been a perfect fusion of what had been given to him by his father and what he’d created on his own. She’d thought he was going to turn around and try to find another way through, but then his massive fist cocked back, and he slammed it into the slate. The boulder split and cracked out from the center like a spider web until the entire thing crumbled around his hand into a pile-–his father’s slab included.

The roadmap was gone. 

Dartson had laughed at the sight of it. The sound was deep and burdenless, and declared he’d be alright and she knew in her core he believed it.  He finally trusted himself and seeing him do it made her realize that although she preached the importance to him, she didn’t feel the same way about herself. It didn’t matter how many times she twirled. Not completely. Not yet. 

Dartson had wanted to come into the rift, too. But she was still the only one who could navigate the rifts without becoming petrified in the endless blackness. She had to do this part on her own. At least until they found Link.

Skies, she wanted to hurry up and find Link.

“Hey, Zelda?” Tri chimed. 

Zelda summoned a statue and used it to block a geyser of scalding hot steam reaching for her from a hole in the wall. Sparks danced behind the face of the statue, a hawk she’d copied from the Gerudo Sanctum, and she quickly scaled up the rock wall to a higher platform before the magic broke. She didn’t let her thoughts linger on why she’d chosen that particular one.

“What is it, Tri?” she replied, pulling herself up and over the ledge. She sprawled onto her back and panted, lifting her arms quickly to avoid her bare skin coming in direct contact with the warmth of the floor beneath her. The unimaginable heat of the crater had remained even though life had been drained from the parts of the volcano stolen away. Red stones were now sickly violet and dull, the air dry and flecked with purple embers and wisps of lavender smoke. Curiously, the lava had remained unchanged, contained like the water stolen in the Jabul Waters still world. Now inside the ruins, there was little escape from the eternal heat it gave off.

At least it ensured the void was bright. 

Tri drifted over her face. “What made you laugh before?” 

The small, silver key she’d found in the cavern below jostled against her hip as she sat up. She freed it from her belt and let her fingers brush against the pommel of the sword. After Faron, she’d promised herself she wasn’t going to try anymore. If she used the magic outside of fighting, it was to give a report without any expectations of a reply. 

She could tell him about Dartson and the Goron Elders, but it wasn’t much of an update regarding the mission they shared. If she drew it now, surrounded by shadow and otherworldly wrongness, she knew she would just be doing it so she could listen for his voice.

Zelda, we haven’t known each other very long, but this slate—it's like a road map from my father. So the idea of not having it around anymore makes me pretty nervous.

It’s not the same, she told herself. Link was still somewhere. He was listening. She would find him. 

She forced her hand away and pushed herself to her feet. “What do you mean?”

“When I said it seemed like Dartson made a breakthrough. You laughed.” They buzzed alongside her as she walked through the open threshold and back into the chamber she had started from. The silver of the key in her hand matched the lock on the door in the back of the room. Not a final key, but one step closer. 

“Oh, that. Well, it was funny.” She shrugged.”You were making a joke, right?”

“A ‘joke’?”

Shame on her for assuming. 

“Well, even if you didn’t mean it to be, it was a nice callback to the nugget about breakdowns and breakthroughs. It was funny.” 

Tri gave a tilt and Zelda sighed, still moving for the door.

“You know, funny? Like ha-ha-ha .” She held her palm up in front of her lips to emphasize the laughter. 

“‘Ha-ha-ha’ ,” Tri repeated flatly. Then a little brighter. “Yes. I suppose I was being funny.” 

She held the key up to the lock, pushed it in, and turned. The door clicked open and she stepped inside, glancing over her shoulder to wink at Tri.

“I knew you had it in you,” she teased, eager to lean into the banter.

And then the door slammed shut. 

Zelda’s eyes flew wide open. She drew the sword without thinking and whirled around, it and Tri Rod extending in front of her as shadows slithered down the walls toward the center of the room. It wasn’t a final room. It couldn’t be the monster that had captured Tri’s friends. Not yet. The still worlds had a pattern to them, the same skeleton under all the rotting pieces of Hyrule claimed. But when the doors slammed shut like this in the other rifts it had meant…it had meant—

A large orb of festering oil descended through the air lazily to where the shadows met and collided into the stone with a hiss. Her pulse thundered, a bizarre mixture of fear and exhilaration coursing hot through her veins as a body made of iridescent dark matter began to emerge. She didn’t need to see the human features to recognize what it was becoming. She’d memorized his shape after that first imposter, sharpening her memory of it with every copy that appeared and then confirmed it with the glimpse of the real Link in the castle rift. 

She knew it wasn’t him, but when the oil finally melted away to reveal the likeness of his beautiful, brave face, her heart lurched desperately inside her chest. He could see her through the imposter’s eyes before. If he was there, if he was watching…

She couldn’t stop herself from staring into the vacant eyes and whispering his name like a prayer.

“Link?”

Chapter Text

Zelda held her breath for as long as she could for fear the slightest noise might smother the sound of Link’s voice in her ear. 

Blue flames erupted from the Sword of Might’s blade and spread up her arms, bathing her in the power that once connected them—still connected them. He was there, wherever there was, and with the dark echo and its tether, he would be able to see her. Talk to her.

This was their chance to best whatever had been keeping them apart.

When the Tri Rod disappeared, she shifted into a two-handed grip and tried again, her voice even and sure with the icy grip of fear pushed outside of her body. No longer a prayer, but a command. 

“Link.” 

Embers of fire and shadow drifted through the room, the floor littered with cracked stone blocks that perhaps once belonged to a more formal structure within the space. According to the Gorons, the shortcut had gone unused for a while. It was entirely possible the tremors of the volcano had naturally caused it to crumble away over time, but she couldn’t help but notice as her eyes quickly scanned the room while the imposter remained still, that there wasn’t a single pillar for her to dive behind if needed. They’d been essential in her defense during the last two imposter attacks, as well as Link’s interference.

Her fingers tightened around the hilt, a glare refocusing back on the fake. 

The room had been altered in anticipation of her. 

“Answer me,” she ordered and searched for any sign of the boy who had gazed at her with such intensity in the castle rift. The copy just stared back at her with an expression that was blank and cold. A puppet waiting for its master to pull its strings. 

Everyone had tried to put a face on who or what was making the dark echoes. She’d held her tongue in the throne room, feeling the least qualified to contribute to a discussion when the title of legendary priestess was so fresh, but her gut told her it was the faceless void with claws. She’d thought so from the moment it emerged from the crack in the castle wall, swirling with the same essence that wept from the seams of monsters born from the rifts. 

Pure, absolute evil didn’t have a face. It stole them. 

As if it could read her thoughts, a grin spread across the imposter’s lips. 

With the blade angled slightly, Zelda took a step toward the fake and growled. “I want to speak to him.”

They’d never spoken to her, not in the dark ruins of Suthorn or the stilled Gerudo Sanctum, and now she knew it was because Link couldn’t speak. His voice ripped from his throat in a wicked penance the first time he’d fallen into a rift and dared to survive. The second time, because of her, it stole his likeness and used it to stalk her in the dark.

Zelda frowned slightly. What was her price? Her senses had remained, as well as all her memories. It hadn’t stolen her capacity for joy or ability to laugh, though at times since this whole journey began she needed to remind herself she could. It had tried to ruin her reputation, but she’d freed her father and he put an end to the slanderous postings. Was it possible she escaped the toll by jumping into the rifts instead of falling? Or had she lost something yet to be revealed?

Tri buzzed in her ear, the gleam of their golden magic bright and protective on her shoulder like a pauldron of pure light. Anger began to boil under her skin at the persistent silence, the blue magic a frenzied ripple where it met the fear kept outside of her. She took another step forward, close enough to see the sheen of the dark matter where freckles should be. “You will release him immediately.”

With a flash of scarlet, the imposter’s eyes came to life. Its arms sprang mechanically to lift something high above its head. Light from a peculiar spark dancing above the strange object caught its curved edges, outlining the shape against the shadows swirling around the imposter's hands. A perfect, glossy circle with a quickly shrinking fuse at the apex. 

Link’s final Might weapon. 

“Shit,” she breathed. 

“Get angry?” Tri asked. 

“No.” She took a slow step back as the imposter’s fingers flexed.

“But–”

“MOVE!” Zelda shouted and scrambled away as the imposter hurled the bomb at them. 

There was a lick of heat, a tremendous force between her shoulder blades, and then everything went white. Too white. Painfully white. 

Her knees cracked against something hard. Agony sang all the way up her spine and synchronized with the bell ringing loud between her ears. Fear tightened back around her and she began to fumble blindly. The sword. Her connection to it and the protection of its magic had been abruptly broken when the bomb sent her flying across the room. 

At first, the only thing she could grasp was a thought: Every second her vulnerability persisted was an invitation for another attack. She scrambled faster. Color crept back into the world and the blurred outlines of the sword and the Tri Rod emerged a few yards away from her.

The thought in her head evolved: Every second she was without a weapon was an invitation for death. 

Frantically, she crawled until the weapons were secured in her bloodied hands. Blood. Her blood. 

The room gave a violent tilt underneath her as she stumbled to her feet and held the weapons out in front of her in a feeble warning. 

One second passed. Then another. 

Her vision continued to clear and focus, a heavy fog slowly lifting under the morning sun and still, nothing came. Maybe the imposter had blown itself up in the attack? The bomb had barely left its fingers before erupting and thank the skies, because if it had been any closer, it probably would have taken a piece of her or—

“Tri?” she gasped and spun, the sound of her voice muffled and distant.

Something far off hummed at her. She winced and narrowed her eyes until she found the center of the room where the imposter had originally been. A wide radius of ruin was carved into the floor. 

Gold flared bright in her periphery. On the other side of the room, Tri whizzed around a swirling black orb that looked like it was trying to land on an elevated rock ledge. The imposter must have transformed and flown away to avoid the blast, and Tri was using their magic to delay it from reforming. 

Preventing it from attacking her while she was down.

You got this. Keep your head even and your guard up. Tri, you’ve got her back?

Link’s support that day had been pointed at her and Tri. She squinted at the memory, her head still fuzzy from the blast. Tri had responded. What was it they said? 

Always.

The hum sounded again, the sound of Tri’s voice breaking through the bell fading between her ears. 

“...closer….harder…to aim…!” 

Zelda watched as the orb made a sharp dive for the ground and Tri flew to block it. Shadow ricocheted off golden light back toward the ceiling, but the impact sent Tri into the hard floor with a clang.

For the first time, the energy in the Tri Rod quivered beneath her fingers.

“Tri!” Zelda cried. 

In one fluid motion, she summoned a platboom, lept onto it, and let the echo carry her up so she was level with where Tri had gone down. Tri flickered, as dazed as a fallen star could be while the imposter’s orb twirled in a wide arc and crashed triumphantly into the floor nearby. 

A floating tile echo materialized beside her without her needing to lift the Tri Rod. She didn’t wait for it to start moving. Instead, she used it like a stepping stone to jump the remaining distance to the ledge and knelt protectively beside Tri. 

“Are you okay?” 

“Link…” Tri said weakly, the sounds of their movement noticeably off-key as they drifted up off the ground.

“That’s not Link, Tri.” She held the wand over them with her right hand and crossed the blade between her and the splatter of oil beginning to take Link’s form with the other. 

“No…” Tri wobbled. Disoriented. “Link said…‘The closer you get…the harder it will be… to aim at you’.”

“I..I don’t understand.” Zelda tilted her head.

Link’s face emerged from the inky blackness and those terrible eyes gleamed, an angry red fire coming back to life from within. Its arms once again moved to raise a glossy round bomb above its head, fuse already lit. 

She gritted her teeth, rapidly running through the mental tally of the echoes she’d made. A Gerudo statue might be able to protect them from the blast. If she timed it right, one of the monsters could deflect or catch it, but they mostly had wills of their own. What was to stop them from listening to the same instincts that were currently screaming at her to run? How was she supposed to counter a bomb? With the pillars destroyed, where was she supposed to hide?

The sword gleamed in front of her. The power was ready, the blade as bright as a full moon and pulsing like a heart against her palm. If she bathed herself in the magic and called to him, would his voice be there? Could he tell her what to do?

For a moment, she was Dartson holding the slate. Someone reached out to slap it away and she flinched, drawing the slate back protectively toward her chest. And then it wasn’t the slate anymore. Silver burned an inch from her face. 

Not the same.

“Link’s advice…from the Gerudo Sanctum. It’s a ‘nugget’, right?” Tri urged again, the fuse on the bomb nearly halfway burned through. 

The closer you get, the harder it will be to aim at you.

A bomb was just another range weapon, like the bow. They weren’t designed for close combat, not unless you were willing to risk blowing yourself up in the process. 

But swords were.

A Nugget of Wisdom. No.

A Nugget of Might. 

Zelda lunged forward, slingshotting the echo magic out to snatch the bomb from the imposter’s hands. She cracked the magic like a whip and sent it soaring away from her and Tri across the room.

The imposter blinked at her, its hands still positioned around the bomb it no longer held as Zelda lifted the sword back, the blue-flame magic rippling down her arm and over her skin in a flash. Somewhere in the distance, the bomb exploded and shook the room, a cascade of dust and loose stone falling down around them like rain. Zelda stumbled and swung the blade down, aiming to slash the imposter open from shoulder to hip, but the fake pulled into an orb and spiraled out of her reach to where it had first appeared down below. 

Close. She needed to stay close. 

Zelda let the sword’s magic disappear and brought the Tri Rod forward, the sorcery a solar flare as she summoned her unmade bed just off the ledge and jumped to ride its fall down to the lower part of the room. The wooden legs cracked against the stone, but her mattress softened the collision and allowed her to roll off the side and resume her attack immediately. 

The imposter had just finished reforming into Link when she slashed with the sword. Its mouth opened wide with a silent scream, throat lit with the same red glow as its eyes. 

“Link!” she cried through the magic rippling around her. “Talk to me! I’m here!”

Again, the fake shifted into the dark orb and darted up and out of sight on a ledge too high for her to jump even with Link’s skill. She dismissed the sword’s magic and pulled out the wand just as Tri zoomed overhead to where the orb disappeared.

“Tri! Wait!” she shouted and summoned her bed and then a trampoline directly on top of it. With the echoes in place, she transformed again and used Link’s agility to jump up onto the trampoline, and then flipped up and over the rock ledge to where Tri and the imposter squared off. 

Tri hadn’t been quick enough to stop the imposter from reforming, but they buzzed around its head, their music as loud and jarring as a dozen bells ringing at the same time. Thankfully, it hadn’t pulled out a copy of the sword, just another bomb mercifully unlit. 

She smirked. It was all the fake could use because the Might weapons couldn’t be copied. Once they were in her hands, the imposter had less to use against her. The Bombs of Might were all that was left. This was the shadow creature’s last chance to use Link’s echo against her—

Faster than should be possible, the fake clutched the bomb and used it like a rock to crack Tri out of the air. 

Zelda nearly lost her grip on the sword. 

The force of the brutal blow sent Tri to the ground, their magic blinking with each tumble until they finally came to a stop on their side. They lay unmoving, their internal candle a dim flicker against the shadow. Triangles were splayed across the stones like broken pieces of glass.

A hiss sounded beside her and she slid her eyes to the imposter. It grinned again, dark matter oozing from where she’d cut it. In its hands, a splatter of stardust marred the sleek surface of the now lit bomb. 

Had it not been for the sword’s magic, the sight might’ve made her sick, but the flames fortified the feeling into something lethal. Sharp. 

She didn’t remember moving. The speed was intangible. She was intangible when she accessed it. A flash of lighting. A spark. One moment the imposter was across the space, lifting the bomb up over its head and then the next, she was right up against it, the Sword of Might buried up to the hilt in its gut. 

The blue flame magic surged around her. Something heavy dropped nearby with a thud. The bomb. She kicked it off the ledge with the tip of her boot and tilted her head toward the imposter’s face, barely a breath from her own. 

Even through the wrongness, he was so handsome up close. His copy’s lips were parted slightly. Perfectly. The crimson behind its eyes was dulling, the threads connecting the puppet to its master beginning to break. She could almost see the blue that should be there. That she wanted to be there. 

“Hey, don’t leave me alone in this,” she told those eyes. 

Dark matter hissed away from the blade, Link’s likeness eroding in the dying shadow. Zelda could feel the sword’s magic fading as well, the pulse faint and tired beneath her fingers. Heroes were supposed to show up when they were needed…but they couldn’t if they were…if he was…

“I don’t want to be alone in this,” she whispered. 

Chapter Text

Zelda stood at the base of the snow-capped mountains with the Sword of Might illuminated in her hands. If not for the protection of the blue flames surrounding her, she would probably be clutching Link’s cloak tight around her shoulders. A harsh wind blew down into the valley, rattling the sturdy pine trees standing like sentinels along the unkept path to the caves. 

A traveler had encouraged her to use them to reach the summit after failing to dissuade her from continuing ahead. Even when she informed him of who she was and what she planned to do, he looked at her with pity and cautioned those who tried to scale the frigid cliffs rarely returned. Recovery efforts did not extend into the eternal snowfall, no matter who was lost. 

Basically, if she left the foothills, she was on her own.

There was a kindness to the warning, but it felt a little bit like the universe was trying to rub salt in a wound she refused to acknowledge. She’d thanked the man and hurried away as fast as she could. When he was out of earshot, she pulled the sword and let the thrum of magic lessen the sting while she gave report. 

“It’s called Null.”

Din’s sanction had been warm in her hands and her heart, bestowed upon her after they defeated the final beast inside the Eldin still world. A rageful creature of fire and scale, the dragon had used the lava to avoid every swipe of Link’s blade. It also incinerated any echo she cast at it by spitting flames of every color into the air. The newly acquired Bombs of Might had been her saving grace. She hurled them from the various platforms erected in the final lava-flooded cavern, the crystals strong enough to withstand the heat until they erupted either by a shrinking fuse or the stroke of flame.

Even though he hadn’t spoken to her, Link had still given her what she needed in the end.

She was not on her own, even though she’d technically be on her own as she ventured up the snowy mountain. As long as the magic still worked, their connection remained. This was the hope she’d clung to after the silence in the Faron rift, and what had given her the strength to rise to her feet and keep going after his likeness faded into nothing in Eldin. 

Link was listening. He was there. And he would show up, like the hero was supposed to, when she needed him most. 

“What we are up against is ancient,” she told him, “as old as the goddesses themselves. It…it’s a world eater.”

Flames hissed loudly around her. She squeezed her eyes shut and continued, “Din told me the goddesses created our world to contain it. A rift is Null’s insatiable hunger trying to break free.”

She was no goddess, she barely felt like the priestess she was supposed to be, but the logic felt flawed. Why not destroy it? Or, if it couldn’t be destroyed, why not put it in a cage away from the pulse of life it so desperately craved? 

Her eyes drifted to Tri. They swayed in the air beside her, a ripple working through their tail of triangles. She’d been so relieved when she heard their bells in her ear after the imposter disappeared. They’d bounced back from the attack like it was nothing, but it had shaken Zelda. Made her think twice before turning that final key in the still world. 

None of the dark echoes had ever targeted Tri that way before. The creature in Jabul Waters had gone after them, but it had been drawn to their light, not what they were. 

A smear of dark gold along the bomb’s curve and the terrible, please grin that accompanied it...

The imposter, and the shadow creature called Null controlling it, hurt Tri to get to her.

“Tri and their friends were created by the goddesses to clean up the rifts. To maintain balance.” Again, another question she didn’t feel qualified to toss at immemorial deities but: Why target the mess and not address the root? Eventually a weed that wanted to survive would evolve, either by spreading where the light couldn’t reach it, or in this case, learning how to capture the light and use it. 

“Our world, the core is… rotten. Balance is no longer sustainable,” she asserted. 

Tri nodded in agreement.

“I stand before the final rift. One sanction remains. It… ” Finality loomed in the dark shadow of the mountains as she gazed upon it. She tried to keep her tone measured, but the magic flickered and faded as she spoke. “It would be a really good time, I think, for you to…to…”

Energy fluttered beneath her fingers and then stilled, snuffing out her courage. She quickly sheathed the sword and drew the cloak in around her, the wind so cold it snatched the air from her lungs. Just a preview of what awaited them.

She hurried for the cave’s entrance in the distance. The musty dresser smell she’d sneered at all those weeks ago was long gone. It didn’t matter how hard she pressed the fabric against her face. All she could smell was cinder, rainwater, and the faintest hint of the rosemary they use in the laundry back in the castle. 

And now the crisp promise of snow.

—

“I thought you said no one lives here.”

Zelda paused her sipping and narrowed her eyes at Tri over the ridge of her knuckles. She was pinching her nose so hard her eyes watered, but if she released it, her focus would narrow on what the peppers had been mixed with to make the warming potion she was drinking. The business scrub had told her she needed to finish the entire thing to receive the full chill-proof benefit and even though they were out of the storm, the feeling still hadn’t returned to her feet. 

Grimacing, Zelda craned her head back and let the thick liquid drain down her throat until the vial was empty.

Shortly after exiting the safety of the caves, the persistent but gentle snowfall on the mountain intensified into whiteout conditions. Thankfully, she’d thought to gag down a potion and donned additional layers of armor under Link’s cloak before stepping out, but the fire the tonic lit in her belly would only last for a limited time. Heavy winds and snow had made it impossible to do anything, but brace herself as the warmth slowly drained out of her limbs. She would have frozen to death if not for Condé.

“I didn’t think anyone did.” She murmured and glanced over her shoulder. Across the room, the behemoth of muscle and white fur turned its gentle face toward her and waved. The two petite horns that peaked at her from atop his head suggested adolescence despite his size.

Technically, she’d been right. People didn’t live here. There was just snow and ice and Condé…whatever Condé was. She’d nearly run into him sleeping in the middle of the blizzard and he’d kindly invited them to wait out the storm in his home.

She waved back. 

“What do you think he wants help with?” Tri asked when Condé turned back and resumed organizing the massive tools in a crate by the door.  

Zelda wiggled her toes in her boots and sighed, her skin prickling with a pleasant heat. “What do you mean?”

“Everyone we’ve met so far has needed help. The faster we figure out what he needs, the sooner he will help us get to the rift,” they chimed.

Zelda frowned. “Not everyone.” 

“Yes, everyone,” Tri insisted.

“No, that’s not true. The Deku’s put us in jail for trying.”

Tri glanced where the Tri Rod was resting against the wall. The slightest hint of a grimace tugged at their unchanging face and she knew they were thinking about spider-web cotton candy spun around the curved branches of the artifact. 

She tried not to smirk.

“True. But, eventually that one Deku came to her senses after we helped clear the rift that covered her house. She helped us get into The Sweet Spot,” they countered.

Zelda opened her mouth and then closed it. They weren’t wrong. 

“And Dohna came up with the plan that granted us access to the Sanctum, but that was all so we could help her because the rifts were targeting Gerudo holy sites.”

Zelda bristled. Dohna and Zelda had become fast friends, but it felt like that would have happened no matter the circumstances. She would have helped them immediately if not for the interference and doubt sowed by the imposter wearing Facette’s face.

“But we—” she began, but Tri cut her off.

“Kushara and Dradd only put aside their scabbling when they needed us to rescue the two Zora that Lord Jabu-Jabu gobbled up.”

“Sure, but—” 

“And Lueberry is fixing up the Might weapons because he wants you to rescue Link.”

The hard-earned fire in her gut went out. She couldn’t tell if it was from what their words implied or the unexpected mention of Link’s name. Either way, she was cold once again. Cold and empty and exhausted. 

“We-we want the same thing, Tri.” Her eyes slid to the sword resting beside the Tri Rod. “I…I want to rescue Link, too.”

Quiet fell between them. Tri’s melody lingered with the promise of follow up. Zelda quickly raced through all the interactions they’d had across Hyrule in her head, trying to pinpoint a snapshot that didn’t support Tri’s argument. 

She couldn’t think of one. 

Her eyes shifted to the sword and then the wall beyond it where a mural was painted on the ice. Three figures, similarity shaped with horns, stood in a line with stars, or maybe snow, scattered around them. It was crudely done, much less detailed than the carving of Dartson’s father or the painting of her mother back at the castle, but she knew the significance even before Condé spoke up. 

“Condé made that picture,” he said from behind her. “Big Brother taught Condé lots of things, like how to crush rocks to make paint. He’s part of my family…close to Condé’s heart.”

“It’s beautiful, Condé.” she said.

“Just a little earlier, Condé saw Big Brother. He was walking here on the mountain.”

Zelda turned around to face Condé fully, her head tilted with curiosity. He had told them his brother had been missing for a while. An adventurer of sorts, he’d taken off from their mountain in a hot air balloon to explore Holy Mount Lanayru. If he had returned, perhaps he had information about the rift that might be useful. Wandering the region, like they’d done everywhere else, was out of the question. She only had so many warming potions. 

“Condé saw him from behind and called out, but he vanished into the storm. Condé chased after Big Brother, but couldn't find him anywhere until finally Condé fell asleep in the snow after all that running. Maybe Big Brother will come home soon.” 

He glanced pensively toward the door and went back to organizing the tools, which she realized just entailed him rearranging the order. She’d seen the guards do it sometimes, especially when they were awaiting a patrol to return. 

A way to settle idle nerves. 

“Do you think he’s going to ask us to help him find his brother?” Tri said.

She sighed and dropped her voice low. “I think he’s lonely.” 

“‘Lonely’?”

“Yeah. He misses his family. His brother and…” She looked at the tallest of the three figures in the painting and then back at the tools in Condé’s strong hands. He mentioned some of them belonged to his father when he first brought them inside. Said they used to “clean up” the mountain together, whatever that meant.

She blinked.

Outside Condé’s house, Zelda had caught a glimpse of something in the snow. She’d been too cold to dwell long on it. Only now, properly thawed and with the painting before her, could she put together what it was. Grey, circular tones encircled the base of a structure made of crossed dark wood and braided leather.

A grave. 

“He’s alone,” she said softly and then before they could ask, added, “It means he’s isolated on this mountain. He had his family before but now…”

“‘Alone’,” Tri answered, their voice a slow, descending scale. “I know ‘alone’.”

Tri looked smaller all of a sudden, the light inside them shrinking in so the three peaks that gave them a shape dulled. They’d always called the others their friends, but Zelda hadn’t considered the depth of their connection. That there might be a reason behind that idle tune that often played during the quiet moments they traveled. Like rearranging tools that required no particular order. Like giving a report to a sword that never answered her back. 

Suddenly, she was back in the castle rift, fighting alongside Link through the sword’s magic. There had been rightness that accompanied every movement when she could hear his breath in her ear—when she could imagine their movements like reflections on a mirror, his spine pressed to hers. Just a glimpse of it had left her feeling exposed in every fight since, even though she carried all of his weapons. Even with his cloak on her back. 

Tri had only ever known what it was to be part of many...until they were on their own.

Alone.

–

The ignizol she’d summoned to clear the ice hissed against the cold, the light from the flame atop its head catching the edge of the rift Condé was currently trying to bury.

When the storm had finally settled, Condé had grabbed his tools and exited his house quickly. Zelda and Tri followed him deep into another cave that was half consumed by a shimmering rift.

“Condé’s got to…clean up…this mess. And before Big Brother gets home,” Condé grunted between each pull of the shovel. Snow disappeared into the rift the second it touched the surface, only an iridescent ripple to show for his efforts.

This was how he “cleaned” up the mountain. Keeping the entrances to the caves clear and trying to cover rifts. 

“It’s not working, though!” Condé huffed and buried the shovel deep into the snow so it would stand on its own. Tri started to say something, but she snapped her head toward them, her lips pressed together in a tight line while she waved her hand across her throat. Zelda circled back to explain the meaning after that embarrassing first report, and it looked like the lesson had stuck because Tri fell silent. 

“Still, Condé won’t give up—no matter what,” Condé said after a moment of rocking back and forth, pumping a massive fist as if to rally himself. He reached for the shovel again and caught Zelda’s eye. 

He immediately frowned. “Huh? What’s wrong? Condé is cleaning up the dark gunk! Trying and trying, anyway.”

“Gunk? Do you mean that rift?” Tri asked. 

“This gunk has been messing things up all over these mountains lately. Condé has to clean this up before Big Brother comes home.” He wrenched the shovel free and nodded.

Similar to the Deku Scrubs, Condé had known about the rifts, just under another name. A part of his job. Idle work to fill lonely days.

It all felt frustratingly familiar to her. Just like purging rifts from the surface of Hyrule while Null continued to fester beneath their feet, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Who was she to rip away something that eased his worry? His grief? Especially when she knew she wasn’t willing to stop giving reports.

“You can’t get rid of a rift that way,” Tri offered pragmatically. 

“Really? But Condé is pretty sure this will work!” Condé nodded again and lifted the shovel up to show them. “Just need to try harder.”

“Um, but…” Tri glanced between Condé and Zelda, but Zelda kept quiet. 

Her fingers brushed the sword’s pommel. 

“Tri, thank you for wanting to help,” the behemoth said gently—too gentle for what seemed possible for someone so large. “It makes Condé happy. But this is something Condé needs to do.” 

He turned back to the snow and tossed another shovelful into the rot.

“He’s not going to listen to us, is he?” Tri said.

“I don’t think so,” Zelda answered and pointed the wand so the ignizol hopped toward ice blocking an opening to her left. It felt wrong to try and enter the rift in front of Condé. She didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. She wanted him and his gentleness to stay out of the still world. 

When the ice had shrunk enough, Zelda stepped over it and summoned another ignizol in the new part of the cave. Light chased the shadow up the dark, damp walls. 

“Why doesn’t he just ask us for help?”

She released a heavy sigh. “Is this about what you said back in his house? About helping people so they help us?”

Tri whistled.

Another part of the rift festered along the back half of the cave, jagged black fingers stretched greedily along ice-coated stone. She glared at the very center of it, her fingers curling tight around the Tri Rod in her hand. 

“We are all working toward the same goal. Eliminating the source of rifts,” she emphasized the word toward the dark. The tonic still burned in her belly, keeping the ice of her fear at bay. Or who knew, maybe she’d jumped into enough now that the sight of one no longer frightened her.

“People help us and we help them. It’s how we save Hyrule. Together.”

“But you’re the only one who can enter the rifts,” Tri pressed.

“And Link,” she shot back, speaking to Tri and the blackness. 

The rift glimmered.

“But then why didn’t he answer back in Eldin?”

Zelda shot her hand up, her pulse pounding between her ears. More salt. “What does this have to do with Condé?”

“I just don’t understand why he helped us if he doesn’t want help in return?”

I’m only helping Zelda so that I can get rid of the rifts.

Din revealed Tri and their friends were created to restore balance. They had been born out of need, part of an endless, cosmic cause and effect. 

“Tri…” Zelda relaxed her grip on the wand slowly. “People can help others to be helpful. Just… because.”

She watched them float there, trying to reconcile all the complexity of all they’d observed in Hyrule with the simplicity of their design. The flaw. They’d learned a lot during the journey together but this…this she could tell was different. 

“‘Just because’,” they finally echoed.

Chapter Text

Zelda knelt beside Condé and smoothed her fingers over his soft fur while he wept. They’d found him in the deep snow that surrounded the peak of the Holy Mount Lanayru, allegedly struck down by his brother when he tried to get his attention. Physically, Condé appeared to be unharmed, but Zelda knew all too well that unseen wounds, especially those upon the spirit or heart, could be more devastating than those that wrought bloodshed. This had the potential to be a wound he carried with him for years; to become a word that followed him in his shadow.

“Are you OK?” Tri inquired, their golden light a gentle gleam on the white of Condé’s trembling shoulder. 

Condé sniffled. His watery eyes peeked through his fingers toward the top of the mountain that loomed over them. It was obscured from view by clouds trapped in the cradle of tall, jagged stones. A crown around the summit. The perfect spot for a rift to blossom and slowly spread.

Suddenly, as if a jolt of electricity had run through him, Condé jumped to his feet and started rocking back and forth, his face contorted into what she could only guess was his best attempt at a smile through the hurt. 

“D-don’t worry. Condé can brush off an avalanche. Just surprised, that’s all,” he said. 

Zelda rose to her feet slowly and frowned. She recognized what he was trying to do. How many times had she put on a brave face—all that twirling? But his pain was bright, a sun glare off the snow. Too blinding to look beyond, too blatant to ignore.    

Tri hovered close to inspect Condé’s face. “But you don’t seem like your normal self?” 

As if the question had given him the permission he needed, Condé wilted before them and buried his face back in his hands. “Condé doesn’t feel…like his normal self.” 

“I don’t understand…” Tri looked at Zelda and she shook her head. But before she could tell them not to, her lips stiff from the cold, they pointed the question at Condé. “Condé, why would he do that? You’ve been waiting for him for so long.”

Condé whimpered. She tried to place a comforting hand on his shoulder, but could only reach his elbow now that he stood at his full height. 

They’d heard one side of the story. It was clear Condé looked up to his big brother, but younger siblings often did. It was entirely possible there was a different perspective looking down. A harsher one. Condé was sweet, but he was also naïve. Persistent. 

She wouldn't necessarily call herself sweet but long had she been naïve, thanks to the overprotectiveness of her father. And there were a few less tolerant guards than Rhoam, ones who responded coolly to her endless questions and thwarted schemes to uncover the castle’s hidden passages, that sometimes called her an unkind variant of ‘persistent’ when they thought she couldn’t hear. 

The combination of traits apparently had a way of grating on people’s nerves. 

These were the guards that promised to play when she was younger and then volunteered for shifts along the wall and the patrols she was least likely to cross with. Condé’s big brother could have very well said he was going to come back with no intention of doing so. Or, perhaps less cruel-spirited, after he’d tasted the freedom of open air and saw the expanse of Hyrule all around him from his balloon, decided a small house made of ice and the monotonous job of clearing away snow that would never stop falling was no longer for him. But to leave Condé waiting without an explanation? To push him away when he called out…why would he do that?

“Maybe…Condé wasn’t good like Condé was supposed to be,” Condé murmured as snow began to fall around them. Zelda shivered. 

“‘Good’? What do you mean?” Tri asked. 

“On the day he left, Big Brother said, ‘Be good, Condé’. Sometime after that, Dad became one of the stars in the sky, so Condé has been all alone. Condé has been waiting for Big Brother to come home for a long time.” He sniffled and wiped his face with his massive hands. “And lately, Condé has been thinking…what if Big Brother never came back home because Condé wasn’t good?”

She was already cold, the last bit of fire from the latest warming potion she drank only embers in her stomach, but his self-blame spread through her like a killing frost. What if the comfort she had felt fighting alongside Link in the castle rift was one-sided? Was she the one wide-eyed and looking up at their connection like Condé did his brother? He’d been encouraging and supportive, but she was a novelty, like Lueberry said. The first person he’d been able to speak to since a still world claimed his voice. 

And novelties wore off.

Condé continued, “So…Condé has been trying his hardest to be really, really good. Thinking Big Brother would come home then.” 

Her mind whirled. But she’d been playing the part! Both of them—the Tri Rod in one hand and the Sword of Might in another. She’d fought a massive spider and hurdled lakes of molten fire and cleared every rift she came across regardless if there was a goddess with a sanction waiting for her at the end of it. 

The sword was long and heavy along her thigh in the cold. Her eyes shifted down to examine the crystal hilt. Was it too little too late? She’d failed to save him under the castle when he needed her. The cage he helped her escape from had become his own. 

What if instead of not being able to answer, he heard all the times she had called his name and chose to ignore her? What if he’d already gotten free and determined he was better off on his own?

Tri let out a low flute-like sound that stole her back from her thoughts. “I see…What will you do? Will you go after him?”

Zelda glanced up to Condé. A fresh wave of guilt washed over her at his soft, tear-stained face. “Well, Condé saw Big Brother go north of here…but Condé isn’t going to chase after him. Being knocked down once was enough.”

“I’m s-sorry, Condé. I’m sure it was…a mi-misunderstand of some-some kind,” she offered through chattering teeth. Her limbs trembled. The warming potion had completely worn off. 

“Condé doesn’t know what else Condé can do.” He shrugged unfazed by her words and the cold. Again, with a gentleness that shouldn’t be possible, he moved Zelda’s hand away from his elbow and bowed his head. “Sorry, Zelda and Tri. Condé wants to think here by himself for a while.”

He turned and trundled away from them into the snow as the storm intensified. Thick snowflakes pelted her face. She could hear Tri working hard to remain beside her with the wind. They couldn’t linger and Condé had made it clear he didn’t want them to. She summoned an ignizol, sighing at the tiny relief of its warm flame. It hopped northward, melting a path in the deep snow for her to follow up to the summit. 

Maybe his brother hadn’t recognized him. Or, perhaps he wanted Condé to stay back from the rift that swallowed Holy Mount Lanayru’s peak. It didn’t have to be something bad.

It didn’t have to be something bad.

She wrapped her arms around the thought, pulled it tight against her chest, and climbed. 

—

The rift provided refuge from the storm and the wind, but it was still unfathomably cold. The frigid mountain air itself had been stolen away, along with icicles as tall as Condé, snow-blanketed pines, and pools of crystal clear water that burned whenever Zelda had the misfortune of touching it. 

It was so cold, she didn’t even plug her nose as she downed her warming potions. The next one sat ready on her belt for whenever the furnace in her gut started to dim. Recipes for stronger potions filtered through her head as she made her way across fractured glaciers and into the temple ruins. She would eat chili peppers with moblin toenails or hoarder mushrooms if it meant she would stay warmer longer. 

Even the monsters were cold. Ice slugs and chilly keese and octos that spat frozen rocks at her. They were all afraid of fire, though and succumbed quickly to any echo she’d gathered in Eldin.

The only monster fire didn’t seem to work on was the wolf.

The sound of the iron doors slamming shut should have made her jump, but instead, her eyes had instinctively lifted to scan the darkened corners of the room for an outline. His outline. Without a final key in her possession, the move was generally reserved for an imposter fight, and in still worlds of greater significance, like this one, it was usually Link’s imposter. 

Skies, she was pathetic. Persistent. Even Condé had known when to let it go. Link wasn’t going to answer. According to Lueberry, there were no more Might weapons for a dark version of him to wield against her, unless Null intended to have the imposter come at her with its fists. 

But instead of her swordsman’s likeness emerging from the pocket of oil on the stone floor of the stilled Lanayru Temple, she found herself face to face with a beast. A massive wolf. 

It slowly stalked around the edge of the room, glowing red eyes fixed on her through the ripple of flames atop the barrier of ignizols she’d quickly cast. Unbothered by the heat or the light, it was easily twice the size of wolves she’d come across in her travels. It had magic, too, scattering the shadows with every step and the ability to summon grey wolves to its aid out of thin air with an ear-splitting howl. 

The lesser wolves had all lunged for her wildly. The ones that didn’t burn themselves up in the wall of fire fell quickly upon the sword. Feral enough to keep her on her toes, but clumsy. Mindless. It was only after the third round of attacks that she realized the larger wolf never advanced with them. 

It was using the other wolves to study her. To watch how she fought. A test. 

Ordinary wolves weren’t that smart. This was something else. An imposter of a god from the old world, like Lord Jabu-Jabu. 

The fake Lord Jabu-Jabu’s rampage throughout Jabul Waters had been suspiciously unstrategic. Sloppy. Rushing north and then south without any reason, its rage had only served to unite the Zora chiefs. Then it led them right back to the location of the rift causing all the trouble and its last stand could barely be called a fight. It certainly was not what she had expected from the copy of a god. It was as if the real Lord Jabu-Jabu remained connected to the echo and tried to sabotage it. 

Zelda dismissed the ignizols. With a snarl, the wolf started to move toward them. 

“What are you doing?” Tri exclaimed. 

“Trust me,” Zelda said. 

From a distance, she had thought its coat was white like the mountain it had been stolen from, but as it crept closer and closer, she could see the faint shadow of a darker pattern along its pelt in the light. 

I believe the still world likes to steal actual pieces of a person if it can. 

Markings that the rift had tried to take, but couldn’t erase completely.  

“I fight with the hero” she told it.

Its lips peeled back to reveal menacing teeth, sharp enough to tear through the shadows that slithered out of the path of its massive paws. Repelled. A living Might weapon.

“Zelda…” Tri buzzed in caution. 

“I’m going to destroy Null,” she vowed. 

The beast moved like it was going to strike and then jerked back, as if restrained by an invisible leash. A tether. The sword was a bright streak of moonlight between them. She could strike now, while the wolf was compromised. Link’s speed and strength would end the tense standoff faster than a breath. 

It snapped its jaws, wisps of dark matter from the black of its throat curling up around its snout. Still, despite its wicked make, the hold on the tether was stronger. It did not attack her.

She hadn’t been able to make a copy of Lord Jabu-Jabu’s echo when it was all over, but the wolf…

She lowered the sword. Softly, she asked, “You'll come with me... Right?”

Her words did something to the beast. A sudden calm washed over it, sweeping away any trace of ferocity. It lowered its head so she could see the faded diamond upon its thick coat, right between eyes that, somehow, she knew had once been blue. 

Because his eyes were blue. 

When the imposter was gone, its likeness disappearing into an eddy blackness that hissed away from the illuminated blade into nothing, shadow—real shadow, not the phantom blackness that slithered in the rifts—gathered before her. And as she dismissed the sword’s magic and lifted the Tri Rod, a pure echo of the wolf waited for her to claim it. To knight it with gold. 

—

She started running the instant Tri’s magic released her. 

It was so much brighter on the mountain with every trace of the rift’s gloom erased. Even the eternal storm was gone, the sky endless and startlingly blue around her. She might have stopped to search the vastness of Hyrule for all the places they had been if she’d not immediately spotted her target lumbering toward them through the snow.

“Condé!” she shouted, her smile spreading so wide at the sight of him that her cheeks ached.

“Zelda! Tri!” Condé cried, “Where were you?”

Her lungs were screaming by the time she stood in Condé’s tall shadow, the combination of frigid air, her max effort, and a steep incline too much for her already tired body. 

Tri, unfazed by it all, whizzed past her and did a twirl. 

“Show…off,” she gasped and then bent over herself with her hands on her knees. 

Tri answered with a ring of small bells. Laughter. She smiled before ducking her head down to concentrate on her breathing. 

“Condé was worried, not being able to find you anywhere. You left so fast…Whuh?” She watched his feet shift in the snow, probably surveying the summit. “The mountain! It’s clean! It’s clean everywhere!”

“We…did…it!” she said between gulps of air. 

“What?! You two took care of all that dark gunk?” Condé asked. “Then you two cleaned the mountain! Wow! Thank you! That makes Condé happy!”

Nayru’s sanction was still in her hand. A smooth disc of solid sapphire with the sigil of Wisdom carved at its center. A symbol, like the other two stones, of the goddess’s favor—of their faith in her. All three of them had addressed her as priestess, but when Nayru spoke her title, it was as if something finally clicked into place inside her. Wisdom’s daughter receiving Wisdom’s blessing. 

She thrust the sapphire into the air above her, her head still down, and waggled it triumphantly. All she needed was a little victory jingle from Tri. Condé wouldn’t know what it was, but it felt like something she needed to do. 

They hadn’t even told him the best part. 

But as quickly as it started, the celebration stopped. 

Her gaze lifted quickly to find Condé still. 

His face twisted in a frown. “But…” 

“What’s wrong, Condé?” Tri buzzed around to inspect him.

The giant slowly looked between them and then back at where the rift had been, now a crest of sparkling white snow atop the summit. He buried his face in his hands. “You and Zelda are better at being good than Condé is. Much better. Big Brother wouldn’t be so disappointed if Condé was as good as you two.”

Her heart dropped like a stone. “That’s not true at all, Condé. We found a message from your brother in the temple inside the rift.”

Tri buzzed around Condé’s horns and added, “He’s not disappointed in you at all, Condé. Don’t lose spirit over any of this. Your brother said he wanted to take you on adventures with him someday.”

Sunlight kissed the side of Condé’s face as he glanced up from behind his hands. Spring peeking through the dead of winter. 

“W-what do you mean?”

“You can go see it for yourself. He painted all over the temple walls.” Zelda motioned with the Tri Rod to emphasize the size of his brother’s message. “He’s somewhere in Hyrule, probably charting out the trip the two of you will take together as we speak.”

Tri chimed eagerly, “We followed the footprints of the figure you saw, too. It looked like your brother from behind, but when it turned around, it wasn’t him.”

Thankfully, it wasn’t an echo of Condé’s brother,  either. Which meant he’d taken off on his adventure before the rift appeared. 

Condé tilted his head.“So Big Brother is still on his adventure…Condé was only seeing the back of some big monster?”

“A big, ugly monster,” Tri clarified. “It looked nothing like the great painting you did of your brother back home.” 

Zelda beamed up at Tri. They hadn’t covered kindness in their lessons and maybe they wouldn’t need to. 

“Condé feels…better.”

Simply put and yet, the words rang true for her as well. What they’d discovered inside the still world had loosed a weight from all their shoulders. Condé’s brother’s message and the final sanction and the wolf. 

A soft gust of wind wrapped the cloak around her. 

The silence didn’t have to mean something bad.

“But you’ve waited so long for him to come home,” Tri whistled. “Aren’t you sad that he’s not back yet?”

Maybe a lesson was indicated. 

Fortunately, Condé was now a star that couldn’t be dimmed. “Not at all! His adventure isn’t over yet. That means he’ll be back when it is!” 

“But you’re back to waiting again…” 

She was tempted to swat them with the wand.

“Only until he comes home!” Condé countered with a brilliant smile. “And he will! So Condé can wait forever!”

She wasn’t going to wait, but she would look for Link for as long as it took. And her thoughts would not darken again. Not with his cloak on her shoulders and his sword at her side and the blessing of all three goddesses. The Prime Energy was hers to secure. It and Link, Nayru had said, were somewhere in an ancient forest guarded by a sacred tree. She’d never come across such a place in any of the library texts, but the fact a path was secret had never deterred her from looking before. 

The forest. A tree. Link. 

Good thing she was an expert at finding hidden things. 

—

The scones were still warm. 

Zelda could see steam wafting off the flaky crust freckled with gooey chunks of dark chocolate from her bed. They smelled divine, the original recipe refined by the quality of ingredients in the castle pantries. Lueberry had made good use of the kitchens since she’d been gone, it seemed.

Her new favorite dessert, on her favorite plate, in her most favorite room back in the entire castle. It should’ve been enough to get her up and out of bed, if only to ensure Louise didn’t try and steal a bite. 

But the offering was two-fold. Sweets to coax her to eat something, anything, so she might begin to regain her strength, as well as a quiet claim on a debt still owed. One she knew now there was little hope of ever fulfilling. 

Tri, having caught her eye, started to drift down to where she lay, a silly question like ‘how are you feeling’ forming behind that unchanging, golden face. 

Zelda lifted the covers up over her head and turned away.

How could it have all gone so wrong, so fast? One minute she and Tri were waving goodbye to Condé and trying to figure out how they might learn more about the ancient forest, and the next…

She couldn’t face any of it. Not the safety and comfort of her room, not the sweets, not Tri or the entire castle’s concern for her wellbeing after she’d turned up unconscious on the throne room floor. 

Not when had she failed them all. 

Not when Link was as good as dead. 

Chapter Text

“Ah, Zelda! You are awake.” 

Her father, who had been standing at the end of her bed and must have looked up at the exact moment her eyes flew open, quickly moved around to stand beside her.

Bright spots danced like fireworks in her vision as she forced herself upright from her pillow. She’d gotten away with ignoring Tri for however long she’d been in her room, but her father’s presence was not one she could so easily turn from. 

She also didn’t want to drop back into the nightmare she just escaped. 

He reached for her hand and squeezed it. The feel of his touch was near and far at the same time. She blinked and for a flash, his hand was suddenly Condé’s as he spun her round and round in a circle. They were celebrating the return of his good spirits, no, great spirits, as he cheered from atop the mountain. They’d done good work in Lanayru. Not only had they purged the final rift from the goddess’ land, securing the Prime Energy from ancient evil, but they’d also helped restore Condé’s hope. 

Hers, too. For all of about five minutes.

Another flash and the soft flesh of her father’s hand eroded into that all too familiar rift rot. It hissed against her skin as total darkness encircled her, cutting her off from Tri. From the world.

“Long have I awaited this moment.” The voice and the darkness were one. It pulsed from the shadows that crawled up her arms, power searching for a way to burrow deep inside her and—

It was all she could do to keep from screaming. 

But then the darkness was gone. It was just her father’s hand and the distant feel of his touch, even though she could see his fingers curled around her own.  

You are in your room. You are safe, she told herself. 

A breath shuttered out of her. 

“After you collapsed, Tri brought you here to the castle. We’ve been watching over you—waiting for you to wake up,” her father told her gently. Carefully. Like she was a wounded animal he was trying to coax out of a corner. 

She already knew all this. The first few times she’d awoken in her room with only Tri there, Tri attempted to relay as much, including where she was and how they’d gotten there from Holy Mount Lanayru. And like some twisted version of a lullaby, she would bury her face into her pillow and listen until they realized she wasn’t going to answer and sleep claimed her once more. 

Slowly, because every inch of her felt like a bruise, Zelda moved to the edge of her bed and stood. Impa was there as well, a gentle hand pressed against her spine as she steadied herself on wobbling legs. 

Maybe she should have eaten a scone. 

She pulled her hand out of her father’s and nodded for Impa to let her go. 

The Sheikah didn’t listen. 

“But…what has happened?” her father asked. 

Thanks to Tri’s quick thinking, she was still alive. They had teleported her unconscious body to the castle after Null’s microburst of power swallowed her up and then spit her back out into the snow. 

But of course, they wanted to hear it from her. 

A report. The key piece in her undoing. In all of their undoing.

“We cleared all of the rifts and secured all three of the goddesses’ sanctions,” she said numbly. “They…they are represented by three stones I carry, but the blessings are bestowed upon me. I alone can be granted access to the Prime Energy by a sacred tree in an ancient forest. But Null ambushed us on the mountain and…:” 

Her eyes slid to Tri, who nodded back encouragingly. Their accounts of the story matched up to that point, but what Tri didn’t know, what they couldn’t have known, was what had happened inside that anomaly of swirling rift. 

Null created a perfect mold of her in the vortex, but it had also spoken to her—only to her. 

The sound of its voice oozed like oil from the cracks of her memory.

“Priestess of legend,” it crooned as dark matter swarmed and smothered her. The same icy panic that had gripped her when she’d fallen into the black water of the Jabul Waters rift took hold of her and squeezed. 

She’d thrashed and screamed for help then, but she knew there was no surface to break through here. No air to find. She’d been swallowed. Stolen away. There was no beginning or end to nothingness. 

She couldn’t breath, couldn’t speak. Was she petrified? Drained of life and frozen with a scream on her lips? 

No, she could still feel her heart thundering in her chest, her limbs pushing through the heavy, swirling eddy surrounding her. Somehow, she’d been spared that terrible fate, though drowning in darkness didn’t seem any better. 

“I want to thank you,” Null mused. A spider watching a fly squirm in its web.“It is because of you that the world will return to the precious void. Because of you my darkness will once again be free to consume all life.”

Let-go-of-me! She pictured each word like a fist and thrust them outside of herself, trying desperately to break free. 

Null’s laughter bubbled in her ear. “Such resistance. Just like your beloved swordsman.”

Link! Her heart lurched.

“‘Link!’” An echo of her voice bounced back off walls that didn’t exist. She remembered Tri had done the same thing with the Zora chiefs. 

“‘Answer me!’” It continued in a perfect mockery of her, “‘Talk to me! I’m here!’” 

It was like she was speaking into a black mirror. Only, she hadn’t thought those words just then. They’d been spoken by her, yes, but a while ago. The fight with the last Link imposter. 

This was a different kind of echo. A copy. 

Was it trying to intimidate her? Using her voice from a fight it lost to try and scare her? 

Nice trick. So you heard that? She hurled the words at the darkness. Tell me, did you catch this one, too? Why don’t you be quiet, but with ANGER!

Her voice answered back, “‘Tri and their friends mended the rift, but before we left, one of the goddesses spoke to me. Farore. She said courage will be my salvation and gave me her sanction. I think we’ll need one from each of the goddesses to access the Prime Energy when the time comes.’”

Ice filled her veins. She recognized this. Her first report before Eldin. The clever solution to temper her loneliness that included the vital information she’d learned about how to secure the Prime Energy. 

“‘I stand before the final rift. One sanction remains. It…it would be a really good time, I think, for you to…to…’” Her voice dissolved into another ring of thick, syrupy laughter. 

If she were able to breathe, every wisp of air would have been knocked from her lungs. 

How could she have been so stupid? Link hadn’t been the only one listening to the reports through the sword. Of course he wasn’t. Null was probably the reason why he couldn’t answer. 

“You told me everything I needed to know about the Prime Energy with those precious reports. Your swordsman slammed his fists against my cage for a time, trying to signal you to stop, but you just kept going and going. All I had to do was listen and wait.” 

Her memory went black after that. The next thing she remembered was waking up in her bed. Tri’s lullaby filled in the rest. There was a perfect version of her slowly descending the snow-capped mountains. Null was going to wear her face to steal the Prime Energy right out from underneath them and use it to return the world to darkness. 

And it was all her fault. 

Her eyes burned as she glanced between her father and Impa still waiting for her to finish the report. She opened and closed her mouth, unable to summon the whole truth to her tongue.

Eventually, Impa patted her back and placed a scone in her hands. 

It was surprisingly easy to cover shame with shock. 

Impa identified the forest northwest of the castle as Null’s target. There was a large, beautiful tree rumored to be in the center. Add it to the list of things she was the last to know about in her kingdom. 

Though she’d proven they were right to keep any manner of secret from her. 

Tri blamed themself for not realizing Null's plan sooner. No one suspected there was anything more to it. Why would they? Even though she’d surprised Hyrule with how capable she was of fighting monsters (with Link’s weapons) and wielding magic to clear the rifts (Tri’s, not her own), she’d always been clever. No one would think the princess who regularly outsmarted the castle guard and often spent her afternoons pouring over texts in the library could be possible of such a tremendous error. 

Wisdom’s daughter didn’t make dumb mistakes. Not like this.

All those miserable words she’d thought gone from her shadow suddenly reappeared behind her. 

Surprised, fugitive, not him, joke, coward, liar.

But they were joined by another. One that stretched taller and more terrible than the rest. One that might kill her if anyone were able to see.

FRAUD. 

Chapter Text

It was determined by her father, Impa, and Tri that their best chance to stop Null was to continue leaning on what the legend said. 

When evil strives for the Prime Energy, a wise priestess and a courageous hero will appear. Together, the priestess and the hero will render this evil asunder. 

It was already half-fulfilled with Zelda and Link’s appearances. That is, if they were still right in assuming she was the priestess. In her mind, there was no question when it came to Link. He was the definition of courageous. Fearless and strong, he’d demonstrated time and time again that he possessed the true spirit of a hero. At this point, all she had going for her was Tri’s allegiance and her ability to channel their magic. 

She’d assumed it had been tied to the Tri Rod at first, something that could change hands with the passing (or theft) of the wand, but then she’d been able to direct it with the stick in the Deku Scrub’s prison cell. It was a small comfort to imagine that the unique nebula of starlight inside her was what helped the magic flow, but that was only part of the description. A wise priestess, the legend said. Maybe her cleverness was once enough to meet the criteria, but it had been stolen away by Null without her even realizing it.

Her price for surviving the still world. If only it had taken her voice. 

Whatever the case, once wise or forever foolish, she was once again all that was available. The last resort. Zelda was to find and join forces with Link. When she did, the legend would turn into prophecy and Hyrule would be saved. 

As they went over the plan, her room filled with a warm, rejuvenated sense of hope that only made her press her lips together more tightly around her mistake. She and Tri had cleared the three large rifts in the goddesses’ lands, as well as a number of smaller ones that peppered the fields, forests, and caves all along the way. There had been no sign of Link in any of them. He’d been well hidden in the crystal cage somewhere unknown. But now that Null had the knowledge and means of accessing the Prime Energy, it no longer had any use for the connection between them. No longer had a reason to keep Link captive. Was he already floating in some still world, violet-skinned and petrified? Was he even alive?

The thought sent her eyes scanning for the sword. It was propped up against the wall by her wardrobe along with the bow and the Tri Rod (she couldn’t blame whoever removed the weapons from her unconscious body for placing the bombs elsewhere), but its sheath concealed any evidence of blue energy in the blade. Seeing it wouldn't be enough, anyway. Zelda needed to feel the pulse of power under fingers to truly believe he was alright. If their connection through the sword was still intact, it meant Null hadn’t killed him. If he was petrified, she could possibly heal him with Tri’s magic like they’d done the others, but Link needed to be findable for that to work. 

Of course, the fate of the world boiled down to the one thing she’d failed to do over and over again. Why couldn’t he come find her? 

He already did, she reminded herself. It was her turn. Had been, for a while. 

“It pains me to consider you stepping out into danger once again,”  her father said, drawing her attention back to the center of her bedroom. She caught his eyes shifting down from a spot on the wall over her head. She didn’t need to turn around to know what he’d been looking at. The grief twisting his features told her enough. Her mother’s portrait. The overprotectiveness of a worried father. The mistakes of his own loneliness made hers feel a little less unbearable.

Maybe she wasn’t wisdom’s daughter, but she certainly was his. 

She wanted to leap into the safety of his arms and confess everything, but his face quickly hardened with resolve. 

“But now, I understand,” he continued. “You are the priestess of wisdom. As king, I must ask for your help. Please go to the Eternal Forest, find the hero, and put an end to Null’s nefarious plans. Please. Priestess, save Hyrule.” 

One person bound by duty to another. This was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? To be taken seriously? Assumed capable? To be trusted? 

Another mountain of her own making loomed before her. Not fire or ice, but notoriety. The reputation she’d coveted and claimed for herself now demanded a reckoning. Otherwise, the words in her shadow would find the light. 

The most recent addition sat poised and ready to tear her and her mountain down for all to see.

FRAUD. 

Vowing to save Hyrule felt like too much, but she managed a nod. It was enough for them to bid her good luck and leave her alone to prepare. 

She barely had enough time to blink at the still untouched scone in her hands when a knock came at the door.

“C-come in,” she muttered. 

The door creaked open. 

“Permission to step inside?” asked a familiar voice. 

Her eyes snapped up. 

Rhoam. 

His head was bowed so low that the tuff of ruby feathers on top of his shiny helmet flopped to the side. It was standard protocol that rarely extended to her outside of the formality of the throne room, especially with Rhoam. But that was before. Before she became a criminal, and he, along with another guard, hauled her off to the castle dungeons on the order of her father’s imposter. Before soldiers began passing out the posters publicly accusing her of treason and attempted regicide. Certainly before he witnessed her storm into a smoldering Castle Town and exhumed it from shadow. 

Rhoam slowly tilted his gaze up in her lingering silence. One of his hands was propped against the door to keep it open while the other clutched a long silver spear. The weapon of the watch. He was the guard outside her chamber once again. Like nothing happened. 

Anger flashed hot across her skin. Her first instinct was to send him away. Loudly, so the other guards that had undoubtedly been given back their posts lining the hallway could hear. She hadn’t forgotten what they’d done to her—what they allowed to be done to her. It was their job to protect her, to know when something was amiss! It wasn’t respect that bowed Rhoam’s head now, but shame. 

Whatever he wanted to say to her, she wasn’t interested.

Her fingers curled around the scone in her hands. Was it too unbecoming of a queen if she hurled it at him, even if it was justified? Did a priestess of legend need to consider manners or etiquette?

The pastry didn’t feel substantial enough a means of proving her point. Maybe an echo of her bed or a twirling peahat would be more clear. She looked back at the wardrobe for the Tri Rod, but her eyes once again landed on the sword. 

Would Link be angry with her like this? Null said he’d slammed his fists against the cage to try to get her to stop, not unlike how she’d struggled all the way to the dungeons. The foolishness of her reports could easily be compared to the mistakes made by the guards. If she and Link got face-to-face again, she hoped he would at least give her a chance to explain herself. What would she even begin to say? Admit she’d been afraid to a fearless hero? Apologize for feeling lonely to someone who’d endured being alone in the still world for weeks? Was there anything she could say that wouldn’t damn her further? 

Zelda returned her attention to Rhoam still waiting in the doorway. She nodded stiffly.

He quickly stepped inside and let the door close behind him. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but did I hear you’re going to the Eternal Forest?”

“Do you think he knows anything about it that might be helpful?” Tri asked from beside her. 

“No,” she responded in a flat tone. 

Rhoam got a confused look. He’d been one of the guards who escaped the rift that spread through Castle Town, so Tri’s question had gone unheard. “But the king just said…”

“Sure it was the real king this time? Not a phony?”

The color drained from Rhoam’s face. “Princess…”

Tri chimed in her ear. “Of course it was the real king, Zelda. We healed–”

“Not now,” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth and then narrowed her eyes on Rhoam. “How could you?” 

“I-I was following orders,” Rhoam stammered. “We had no idea the king wasn’t himself.”

“So if my father walked back in right now and ordered you to run me through with that spear, would you?” she quipped. 

Rhoam glanced over his shoulder at the door. “The imposter didn’t say anything about an execution until after you were in the dungeons. We would have never gone through with—”

“None of you tried to help me escape.” Her rage flared. “You imprisoned Impa. You…you passed out those humiliating wanted posters.”

“Uh, yes, well, that was my idea,” he admitted,  the tiniest hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth.

Zelda bristled. “ You did that.”

The almost-smile disappeared.

“I thought if we exaggerated your features, less people would recognize you. It…it was strategic.” He made a pleading gesture with his free hand.

She paused. She hadn’t considered that the wanted posters were intentionally bad. She’d been too focused on how they had presented her. If what Rhoam was saying was true though, it was a smart move. Clever. A way to undermine questionable orders without raising suspicions. 

Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen much of a patrol out in Hyrule accompanying those wanted posters. It was like they handed them out and then made themselves purposely sparse. Even if someone did recognize her, they would have to work to find a guard and who had time to do that?

Still, she wasn’t ready to forgive him just yet. “You said you exaggerated my features. Are you saying I have a big nose to begin with?” When he started to shrink back from her, she advanced and held up the scone like a rock. “Don’t lie!”

“It’s…strong.”

Zelda looked at Tri. 

“Don’t ask me, I don’t have a nose,” they bounced up and down in a full-bodied shrug.

Rhoam pressed on, speaking rapidly. “Everything happened so fast. You’d been missing a week. Wright increased the security around the castle and we were all rotating shifts in the search parties. None of us had slept, we were starting to consider the worst, but then you just showed up. Marched right through the front gates with the patrol like you’d never been gone. Naturally, your father wanted to see you immediately, so we didn’t even get to debrief on how you managed to escape, just that you were found on the cliffs of Lake Hylia without a scratch on you. The whole thing was a big mystery.”

Zelda lowered the scone. How she managed to escape, not who rescued her. “You…you thought I escaped? On my own?”

“Of course I did. We all did. Isn’t that what happened?” When she couldn't bring herself to respond, rendered silent by her surprise over their faith in her, he continued, “We were just glad you were alright. But then the king was hollering for help and we went in and there was a rift right there in the throne room. I’ve never seen a rift up close, they mostly keep me here in the castle. With you. The king and the general and the minister were all barking orders and pointing their fingers at you. I didn’t know what to believe. It was chaos.”

Zelda could feel the whiplash of things going from bad to better to worse and knew how dizzying and disorientating it was. The pattern had defined her journey. 

“He was scared,” Tri said. 

Zelda frowned.

“Didn't you tell me that when people are scared, they can say or do things they don’t mean?” Tri offered thoughtfully. 

Rhoam, still unbeknownst to the exchange, took a knee. “I made a mistake, Princess. I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive me.”

A mistake. 

All this time, she’d accused the guards of not really knowing her when she was the one who really didn’t know any of them. Of course they would assume she escaped on her own, she’d begun evading their patrols from the moment she could walk. Of course they would follow the orders of the king and their general because that was where guidance and truth normally came from. They’d known something was amiss and undermined the hunt for her to keep the chaos from spreading and dismantling her entire kingdom. To buy her time so she could come back and save it. Rhoam had made a mistake when he dragged her to the dungeons, but then he tried to correct it. And if he could try to overcome his mistake, if he could ask for forgiveness, maybe so could she. 

Unable to restrain herself, Zelda lunged forward and hugged him. Through his armor, she felt his body go rigid but just for a breath. There was a clatter as the spear fell to the floor and then his arms encircled her in a tight embrace.

When they finally pulled away, both their eyes were shining. Mercifully, Tri remained quiet even though she’d felt them watching intently the entire time. Maybe they were finally learning there was an important timing to some questions. 

Rhoam retrieved the spear from the floor before standing to his full height. “I should leave you to get ready, then.” He took a step toward the door and then looked over his shoulder, dutifully ignoring the fact she’d hastily risen and wiped her nose on her sleeve when his back was turned. “I know you’ll find him. The hero everyone is talking about? If anyone can, it’s you.”

Zelda sniffled and straightened her shoulders. For the first time, she actually let herself trust the words. Why shouldn’t she? They’d come from someone who really knew her. Perhaps better than she knew herself.

“Guard my door?” she asked. 

“Always.” He smiled and then he was gone. 

As soon as the door clicked shut, Zelda stuffed what remained of the scone into her mouth, and crossed the length of the room to her weapons. Step one in overcoming her mistake would be assessing the full scope of the damage it had caused.

She drew in a breath, pulled the Sword of Might from its sheath and inspected it.

A flash of blue magic shot down the sharpened edge of the blade like a falling star. Under her fingers, the magic pulsed strong and eager, as if it had been waiting for the reunion of her touch. 

Zelda released a sigh and tilted her head back, pressing the hilt tight to her chest.

Alive. 

Link was alive. It took every ounce of willpower not to ignite the blade and let him know she was coming. She didn’t need to go reminding Null of their connection. Maybe it had simply forgotten to deal with him now that the Prime Energy was within its grasp. Hunger had a way of tunneling one’s focus. 

Like loneliness. Like fear. 

She stood there for a moment, imagining every thrum of magic was his heartbeat against hers. A silent report she was sure couldn’t reach him, but what she needed to reinforce she wasn’t alone. Not completely.

“Zelda?” 

She turned to find Tri hovering by her bed. She finished chewing the scone and swallowed, her head already feeling a bit clearer. 

"Do you have question?"

Tri tilted. "Not yet."

“Want to learn another word you shouldn’t repeat unless you're feeling good and confident?” she said, grinning.

Tri's inner light gleamed bright.

“Let’s go kick some ass.”

Chapter Text

Zelda knew they would have a better chance of kicking Null’s ass if she had everything in order before stepping foot in the Eternal Forest. 

An array of the gear and accessories she’d collected were laid out across the floor of her room. Ruby-red desert sandals, a golden neck scarf that could stop the wind in its tracks, a bottle of fairy-luring cologne, several pieces of enchanted jewelry, a sturdy leather bracer and climbing belt—the decision of what to bring would be easier if she had an idea of what to expect. The dueling mountains and other regions had given her clues to the weather and potential challenges that might await her, but the dense woods to the north possessed an air of strange magic. Arcane. Like the dark trees and swirling silver mist could contain anything from an endless maze, to pits of quicksand, to bottomless black lakes. With her luck, likely all three. 

The image of her defeating capital “E” evil wearing the cat ears she received in Kakariko was tempting, but only the ring that made her jump higher and a charm that enabled her to hold her breath underwater longer found a home in her pocket. They were the most reliable accessories in the still worlds. She couldn’t imagine the showdown with Null happening on the surface. Whatever awaited her in the Eternal Forest, a rift would be rotting in the center. 

She mixed a couple of consistently helpful potions and packed up the rest of her inventory for the Business Scrub. There was always the chance a random ingredient dropped on the scrub’s desk might inspire a new recipe. It would be nice if there was a potion that could invigorate strength or rehydrate like the smoothies made with golden eggs or floral nectar. They usually carried remarkably well, but she wanted to minimize the risk of anything spoiling before she found Link. 

Link. 

She readjusted his cloak on her shoulders and shifted her attention to the weapons. There wasn’t much preparation that could be done for the Tri Rod, other than to familiarize herself with the extended durability. Tri now boasted six triangles of magic, which meant she could summon an impressive army of ignizols or build an entire bridge of stacked beds. It also granted her a tiny bit of wiggle room within the magic when commanding authority over more formidable monster echoes like the wolf. It took five triangles to summon it. Even with its ability to summon lesser wolves to its side, having the extra triangle at her disposal would be an essential advantage if the fight against Null required both combative and non-combative echoes. Or if it included multiple enemies. She hadn’t forgotten how it had attacked her with several dark Links during the fight with the bow.

What could really stand to be enhanced were the Might weapons. She eyed the bombs, returned to her by a very nervous-looking guard from the barracks, then the bow and arrows, and finally, the sword. It had once felt so foreign and frightening in her hands that she needed to give herself over completely to Link’s skill in order to direct the blade. Lately, it felt more like an extension of her arm when she swung it, the motion of each strike and parry no longer borrowed, but memorized by her own muscles. If she had the time, she would be curious to test herself against Rhoam with a training sword, but her imposter was getting closer and closer to the Prime Energy with every second that ticked by.

It was time to go to Lueberry’s. 

—

A cold rain pelted Zelda from the dark, swollen clouds overhead. She’d been lingering outside Lueberry’s house for the better part of a half an hour, trying to gather up the nerve to knock. 

In hindsight, she wished she had been a little kinder to Rhoam now that she was on the other side on an apology. How long had he stood outside her door before he felt brave enough to come inside? She’d wanted to hurl a scone at his head before he even opened his mouth. Lueberry had no way of knowing about the damage done by her reports, but they still hadn’t spoken since the throne room. His voice had been filled with so much anguish over Link’s capture. Would he turn her away? Would he even open the door? 

“Are we going to go inside?” Tri asked. 

“Eventually,” she replied. 

Rain drummed hard against the roof. “What are you waiting for?”

Lightening to strike. A flash flood. She sighed. “Courage?”

“Why? Lueberry isn’t a monster.”

No, but the debt she owed him sure felt like one. That final, humble request the last time she was here bounced around in her skull. 

If it’s not too much trouble, bring my boy home, yes?

And to think, she’d actually been enticed by the concept of debts at the beginning of all this. She never wanted to owe anyone ever again. 

“Do you want to twirl?” 

Zelda pressed her lips together and peered at Tri from under Link’s hood. Their light was unwavering despite the sheets of rain pouring down around them. Of course they thought her feelings could be fixed with a spin. To them, this was just a visit. Tri still didn’t know the whole truth. Still believed they were the one to blame for Null’s deception. 

If anyone deserved an apology, it was them. 

“Tri, there is something I need to tell you,” Zelda began, but then the door to the house swung open and her words crawled back down her throat.

Lueberry, still in his blacksmith’s robe despite the late hour, peered at the two of them over the top of his glasses. “Oh, good. I was hearing voices. For a moment, I thought I might be losing my mind.” 

“I’m sorry!” she blurted before she could stop herself and then made it even worse by clapping her hand over her mouth. 

The firelight from inside the house caught Lueberry’s glasses just right. The gleam hid his eyes from view, making him look like an actual monster, and she had half a mind to turn and run back into the storm. He probably had plenty of scones to toss at her. 

Lueberry stepped back and waved one of his wrinkly hands. “Well, hurry up and come in, my dear. Before you catch a cold.” 

The use of the endearment instantly loosened a knot on her shoulders. No scones. Not yet. She obliged silently and set to work pulling off her boots to minimize the mess once she stepped inside. 

“Drop those right by the fire. There should be a hook to hang the cloak, too.” Lueberry instructed before closing the door. “It’s really pissing out there.”

Zelda paused and peered up at him.

Lueberry made a face. “Oh, forgive me, Princess. Impa said I need to mind my tongue around you, I’m just used to—”

“‘Pissing?’” Tri injected. 

She snorted and shucked off one of her soggy socks.“I’m not the one everyone should be worried about.”

Tri hovered toward Lueberry expectantly and gave their signature, curious tilt. Good. The explanation would buy her some time to figure out how to start the conversation about Link. 

“It’s an expression for heavy rain that you shouldn’t repeat,” Lueberry said, adjusting his glasses. “Always good to see your light, Tri. I would offer you some tea, but I remember you don’t have a mouth.”

“Would you say you are delighted to see me?” Tri countered. 

There was a beat of shared disbelief as she and Lueberry exchanged looks. 

“Was…was that a joke?” asked Lueberry.

Zelda pulled off her remaining sock. “Words they shouldn’t repeat. Jokes. Tri has learned a lot of important things during our time together.” 

“You are supposed to say ‘ha-ha-ha’,” Tri insisted. 

The Sheikah let out a peal of rusty laughter. “Well, well, isn’t that illuminating.”

“Oh, please don’t encourage them,” she groaned, but a smile tugged at her lips. 

The two proceeded to exchange light-related puns for the next five minutes. 

By the time the Sheikah, face blotchy and red from laughter, finally turned his attention back to her, most of the tension had drained from her body. It was easier to meet his eye when they were both smiling. 

Tri drifted over to her shoulder.  Their face twinkled in the firelight. Almost like a wink. 

Had Tri done it all on purpose?

“I presume you are here to upgrade the Might weapons before heading to the forest?” Lueberry asked.

Zelda nodded and carefully arranged the sword, the bow and arrows, and the bombs on the table beside the forge in the corner. 

“I see you have the bombs now.” Lueberry hobbled forward to stand beside her. She retrieved a leather pouch filled with the Might crystals she’d collected from her belt and set it down. 

“Link gave them to me in Eldin. I used them to fight a dragon that swam through the lava.” She crossed her arms over her chest. Even the memory of that battle felt warm. “They are plenty powerful, but I have to say, I prefer the sword.”

Lueberry chuckled and reached for the blade. “Any special requests for this enhancement?”

Zelda frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Would you like me to adjust the grip for you like last time?” 

Last time? She’d noticed the hilt had changed after the previous enhancement, but she hadn’t considered it had been for her specifically. 

Instinctively, she flexed her fingers, considering the memory of how it felt in her hand. Lueberry pulled the sword from the sheath. “I could extend the guard to offer you a little more protection?” He tapped the knobby ball of solid crystal on the end with his nail. “Do you ever strike with the pommel?”

She hadn’t, but the idea immediately intrigued her. If the pommel had more of a point to it, and with the right amount of force, it could easily cause as much damage in close quarters as the blade. Fighting from a distance with the echoes was mostly about energy conservation now. Everything went faster when she used the sword. 

Lueberry turned it over, probably inspecting for any damage, and her eyes caught Link’s name etched on the hilt. 

It wasn’t hers. 

She shook her head quickly. “I think you should do whatever Link would want done. I’m going to give it all back when I find him.”

Lueberry looked at her over his glasses. “Oh?”

“Yes. I…I’m the priestess. I have the Tri Rod.”

“There have been priestesses of Hyrule who have wielded both magic and weapons such as this.” He raised the sword and then used it to point at the bow. “And this. The bombs…not so much. But then again, it sounds like you’ve fared quite well between these and your fish.”

What did he mean ‘priestesses’ of Hyrule? There had been others? Why hadn’t she heard of them? What was he even trying to prove? Did he want Link to be weaponless? Was there a secret Might weapon she didn’t know about? The memory of Link beating Null’s back with a stick flashed in her mind. Did a true hero even require a weapon? 

“We…we are meant to fight Null together. Hero and the priestess. You heard my father,” she pressed. 

“What happens if you are unable to find him in time?”

Her stomach dropped. It was a fair question. It wasn’t like Null would wait to take the Prime Energy until after she and Link were reunited. There was a very real chance she might run out of time. 

Her eyes slid to the sword. If she found herself standing alone before Null, would it make a difference if she even tried? 

Maybe having the weapons of the hero and the priestess would be enough to satisfy the legend. It was a stretch, but she had to try. Her debts didn’t begin and end with Lueberry. She’d been helped so much and by so many people. A tally began running up in her head: Impa’s sacrifice in the dungeons, Lueberry’s hospitality and continued aid, the Gerudo and Zora’s early allegiance when she had nothing to her name but rumors, Rhoam and the other soldier’s clever defiance, General Wright’s conviction, Minister Lefte’s prayer, Dartson’s companionship, the moment of joy on the mountain when Condé reminded her hope lost could always be renewed. 

She would save Hyrule for all of them or die trying. 

“Then I will face Null on my own,” she replied.

Lueberry sighed and shook his head. “So alike, you and him.”

“You mean Link?” 

He nodded and turned toward the forge. “Would you like some tea while you wait?” 

“But I’m not like Link, Lueberry,” she said quickly. Urgently. “You said that before, but I’ve made mistakes Link would have never made. I’ve put all of Hyrule in danger and…I…I’m…” Her voice broke apart and wouldn’t pull back together no matter how many times she swallowed, or how intensely she glared at a particularly deep vein in one of the floorboards at her feet. 

A hand found her shoulder as a river of hot tears slid down her cheeks. “Too young, the both of you, to be given such a burden to bear.”

She hastily wiped her face with the back of her hand. “You don’t think I can do it.”

“No. I believe you are the only one who can. I just wish you didn’t have to,” he said with a sigh. He gave her shoulder another light squeeze. “Forgive me, Impa understands it all better than I do.”

She wanted to ask him what exactly did he need forgiveness for, but her brain tunneled in on the abrupt mention of her nursemaid. “Impa?” 

“She says children of destiny cannot be protected from it, no matter how hard we try.” 

Back in the throne room, both Sheikah had reacted to the news of the Prime Energy before its significance was explained. Her father had looked at both of them while Rhoam listed off the regions affected by the large rifts. They knew. 

Her thoughts fumbled over one another, trying to make sense of it all. Null. The goddesses. Secret legends. The Sheikah. A power beyond comprehension. Suddenly, it all felt bigger than her lifetime. Then ten of her lifetimes. 

Lueberry released her shoulder and held the sword up between them. It gleamed with moonlight, Link’s pulse thrumming visibly off the blade. The sight of it made her own race. 

“It’s dangerous to go alone,” he said firmly. A warning. “So, I will upgrade this with a design I believe will be to both of your liking. For whoever ends up using it in the end, it’s the least I can do.” 

Chapter Text

Turns out, the Eternal Forest was exactly what it claimed to be. 

Although its borders were clearly defined on her map, Zelda quickly got the feeling she wouldn’t be able to find the exit again unless the woods themselves wanted her to. There within, she found no quicksand, no dark lakes, or no hidden mountains to climb. The trees only concealed more trees. Endless trees. 

There were plenty of things one might expect to find in an enchanted forest: electric blue butterflies, tendrils of mist that curled around tree trunks like fingers, tiny yellow birds that hummed in low, rhythmic voices as they hopped from branch to branch. She was even required to solve a strange puzzle of lonely stone pedestals and glowing orbs in order to reveal the path to the guardian waiting in the forest’s heart. Which turned out to be another tree. A talking one. 

The Deku Tree, it called itself, stood nearly as tall as one of the castle gatehouses. It possessed a tired-looking face made of knotted bark that was shaded by the canopy of lush green foliage and skittering wild things held up by its massive branches. Upon Zelda’s approach, it claimed it had already been visited by her likeness not that long ago and granted her access to the chamber of the Prime Energy. It had known to expect her, but hadn’t thought to verify anything beyond her appearance.

A mistake. Just as detrimental as the one she’d made and yet, it had chuckled at the idea of being fooled. 

Maybe all she needed to absolve herself was a deep pair of roots. 

“The Deku Tree didn’t seem all that worried,” Tri mused. They drifted idly alongside Zelda as she slowly descended into the earth on a floating stone platform. 

Or remorseful, Zelda thought. 

“Well, you heard what it said,”—she clicked her tongue and tilted her chin up to watch the sunlight shrinking into a pinprick above her head—“Null can’t deceive the Prime Energy. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this ‘power beyond comprehension’ will obliterate Null for even trying.”

“‘Enter, and bear witness to divine judgement’,” Tri said, perfectly mimicking the Deku Tree’s booming voice. Those words had triggered the platform to shiver to life and begin descending. She slid her eyes away from the ceiling and observed the familiar shape of the stone under her feet. Tri’s internal light acted like a torch, illuminating the three sharp corners. 

Tri must have followed her gaze. “Hey, isn’t this part of your family’s crest?”

“Yes,” she said grimly. This wasn’t the first time she’d noticed it since they entered the woods, either. The monument that had tracked her progress with the pedestal puzzle also bore the cluster of triangles. 

Just how connected to the Prime Energy was she? Her family was apparently responsible for passing down legends, but perhaps their role had once been more involved? It didn’t feel like a coincidence that the loftwing in the Royal Crest was depicted to be eternally flying toward the symbol. It didn’t feel like a coincidence it was stitched into every flag raised in her family’s name, or the ancestral vestments she now donned like armor. It felt like destiny. 

A dimly lit alcove drifted out of the darkness beneath her. Zelda clutched the Tri Rod in one hand and the Sword of Might in the other as the platform slipped into a recess in the floor. Her heart thumped against her chest, keeping time with the quickening magic between her fingers. Link’s pulse was racing her own.  

I’m coming, she assured him. Just hang on a little longer. 

A narrow stairway led down to a room that resembled the one she’d last seen him in. Another dank, long forgotten holy space shrouded with cobwebs and dust. The only evidence this one had recently been disturbed was the door carelessly left open on the far side of the room. Tri floated forward cautiously to inspect it. Above the door frame, etched deep into the granite, was the symbol from the monument and the platform and her crest. 

The chamber of the Prime Energy.

Almost as if on cue, the previously dark doorway erupted with light. There was a tremendous whooshing , the song of some great storm awoken, and the ruins around her trembled. Somewhere beyond the threshold, Null must’ve been trying to access the Prime Energy. 

Panic reared up inside her. Hadn’t the Deku Tree assured it couldn’t be deceived? Could it have been wrong? Or was it the light of some great battle begun without her. Had Link somehow managed to escape and emerged to confront Null? 

A vortex of debris and sorcery greeted her on the other side. She sheathed the sword and threw up her free hand to guard her eyes. Still burning embers bled into the windstorm from the audience of lit torches that lined a long aisle. In the back of the chamber, where the power seemed to be most condensed, Zelda could just make out her imposter’s outline. 

Link’s cloak whipped around her, but there was no sign of him or the crystal cage anywhere as she quickly glanced about.

The storm began to melt away. In the center of the blossoming calm, a gilded artifact gently floated in a ray of molten starlight. Her imposter’s arms were outstretched, fingers reaching to receive the unveiled source of the tempest. Three glistening triangles, one for each of the sanctions the goddesses had bestowed upon her. Courage. Power. Wisdom. 

Alone. She would have to do this alone. 

Each of the goddesses had claimed their individual virtue would be her salvation. But which would she need to stop Null? Did she rush forward without hesitation? Try to overpower it with magic and steel? Outsmart it? Was there enough time to do anything? The Prime Energy was right there and Null–

Suddenly, she could see it. There but not. A reflective line, like a rope made of mirror, was drawn between her and her imposter. Just as Link had described. 

When I saw the dark echo start to go after you, I pulled back on the tether.

Without hesitation, she wrapped her free arm tight around the tether, gritted her teeth, and yanked as hard as she could. Her imposter stumbled away from the artifact, surprise momentarily flashing across that too-perfect face. 

“We’re going to kick your ass, Null!” Tri hollered. 

Zelda couldn’t contain her smile despite the seriousness of the situation. Really, Tri was the one she owed most of all. In that moment, she realized her debt to the little star-being was astronomical. Breaking her out of the prison cell, lending her their magic, following her across Hyrule when she had nothing to her name but terrible rumors. All this time, she’d been so worried about having to fight alone, but Tri was with her. Beside her. Always beside her. 

Just as persistent as she was.

She was about to congratulate them on the excellent use of a curse word when her shoulder exploded with pain. A violent tug on the tether still wrapped around her arm dragged her forward and onto her knees. She felt the impact against the stones in her teeth, her vision momentarily speckled with white spots. 

“So, this is the Prime Energy left behind by the three goddesses.” The words echoed across the chamber as the imposter dropped the slack of the tether from its perfect, pale fingers. 

Zelda’s heart sank. Another connection manipulated and used against her. 

“Long, long ago, before time ever was, Null drifted in the void of nothingness. This was a pleasant place for Null. The void needed only Null. All was well and in its right order…” Her imposter tilted its head up toward the artifact. “Until the goddesses came and created the world, stealing away Null’s peaceful void.”

Zelda staggered back to her feet, her pants torn and bloodied at the knees. Gold streaked around her head, Tri a frenzy of worried energy. The sound of their bells drew the imposter’s attention back over its shoulder and those vacant, black eyes flashed with disgust. “Null relentlessly tore at the fabric of the world, but the goddesses’ servants always repaired it…until now. Now Null can return things to how they were meant to be—back to nothingness.”

Her fingers twitched toward the hilt of the sword, but the horrible smile that twisted the imposter’s face —her face—rendered her still. There was too much triumph there. It knew she wouldn’t reach it in time. Not with the sword or Tri’s magic. 

Zelda’s blood turned to ice. She’d failed. She’d failed them all. 

Heroes are supposed to show up when they are needed, her thoughts screamed, eyes once again scanning the darkened corners of the chamber. She willed Link to appear like he had in the castle’s underbelly. A flash of green, eyes like a storm. The moment is now, Link! Please! 

“It’s time—time to return all to the void. Back to the state in which Null prospers!” Her imposter reached up for the Prime Energy, and even though she knew it was futile, Zelda let out a cry and lunged.

—

“I can’t believe it broke,” Tri whispered. 

Zelda pressed her fingers to the spot where the piece of the Prime Energy had disappeared into her chest. Nayru. She could still feel the kiss of snow deep in her bones. Another piece had gone to the imposter. By the brief flash of crimson, Zelda guessed it had been Din’s. Power. The last opened a portal into a still world and vanished inside. 

She still didn’t quite understand why or how it had happened, but the imposter was furious. As soon as it touched the Prime Energy, the artifact recoiled into the air above their heads and began to shudder. Light and shadow hemorrhaged out of the center of the triangles, as if it were unsure which the world should be bathed in, and then, with a flash of light and a resounding CRACK , the three triangles split apart. 

In the tirade that followed, her imposter mentioned something about not being deemed worthy. Divine judgement. But it was the last thing the imposter said before disappearing through the void that caught Zelda’s attention. 

One went to you. And the last one…could it have gone to him?

Him. 

Link. It had to be. Her imposter was going after him. She knew it in her marrow. 

The portal was like a tear in the very fabric of reality. There was no need for Tri to create an entrance. Zelda only needed to hurdle through the fissure to get to the other side. At first glance, the still world was just like the others. Fragments of her kingdom floated in the vast nothingness around her, but as she lept and climbed and dashed about the broken pieces, she began to recognize the unique thumbprints of different regions. A castle staircase climbing sideways, a desert sand dune slowly trickling into blackness like a frameless hourglass, a molten river that flowed vertically toward groves of Faron jungle trees. It was a collection of stolen places. A galaxy showcasing Null’s indiscriminate appetite. 

She was wandering through Null’s prison. 

And where all the broken sections of her world fused together to form a floating island, it was also Link’s.

A crude patchwork Hyrule stretched out under her feet. Dark matter shimmered along the seams, cementing a copy of Castle Town’s main street to a sliver of the Jabul Waters sandy marsh lands. A violet-tinted snowbank from Holy Mount Lanayru was nestled beside a swampy plot of the wetlands. Various ruins she recognized from the expanse between the stables and Kakariko Village filled in the gaps about the island. And on the other side of it all, suspended in the crystal cage, was Link. 

He wasn’t looking at her. Well, technically he was, but it was the other her. The imposter. He glared down at it while a glowing triangle of light faded into his chest. 

“So you were the hero after all,” she heard her dark echo muse. 

Link lurched forward and challenged the wall of the cage with both fists. Brazen. Furious. For a moment, she thought the surface might save her the trouble and split.

“Hey it’s him! It’s Link! We finally found him!” Tri announced eagerly. 

Zelda nodded and, without thinking, dropped her hand to rest on the pommel of the sword. Link froze mid-strike and immediately locked eyes with her.

There was no magical barrier to fend off the electricity that hummed across her skin as he took her in. She shivered and did the same. He was disheveled and a little more gaunt than she remembered, but alive. Alive! And, as far as she could tell from a distance, unscathed. 

But her first step toward him faltered when she registered the intensity in his stare. There was a question underneath it that she couldn’t figure out. Did he know the imposter had been a fake? She hadn’t risked another report after Null attacked her on the mountain. Was all that rage pointed at the real her? For what her reports had done? For failing to rescue him sooner?

“Hmph. Well, here you are.” 

Zelda snapped her attention to the imposter. It was already stalking toward her across the island, that triumphant grin tugging at its lips. 

“I didn’t have time to deal with you earlier. But I suppose I’ll make the time now. All of the Prime Energy has gathered here.” It gestured between the three of them. “And the great Null will consume it.”

Had she made another mistake coming here? Should she have run in the other direction when the Prime Energy split? 

A pounding registered in her ears. At first, she thought it was her pulse, but a quick glance back up at the cage confirmed it was Link hammering away at it with his fists. 

Was he thinking the same thing? Did he want her to flee?

Instinctively, she tightened her grip on the sword. 

“Oh, no need for your special connection. The cage isn’t sound proof. You remember,” the imposter snickered. 

Heat prickled up her neck. It felt like a lifetime ago their roles were reversed, but she remembered it well. She could hear everything around her but no one could hear her. What was worse was the feeling of complete vulnerability. Being able to do nothing but watch as strangers dueled for her life. 

“Poor, helpless Princess,” teased the imposter. “No one is coming to save you this time.” 

The imposter held out the copy of the Tri Rod. A bell shrilled in protest somewhere over her shoulder as shadows burst out of the tip of the wand and took the shape of two glistening black suits of armor. Darknuts. Each of them wielded a double-edged battle axe, their helms befit with giant curved horns that made them look like steel beasts.

Horned beasts…

She narrowed her eyes and crossed the Tri Rod in front of her defensively. Two could play at that game. While the Eternal Forest had been relatively docile, it had contained one monster deep within the maze of trees. An echo the imposter would not have access to when it made the copy of her. She’d stumbled upon hoofprints, as wide as dinner plates, while hunting down the last orb for the puzzle. 

Zelda pointed the real Tri Rod at the Darknuts and summoned the behemoth. The head of a lion with glowing red eyes and the horns of a ram emerged from Tri’s golden light. The body of a stallion followed, each powerful leg stretching out to stomp the earth. The lynel echo easily dwarfed the two Darknuts. It trotted protectively in front of Zelda, muscles rippling as it drew a colossal sword from its side. 

With only one triangle of power left, Zelda let the Tri Rod disappear and pulled the sword. Blue flames engulfed her as she settled into the two-handled grip, her eyes focused on the perfect version of herself now lingering back behind the showdown of echoes. 

“I don’t need to be saved,” she spat. 

“CHARGE!” Tri bellowed, channeling all of General Wright’s conviction. 

The lynel roared and galloped forward, sword raised high. Zelda, tapping into Link’s speed, zigzagged around the collision of echoes to where her imposter stood. It barely raised the fake wand in time to block her first strike, the force of it sending the imposter stumbling back. Zelda pressed her heels into the dirt, shifted her grip, and exploded again.

This time, the imposter disintegrated into an orb to evade the attack. It arched high out of reach before the imposter reappeared, floating in a shroud a black mist. 

“You always end up requiring rescue, one way or another,” it said. 

The way it said that reminded her of the way Ganon and Link spoke about each other. 

So, it’s you again.

You've faced him before?

More or less.

What did it mean she always ended up requiring rescue? She’d fought and plotted her way out of every peril she’d faced since Link was swallowed up by the rift. She’d had help, yes, but that didn’t diminish the fact she was responsible for saving her own life multiple times. Even when she’d wanted to be rescued, she’d ended up doing it herself.

Zelda sheathed the sword and retrieved the bow from her back at the same time she rolled to dodge a battle axe soaring at her skull from her left. There was a sickening crunch of metal and viscera as the lynel buried its sword deep into the attacking Darknut’s shoulder. It lifted the echo off the ground and thrashed the blade, the echo dissolving into nothing but a splatter of rot across the stones. 

Tri rushed to her side and whizzed around her as she kneeled and took aim at the imposter.

“Ah, your loyal little speck. Do they know?”

The arrow hesitated against her cheek.

“Link does, of course. And he despises you for it.”

BAM! BAM! BAM! Link’s fists assaulted the walls of the cage. 

“There he goes again. This was what he did when you started making those precious little reports. When you were practically begging for him to show up and help you clear the rifts from the goddesses’ lands.” Zelda’s stomach dropped. “When Null was listening.”

“Enough!” Zelda let loose a spray of arrows. Lueberry’s latest update made it so a single arrow split into three when it was fired. One connected with the imposter’s shoulder before it shifted into the orb again. Oil streamed out of it as it whirled toward the ground. When it reappeared, it quickly summoned another wave of dark echoes. Lizaflos this time. They dropped and slithered on their bellies toward Zelda, but the lynel cut them off.

“Zelda, what does it mean by ‘Null was listening’?” Tri asked.

The shame hit the barrier of the blue flame magic so hard she flinched. Her bow lowered an inch. “I…I didn’t know…” 

A distorted variant of her laughter sounded from the other side of the echo monster fray. “You didn’t tell anyone, did you? So desperate to play the hero instead of a priestess…”

“No...that’s not…it’s not like that,” she stammered. 

“ All you’ve done is prove you are unworthy of either title!” 

A trio of iridescent crows materialized above her and dove for her face. Razor sharp talons tore into the flesh of the arm she lifted to shield herself. A scream burst past her lips and she blindly swung the bow like a bat to fend them off. One skidded across the ground into the hooves of her lynel, while the other two flew out of reach and squawked at her. 

“Fraud! Fraud!” they seemed to say. 

“Hyrule already has a hero, and he’s not coming to rescue you from a mess of your own making,” her imposter taunted from among them. 

BAM! 

“Fraud!”

BAM! BAM! BAM!

“Fraud! Fraud!”

The blue flames snapped off her skin. Warmth quickly pooled into her palms. Sweat or blood, she couldn’t bring herself to check which. She shrank into herself, exposed to the guilt and the disgrace. The words in her shadow were strewn out in the open, the worst sung loud for all to hear. Her eyes volleyed between multiple targets: the circling crows, Link slamming his shoulder against the wall of the cage, her imposter grinning wickedly, the lynel trying to buck a lizaflos off its back, Tri frozen in mid-air. Staring at her. 

“Tri,” she breathed. 

The imposter chuckled darkly. “Still willing to lend your light to this liar, servant of the goddesses ?”

Zelda’s shoulders sagged, her eyes burning with hot tears. “I’m…”

A shadow crept over her. She couldn't even lift her eyes to meet it. She stared at the top of her imposter’s shoes as it hovered above her, marveling at how flawlessly it had copied the gold buckles. 

“Null will bring your worst fear to life,” it told her. “All you are in the great void is alone. Nothing—”

“Oh, shut up!” snapped Tri. A mixture of a gasp and a laugh pushed past her lips. There was a flash of light and the imposter shrieked. Zelda looked up and caught Tri’s body fading back to their normal brightness. The imposter's eyes were squeezed shut, temporarily too stunned to attack. 

“Zelda, now!” Tri shouted. 

With hesitation, Zelda let the blue magic wash over her, lifted the bow and shot herself. 

Oil hissed out of the imposter, all three arrows finding a home. She felt the ghost of the impact in her own chest and watched the copy of her face melt into bubbling rot. The crows and the remaining lizaflos immediately evaporated and the orb swirled toward the black abyss and disappeared. 

It was over. For the time being. She let the magic go and immediately swayed. Her arms were bleeding where the crows had carved into her and her knees ached from the fall in the chamber of the Prime Energy. Any type of bed would be welcomed at this point, but she couldn’t imagine Null granting her the luxury of rest inside its prison. If she closed her eyes here, darkness would be the only thing she’d know forever. 

BAM! BAM!

Apparently he wouldn’t allow her rest, either. 

“Shit,” Zelda muttered. 

“‘Anger’?” Tri asked, confused. They drifted idly, face unreadable as always. She wanted to ask if they were angry with her, but the sound of Link’s pounding made it hard to pull together the right words. What would she even say? What could she say? Would it even matter to Tri? 

I’m only helping Zelda so that I can get rid of the rifts.

Perhaps the best way she could make it up to them was to keep fighting. 

Her eyes shifted to the boy in the crystal. Her mouth went dry. 

The imposter said he despised her. 

Link tapped the cage irritatedly and she sighed. He couldn’t hate her anymore than she hated herself. 

Zelda approached the crystal slowly. The surface was shiny and smooth. She hadn’t had anything to liken it to before, but now that she’d been to Jabul Waters, it resembled the sea glass some of the Sea Zora used in their jewelry. She had punched and kicked and even tried scraping away at it with the gold on her belt when she was trapped inside. The only thing that had been strong enough to pierce it was the arrow. 

When she glanced up, Link was smirking. 

“Not one of your better plans,” she said, remembering their conversation about her rescue. 

He titled his head as if to say, but it worked. 

Would it be the same case for her mistakes? Would it all be erased if they saved the world?

“Stand back.”

He did what she said and she put some distance between her and the cage so the ricochet wouldn’t catch her. It was still close enough that she didn’t need the magic to feel confident to hit her mark. 

She peppered the front of the cage with Lueberry’s Might arrows and let out a shaky breath when they only fractured the surface. The possibility one of the enhanced arrows might pierce the cage only occurred to her after she released the shot. 

Link inspected the damage, lifted his hands up, and struck. 

BAM! 

A spider web spread out from the weak spot in the wall. He shifted his stance, raised his fists, and struck again. 

BAM!

Rose-colored shards rained down onto the island. Zelda took a step back, her gaze lowered like she was examining the pieces. The pounding continued, solely her pulse now, but her ears picked up the sound of Link’s feet hitting the ground. The steady cadence of his breath.

It was safe to say their bet was off. Would he take back the Might weapons and leave her? It had been his preference to fight on his own at the start of all this. 

“Listen, I know it isn’t ideal, but we should really work together,” she sighed, securing the bow behind her back. “I can’t mess things up anymore than I’ve already—” 

The feel of fingers under her chin silenced the rest of her defense. She glanced up to find those storm eyes inches from her own. Intense and beautiful and swimming that same question from before she couldn’t place. Back in the castle, she fantasized temporarily tossing aside all formalities to embrace him in victory. She never fathomed, certainly not in the face of her failures, that it would result in a kiss. But there were his lips, warm and earnest and, if she wasn’t mistaken, a little eager pressed against her own.

Chapter Text

Link’s fingers on her chin gently held her in place as the shockwave ran through her. Her hands fisted at her sides, every nerve in her body blinking awake. She’d never been kissed before. Not like this. Kisses had always been chaste. Ceremonious. Lips pressed against the top of her glove or the high point of her cheek. Never on the lips. Never with such enthusiasm.

Her eyes had just fluttered closed when he pulled away. A small sound escaped her mouth, an embarrassing blend of protest and confusion and breath. Link tilted his head slightly and smiled. No, smirked. The delicious shape of it twisted her stomach into a tight, radiating knot that set her cheeks aflame. 

Tri’s curious jingle echoed somewhere over her shoulder and even though the questions would come without judgement or ridicule, she didn’t want them voiced at all. Not in front of Link. Not when she couldn’t quite catch her breath and her head was spinning. How was she going to explain any of this when she didn’t understand herself? He was supposed to despise her. 

Reflexively, Zelda lifted her hands up and shoved Link back. He stumbled a few steps, eyes wide with surprise she could tell was aimed not at the action, but the force behind it.

She should have aimed for his jaw.

“What was that for?” she snapped.

The ghost of the smirk reappeared on his lips. Oh, he’d absolutely been on the other side of a mistake and used that smile to weasel his way out of punishment. It probably had great influence over that glowing reputation back in Suthorn. Him and those stupid, perfect lips…

Ugh, and now she was staring at them!

“Well? Explain yourself!” she barked. 

Link lifted his eyebrows. She started to make a face and then blanched, her eyes falling to his throat. With all of their conversations through the sword, she’d forgotten he couldn’t speak. 

Great, now she was the reprehensible one. 

“Zelda, why are you yelling at him?” Tri asked in an inquisitive tone.

She whipped her head around to face them. “I-I’m not…he deserves it!”

“Because he kissed you?”

A fresh wave of heat crawled up her neck like a hundred tiny ants. “How do you know what that is?”

“Is this ‘anger’?” Tri pressed. “Because you're yelling and you pushed him. Or, hold on, is this ‘scared’?” They reflected, one of the triangles from the tail taping against their chin like a thoughtful finger. 

She sputtered, still stuck on the fact they had recognized what Link had done. “No, I’m not…it’s not…”

“Oh! Wait! Is this,”—Tri flew forward, a wrinkle forming over their ink spot eyes— “ ‘denial’?” Then—let a rift yawn open and swallow her where she stood—they waggled the wrinkle for emphasis. Just like she’d taught them. 

“Not everything requires an explanation, Tri,” Zelda quipped and crossed her arms over her chest defensively. Tri made a pensive sound.

“‘Just because’?”

Before she could respond, Zelda became aware of a sudden closeness. When she turned her head, she discovered Link standing before her again. His face, that mouth , was so close, she could count his freckles. 

His fingers reached for her side instead of her chin and she stiffened. “What…what are you…”

He retracted his hand a few inches, flexing his palm up in the same pacifying gesture she’d seen the stable hands use on the horses. She wondered if it worked on them. It only made her more annoyed

“If you try to kiss me again, so help me…” she warned, but her body betrayed her. She was frozen in place, her heart pounding as that pleasant knot writhed in anticipation. In spite of herself, if he tried it again, she just might let him. And how would she go on to explain that? 

Link gave a weak smile and reached again, his hand coming to rest not on her waist, but the pommel of the sword. Magic exploded over her, triggered not by her will, but his touch. 

When he spoke, his lips didn’t move. The sound still echoed from the sword. “I'm sorry, Zelda, but I promised myself that if I made it out of that cage alive, I was going to do that.”

The barrier along her skin shivered, a rain storm of feelings testing the magic. She couldn’t even begin to guess the shape. Was this fear? Exhilaration? Something else? The knot in her stomach had melted away the moment the blue flames ignited leaving only a strange hollowness where it had been. Somehow, hearing he had thought about kissing her changed the significance of it all. Or, perhaps, it was the knowledge he had considered the cage might become his grave.

She set her jaw. The latter was easier to focus on with him standing so close. “I was searching for you.”

“I know. But then the reports stopped. I thought something bad happened.” His eyebrows furrowed slightly, voice growing soft. Tentative. “Or…maybe, that you’d changed your mind.”

“Changed my mind?” she asked. 

“About finding me. I mean, it’s not like you need me for this.”

The magic shuddered. “What do you mean I don’t need you? The legend says the priestess and the hero will render evil asunder together. Of course I do.”

He gave a small smile. “Who says it has to be two separate people? You’re just as much a hero as you are a priestess.”

“What?” She frowned and shook her head to dismiss him, but the motion stalled as the implication of his words settled onto her shoulders. The legend was vague. It didn’t specify how they might vanquish evil, didn’t mention anything about the rifts, or what should be done if the Prime Energy split apart (or even that it could), but the participation of a priestess and a hero was clear. Wasn’t it? Did it have to be two different people? Everyone, including herself, had assumed she was the priestess because of Tri’s magic, but Link had magic, too. However, he wasn’t suggesting their roles were reversed. He was removing his relevance entirely. 

“I am not the hero,” she said.

“You’ve defeated countless monsters.”

“Yeah, but—”

“You jump into rifts. You stepped up to help Tri and their friends. You saved all those people who were stolen away. I’ve never been able to do that. The only person I’ve ever saved from inside a rift is myself.”

“That’s Tri’s magic. Not me,” she admitted quickly.

“You saved me,” he countered.

His eyes were so blue. So intense.

“But I’m not… brave like you.” The truth came easily with the shame outside of her. It pummeled the barrier like his fists on the cage while she spoke. “You heard what the imposter said. I’ve been trying to be like you. I envied your reputation, used it like a blueprint. I have the weapons and the cloak. I can fight monsters, people rely upon me and seek my aid now, but I’m pretending to be something I”m not because deep down, I’m still scared.” Memories flooded her, providing evidence to her claim: dodging the first Dark Link’s sword, her likeness etched under bold, slanderous print, dark water pressing in on her, the purple faces of her soldiers frozen in the castle still world, Null’s clawed hand reaching toward her, a smear of gold over the glossy surface of the bomb, shadows burrowing under her skin, the warped smile on her imposter’s face as it reached for the Prime Energy in the chamber. “I’m scared all the time, Link.”

“And you think I’m not?”

The magic gave a final thrum and then the flames evaporated off her skin. They stood there, his hand still on the sword, sharing breath, eyes locked. The shame and the embarrassment and the dread should have overcome her in a gigantic wave, but the surprise of his confession dispelled it all. The swordsman from Suthorn, who ran toward rifts when everyone else ran away, who hunted Ganon in the still world alone and beat back Null with a stick, was afraid? Was he lying to her? Trying to make her feel better about herself? She had half a mind to go collect more blue energy to power up the sword, but the earnest look blooming over his face told her it would be a wasted effort. He had no reason to lie to her. He was finally with someone with whom he could admit the truth. 

Somewhere deep inside her, the crooked mirror began to tilt into place. The image briefly caught the reflection of other mirrors surrounding her, her face at various angles such that her hair looked different, the shape of her body unfamiliar. She was tall and short, tan and pale. Her eyes were other colors--some blue, others green. One version even had eyes that looked red. In some of the reflections, she carried a golden bow or a menacing sword or fistfuls of molten starlight.

The mirror gave a sudden jolt, snapping all the images into one as it stood rightly in front of her. Just her, with the Sword of Might in one hand and the Tri Rod in the other, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, blonde hair fraying slightly out of her ponytail, and her mother’s diadem across her forehead. Ready to face whatever awaited her despite the rapid thrumming of her pulse in her wrists.

Suddenly, the mirror wasn’t a mirror at all, but a window. She was back in the still world on the floating island with Link looking just as prepared and anxious staring back at her.

So alike, you and him.

Huh. Would you look at that? She was a hero. 

He was the first to break their shared gaze. He looked down almost shyly, and then his hands flew to her own, lifting her arms to inspect where the crows had shredded her gloves.

“I’m okay, really. It looks worse than it is,” she said. 

He helped her ease off the gloves. Most of the cuts were shallow, the full-force of the crow’s talons blunted by the leather, but blood still oozed from a few deeper gashes. Summoning a water cube, she stuck both arms inside up to the elbow and let the cool, clean water level her. The pain that had begun to radiate from the cuts now that adrenaline from the fight and the kiss was burning off dulled as blood plumed off her skin. The sight of it would have had her wobbling once. When did that change? When did she?

She chanced a glance up at Link after a few moments, but he lost to his wonder. She followed his eyes tracing the contained shape of the square until he got to where she connected to it and looked up.

He mouthed, Wow.

When her wounds were clean, she dismissed the rose-tinted water and went to reach for her pack, but Link stopped her. He gestured to her cuts, made a wrapping motion, and then pointed to himself. 

Let me, he was saying. 

He was probably worried about infection. She wanted to tell him it wouldn’t matter if they lost and the world was consumed by Null’s darkness, but she accepted his help. The only bit of cloth that made it into her pack was the surcoat from a dress her father had given her, used to cushion the glass bottles for the smoothies and potions. 

“Those are for you, actually,” she told him as he carefully removed the containers and set them on the ground. “It's no chocolate scone, but the yellow one will restore some of your strength. Should still be good. Tastes like pumpkin and honey. There should be pouches with nuts and dried meat somewhere in my pack as well. Oh, and some candy. I heard you like sweets. I raided the castle pantry before I left.” It was a bit of a stretch. The kitchen staff had offered to cook and pack her enough food to feed six people, but she’d declined in favor of keeping her pack light. They’d settled on nutritious bundles of fortified trail mix to keep her energy up. She was pretty sure they saw her swipe the small bag of candy, but no one objected. 

Realizing she’d rambled and then disappeared into her thoughts, Zelda glanced up to find Link marveling at her the same way he’d done Tri's magic. For a second, she thought he might kiss her again, but he set to work on the surcoat, seeking her approval first before he tore the fabric into thin, even strips. She tried not to notice how the triangle symbol, stitched in gold into the royal purple silk had been broken into three separate pieces. 

After her wounds were dressed, Link started moving in the direction where her imposter had disappeared, but she caught his wrist and forced him to sit down and eat. 

“You are of no good to this fight if you pass out,” she insisted. 

He begrudgingly obliged, but she could see the effort it took to take slow, controlled sips of the smoothie between small bites of dried meat.  

“Did Null feed you?” she asked.

He made a face and pinched his fingers together.

“Just enough to keep you alive, then?” Ganon had done the same to her.

He nodded and took another long draw of the smoothie. Color was beginning to leech back into his face. She summoned another water cube and pressed her lips against the wall, unceremoniously slurping the liquid so he would catch on. It wasn’t the most princess-like thing to do, but he’d heard her curse and they kissed, so she decided they were well beyond stuffy formalities. Besides, she was thirsty. 

He stopped eating and laughed. 

Water dribbled out of her mouth. “What? It’s good.”

He shook his head and leaned over to join her. A loud slurp echoed, rivaling her own. His dark blonde brows lifted concessively before he shut his eyes and continued to drink. 

The muscles of his throat constricted with a large, greedy gulp and she found herself abruptly jumping to her feet to escape the bizarre urge to lean over and press her mouth against it. 

Thankfully, Tri flew down beside Link and tilted to examine him. “You aren’t hurt? You’re alright?”

Link wiped his chin with the back of his hand and gave a thumbs up. 

“That means ‘yes’,” Zelda explained. 

They let out a two-tone chime. “I’m glad. So…the hero of legend and the priestess of wisdom are you two.” 

“Yes,” Zelda interjected as Link held up his finger in protest. “It doesn’t matter if I am both. You are here. We are together. Unless you are planning on turning back?” 

He blew out a loud puff of air and dropped his finger. She could read the words in his expression. Fat chance. 

“And the Prime Energy resides in you, Zelda and Link.” Tri summarized, nodding once in each of their directions before turning to face the abyss. “Null absorbed the last one.”

“Well, technically, my imposter did. I bet it’s bringing it right to Null, though,” she said.

Tri nodded gravely. “Each part of the Prime Energy is incredibly potent, so we have to take Null down. We’ve all got to work together to take back the Prime Energy from Null.” 

Zelda peered over at Link and lifted her eyebrows. He slurped up the last of the smoothie and gave another thumbs up, like they were talking about the most casual of tasks. 

“Oh, but, Link, you’re unarmed,” Tri exclaimed. “We can’t defeat Null like this. Zelda, let’s give Link his weapons you recovered.”

Right. His weapons. Not hers. She rose to her feet and started robotically peeling off Link’s gear. There wasn’t much to check with the bombs, but he took a minute to reacquaint himself with the tension of the bow, admiring the fortification of the grip. When he seemed satisfied, he set everything in its rightful place on his person and waited for her to surrender the sword.

She hesitated, balancing the blade between her hands. This is what she said she would do—what she had wanted to do. Tri was right. He shouldn’t have to fend off Null with another stick, although he probably could. 

Her eyes flickered up to Link’s. Their connection would be lost. They were together, so it wasn’t really necessary anymore, but the possibility she might never hear his voice again made her chest ache. And how was she supposed to fight after she handed it over? Did she just stand back and watch Link and her echoes do all the work? Could she use the Tri Rod like a bludgeon or would that offend Tri? It wasn’t like she would be turning it into a cotton candy stick like the Deku Scrubs…

She pressed her lips together. Maybe if they survived this, she would ask Lueberry to make her a sword of her own. No matter how familiar anything felt in her hands, at the end of the day, it was all borrowed, and borrowed things eventually had to be given back.

“It’s a good weapon. It’ll protect you,” she said softly as she handed it over. Link chuckled, but the sound dissolved into the air as it began to shift around them. He pulled the sword from the sheath slowly and held it up, triggering a ring of energy to encircle him. He took a step toward the edge of the island, the muscles under his shirt flexing as he spun, tracing the power orbiting him with steel. The force of it split the shadows of the abyss apart like a layer of flesh giving way to a deeper part of the still world. His cloak fluttered around her in an eerie breeze shuddered out of the new portal. Less like wind and more like breath.  

Suddenly, the decision to return it to him felt warranted. It never did that when she swung. She moved to retrieve the final borrowed item from her shoulders, but a quick hand on her wrist stopped her.

She blinked up at Link. “But it’s yours.”

He squared off in front of her, the sword already at his side, and, using both hands, lifted the hood over her head and resecured the clasp. When he stepped back, he gave a tilt of the head and a small, satisfied smile. She didn’t need the sword to tell her what he was saying. The knot in her stomach was enough.

I like it better on you.

Chapter Text

“So this is the inside of Null,” Tri said when they were all on the other side of the portal Link had created. 

Zelda glanced down at the floor and grimaced. The damp, rubbery surface twitched like a muscle under her boot. Combined with the acrid smell in the air, it reminded her too much of a stomach. It was the perfect home for a world eater. 

She didn’t object when Link took the lead. 

The three of them walked in silence across a long, winding bridge through the darkness. There were pieces of Hyrule scattered about like the other still worlds, but the surfaces were heavily corroded. Pine trees from Hebra were coated in rot instead of snow, sickly purple cobblestones from Castle Town slowly crumbled away into nothing, a rounded, redstone building from Goron City floated in the middle of the abyss, roof cracked open like a broken skull. 

Thankfully, they didn’t come across any people.

Every so often, Link would stop and look back at her. He didn’t gesture or try to communicate anything. Only a quick glance with a nod, and then he’d continue forward with the sword raised. She smiled back the first time, but by the third check, irritation began to prickle at the base of her skull. It was creepy inside Null, but she’d navigated plenty of still worlds on her own. Hadn’t he just proclaimed her the hero? He possessed all the Might weapons, but she still wielded the Tri Rod. 

She picked up her pace, preparing to cut off another wary look by passing him. She wasn't some fragile—

He turned around again, only this time she was close enough to catch the quick release in his shoulders at the sight of her. 

“Oh,” said Tri in her ear. “He knows ‘alone’ , too.”

Her frustration wavered. Though it had taken her time to fully realize, she’d at least had Tri with her since her journey began. Link had been alone from the very beginning. Lueberry hadn’t mentioned how long Link had been fighting, but she knew he had been young when he fell into the rift that stole his voice. You don’t become the swordsman from Suthorn overnight. Had the only company he’d ever known since he started chasing the darkness been the sound of her voice in his ear?

It wasn’t worry driving him to look back. It was relief. 

“I’m with you,” Zelda assured quickly, giving him a nod of her own. He smiled, looking like he couldn't believe his luck, and the same thought she’d had in the castle rift flashed clear as day across his face: 

This is nice. 

It really was. Even standing where they stood, about to face whatever it was they would have to face. 

She smiled back. 

“Do you think you’ll be together after this? ” Tri asked. 

She skidded to a halt as the entirety of her gut plummeted to the floor. Mercifully, Link’s silhouette had just disappeared through the doorway at the end of the bridge. 

“W-what do you mean?” she whispered, whirling around to face them.

“You and Link.”

“I gathered that much,” she hissed and shot a nervous glance at the door to make sure Link hadn’t doubled back. “What do you mean ‘be together’?”

Tri gave a pensive tilt. Zelda dipped her chin down into the cloak to hide the warmth rising in her cheeks. She didn’t like this sudden shift in their dynamic that left her asking the questions. They had recognized a kiss without her having to explain it. What else did they know? More importantly, what was she missing? She and Link had only just met, it couldn’t possibly be anything that serious. 

Then again, could there be anything more serious than sharing a destiny? Was Tri implying that she…did she? Could she? 

Her head spun. There was a collection of novels in the castle library that Impa had deemed “inappropriate” for a young princess, which instantly made them all the more enticing to seek out and read. In the books, lovers sometimes wrote letters to one another across great distances, not unlike how she and Link had spoken through the sword. The protagonist often clutched a token from their loved one for strength when all seemed lost. Had she not held the sword against her chest back in her room to feel the comfort of his beating heart before setting out for the Eternal Forest?

No. No! Those sort of feelings took time to deepen and develop, didn’t they? Well, technically, they had met a while ago, their connection sustained through the magic of the sword until they could be reunited, but that didn’t count…right? 

The still world gave a low groan around them, digesting more of whatever it had stolen away. Zelda shivered, instinctively pulling her arms in around her. What was Tri thinking? What was she thinking? They were wandering through the body of an ancient evil determined to plunge the world back into eternal darkness and she was trying to figure out if it were possible to already be in love with Link.

“‘Alone’ is a terrible feeling,” Tri said finally. “I just don’t want you to be alone when this is over.”

Zelda lifted her chin up from the cloak, her thoughts jumbled by the whiplash. Her alone? Did Tri think she was going to return to her mundane, sheltered life in the castle if they survived this?

I’m only helping Zelda so that I can get rid of the rifts.

Dozens of twinkling stars vanished in the darkness of her mind until there was only one, lonely speck left. After they freed Tri’s friends and they used their magic to heal the rifts, they disappeared. Did Tri believe she was going to send them away when their purpose was complete? 

Her heart sank a little. She’d made a big fuss about finding Link, but Tri had become just as important to her as well. Her attempts at voicing as much had all been interrupted or deferred in the face of urgency or immediate danger. 

“I can’t speak for what Link will do, but I’m not alone,” she said quickly. Earnestly. “I have you and you have me, you know that right?”

“I do,” Tri said.

“I’m with you, too,” she said and then added one of Link’s nods for good measure. 

Tri lingered for a moment, a ripple working through the long tail of their magic. It almost looked as if they were preparing to say something else, but they only returned the nod and started floating toward the doorway.

Be together. She didn’t want to get too far ahead of herself, they still had a very real and dangerous fight before them, but she hoped Link would decide to stay with her and Tri. Even with the rifts gone, there would still be monsters to clear. The dark echoes had all come from something else originally. There was also the matter of strengthening the partnerships with the various regions in the kingdom. While the lack of recognition surrounding her name was largely in part to her father’s overprotectiveness, Link’s comment about the Royal Family crest and what it meant to the villages surrounding Castle Town had stuck with her. She wanted people to nod to it when they saw it, too. Not with worry, but relief. 

The three of them could do so much good for Hyrule if they managed to save it. 

Zelda followed after Tri, but the daydream blossoming in which she, Link and Tri set off on an adventure was scattered like birds as thorn-like bars slammed down behind her. Her eyes instantly snapped up, searching for gathering shadows or the dark of his outline. Only the real Link looked back at her confused from across the room.

“Did this ever happen to you when you were wandering around the still world?” she asked. Link shook his head. Thick shadows began to drain in toward the center of the ceiling above them. 

Tri released a note that almost sounded like a sigh. They’d sure come a long way from those first fights in Suthorn. Zelda smiled and adjusted her grip on the Tri Rod. “Ready to show off some more, Link?”

He titled his head.

“I mean, the spin move with the sword was cute and all, but Tri and I already know a thing or two about twirling. Don’t we, Tri?” 

Tri zipped around her, their inner light winking as the darkness condensed into several large orbs. Link eyed them carefully before slowly rotating the blade in his hand with a grin. She was actually quite curious to see him in action, but the black orbs only swarmed her. 

Her first instinct was to raise the blade, but at the last moment remembered the Tri Rod was in her hand. She twirled out the way, narrowly escaping a swipe of rot, and quickly backpedalled so there was enough room to call not steel but fangs. The wolf erupted from the end of the Tri Rod with a mighty howl, immediately summoning the lesser beasts to its side. They snarled and snapped their jaws, pushing the orbs back so she could assess the ambush.

No monsters or imposters. Yet. 

Tri buzzed around her, one triangle of magic left behind them. Link stood to her left, sword already tucked away in favor of the bow. The tip of his arrow was tracing the flying path of the closest orb. 

Three arrows burst from the one as he released it. Two pierced the targeted orb, popping it like a bubble, while the third embedded itself into the wall with a fleshy shluck . 

Link held the bow out in front of him, eyebrows raised. The spray came in handy with dark echoes, but the accuracy he was accustomed to was probably skewed. 

“Do you like it? I’m sure Lueberry can change it if you—” she started, but Link cut her off, shaking his head enthusiastically. 

There was a loud tearing sound and Zelda turned to see the white wolf shredding another orb trapped in its jaws. The lesser wolves converged on the last one and smothered it into the floor.  Another group of orbs appeared and dove for her, but Link sprayed them with another burst of arrows and the wolves devoured what was left. When the last orb faded into nothing beneath the white wolf’s massive paws, the thorns drew back from the doors. The dark matter hadn’t even gotten the chance to take form. 

Link set his hands on his hips, looking smug as Zelda dismissed the wolves. Neither of them had even broken out in a sweat. Tri was humming idly back and forth, apparently entertained by the movement of their returned triangles. 

It was a little boring, if she was being completely honest, but she could get used to it with the two of them by her side. 

—

“Can you get through on your end?” Zelda shouted, eyeing the deep pit to her right.

A single tap echoed from beyond the wall to her left. They’d been forced into different rooms, but quickly worked out a system of communicating without the sword’s magic. Funnily enough, it still involved the sword, with Link tapping it against something to make noise. Two taps for a yes, one tap no. 

“Do you see anything that might act like a lever?”

One tap. 

Zelda looked around. Sometimes all a puzzle room required was turning on the light, but she didn’t see any torches. 

“Anything you can light? A torch or maybe a cauldron?” she called. 

Tap. 

Zelda sighed. Great, he was stuck, which meant the solution was likely somewhere on her side. The only thing she spotted was across the pit. A pedestal with what looked like a glassy ball of energy on it sat atop a narrow stone pillar too far for her to reach even with a floating tile. 

“I think I see a switch, hold on,” she shouted to Link who answered her with two quick taps. She readied Tri’s magic and cast it out across so a crow echo would appear near to the pedestal. It squawked and started to flap loyally back toward her. 

“No, wait, go that way,” she ordered, pointing the Tri Rod at the ball. The crow turned back toward the pedestal, but it bumped clumsily into the outer wall and burst apart like it had been made entirely of liquid. The room flexed around them, a slumbering creature disturbed by the echo’s touch, and then relaxed. 

“Link, you aren’t touching the outer walls are you?” Zelda asked carefully. 

Tap.

“Okay, good. Do me a favor and just don’t, okay?”

Two taps.

It took her three more attempts with the crow to finally activate the switch. 

“Did it work for you?” she shouted, watching the thorns retract from the doorway. 

Tap tap. 

“See you on the other side?”

Tap tap. 

The next room was filled with monsters. They were still separated, but this time the barrier was slotted so they could at least see one another. She crossed the Tri Rod in front of her, eyeing not only a hopping eyeball with crab legs, a lesser wolf, and a giant carnivorous flower preparing to attack her, but also the ice-spitting statue, the darknut, and spear-wielding moblin surrounding Link. The fortified Bow of Might would make quick work of the moblin. Darknuts were tough but slow, so the sword would be best if he could get it close and strike the weak spot under their helmet. Ice statues were tricky because of the thick armor and constant threat of frost bite. She usually just avoided those. 

The room was big enough for her to summon the lynel. It immediately started hacking away at the flower. The giant swipes of its sword pushed the wolf back into the corner, but the eyeball sprang over the fray toward her. She quickly used the last triangle of Tri’s magic to conjure an echo into her hand and watched as her reflection in the wide glossy eye drew near. The monster launched itself high into the air, screeching triumphantly until it spotted the rock echo. Zelda cocked her arm back and hurled it with all her strength at the blown pupil. Dark matter imploded rapidly around the rock as if trying to fuse with it, only to rupture and explode, splattering the front of her clothes with putrid oil.

“Gross ,” Tri said. 

Zelda groaned and began hastily wiping the slime from her arms when a growl sounded behind her. The lesser wolf had crept around the lynel and was stalking toward her, black jaws bared in a menacing smile. 

There wasn’t enough time to dispel and summon another echo. The wolf was already preparing to leap. Zelda shifted her stance, both hands gripping the Tri Rod like club. She’d never used it this way, but Tri was going to have to forgive her for the improvisation. She just hoped the wand wouldn’t break—

Something bright and blue streaked past her. Three arrows buried themselves deep into the wolf’s muzzle, forcing it to abandon the attack and rear back in agony. The commotion alerted the lynel, which had just finished wiping what remained of the  plant monster off its sword. It roared and kicked out its hind legs. The wolf burst apart, coating her in another splash of shadow gore. 

“Come on,” Zelda groaned, holding her arms out like a soggy pair of wings. She glared over at the other side of the room where the arrows had come from. 

Link, whose hands were held up apologetically in front of him, just barely dove out of the way of the darknut's axe. He was forced to blindly pivot as the ice statue released a deadly stream of frigid air in front of him. The move placed him directly in the path of the moblin’s readied spear. 

Without thinking, Zelda hurled the echo magic out like a whip through the barrier. It struck the moblin just as it was releasing the spear, causing it to topple to the ground with a loud squeal. The spear flew past Link, missing him by several inches, and instead lodged deep into the throat of the distracted darknut. There was a thick, gurgling sound as the darknut collapsed, discharging the menacing axe from its grip. It swung down in a wicked arc, splitting the unsuspecting ice statue in half as if it were a melon. A final jet of deadly frost released from the statue’s mouth, covering the dazed moblin still sprawled on the floor. 

All three monsters exploded at the same time. 

Link, effectively coated in rot, stared in disbelief at the scene that had unfolded around him as the thorns barring their respective doors recoiled into the walls. When he finally looked up, he was grinning. 

Zelda was not. 

“All of your monsters were left. Why did you fire at mine?” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. 

He shrugged. 

“I had the wolf situation under control, you know.”

Another shrug. 

“Shouldn’t you be telling him thank you?” Tri interjected. 

“Him?” Zelda exclaimed, tossing Tri a very betrayed look. “For what?”

“He helped you,” they said matter-of-factly. Link gave a confirming nod.

“He nearly got himself killed,” Zelda barked. 

“Didn’t you say it’s the ' nice thing to do' when someone helps?”

The first imposter fight and the ignizols that saved her. Zelda blinked, glancing back at Link who lifted his eyebrows at her in mock expectancy. 

“Is this how it’s going to be? The two of you ganging up on me?” she huffed, but her anger was already losing steam over how surprisingly pleasant the thought was. The guards often teased one another during light moments of watch. It’s what comrades did. Friends. 

Maybe one of her explanations would eventually work in her favor but for now, she stuck out her jaw and sighed. “Fine. Thank you.”

Link nodded and made a grand, sweeping gesture around himself, likely meant to be his way of thanking her. 

Zelda rolled her eyes and dismissed the lynel. “Do me a favor and pay attention to your own enemies next time? Helping me amounts to nothing if you’re lost in the process. That goes for the both of you.” She pointed a finger up at Tri. “I haven’t forgotten what happened back in Eldin. Having my back doesn’t mean you put yourself in danger, understand?”

Tri’s triangles pulled into a rigid line behind them. They nodded with their entire body. When she turned back around to face Link, he had a curious look in his face she couldn’t quite place. 

Then, without breaking eye contact, he gave a deep nod. Almost like a bow. 

As you wish, it told her. 

—

Zelda started to pace. She and Tri had been waiting for Link to arrive in the chamber they were stuck in for a good ten minutes. From what she could gather, she was going to have to build Link a way up from the lower level so he could cut through a web of dark matter. A floor switch that likely unlocked both their doors forward was waiting for him on the other side. 

They’d been forced to take different routes after the monster fight. Zelda’s had led down into a maze-like cavern that would have been impossible to navigate without echo magic. The last area in particular was completely bottomless and required she alternate between riding floating tiles and platbooms up to a lone ladder out. Hopefully Link’s path had been battle-heavy. It was a rotten thing to have to wish for, but she couldn't imagine him advancing far through similar puzzles with only the Might weapons. 

“Maybe you should fly down and see if he’s stuck?” Zelda said to Tri. 

“You want me to leave you alone?” Tri asked. 

Zelda waved her hand dismissively. “Just for a few minutes.”

“Something could attack you.” 

“I’ll be fine. I have the…” her voice trailed off, eyes downcast upon the Tri Rod. Would she be able to use the magic if Tri was out of sight? They sometimes flew ahead to scan for rifts, but that was on the surface, and they’d never really needed to worry before because Zelda also had the sword. 

Warmth prickled up her neck, fingers flexing for the phantom hilt on her hip. Yes, she would be asking Lueberry to make her a sword of her own after all this. A hero-priestess could afford both. 

Before she could attempt to convince Tri to leave her to search, there was a clatter from down below. She hurried to the barrier, careful not to touch it, and watched as Link stumbled into the room. His chest was heaving, brow shiny with sweat, but he appeared unharmed. 

Relief swelled in her chest. “Took you long enough.”

Link set his hands on his hips and tilted his head up toward her, breathing heavily through a grimace. She tried not to look amused and motioned to the distance between them with the Tri Rod. “Do you need a minute?”

Tri, who must have drifted through the wall beside her during the exchange, reemerged and hovered over to Link. “It looks like you’ll be together again in the next room.” 

Zelda couldn’t pinpoint the source of her blush: Tri’s words or the fact Link seemed to catch a second wind because of them. She could have sworn, though, as the two of them busied themselves trying to figure the best strategy to get him up a level, that the tips of his ears had also gone pink. 

The space was too narrow for a platboom. Link was adamantly against her lifting him with the echo magic in a way that it made her curious about his relationship with heights. She ended up creating a staircase of small rounded boulders he climbed until he could hurl himself up onto the ledge. Two swipes of the glowing blade was all it took to clear the black web and as suspected, when he stepped on the switch in the floor, the thorns blocking their doors disappeared. 

Zelda and Link glanced at each other through the barrier. The sudden sense of finality between them was heavier than any final key she’d held. There would be no more puzzles to solve. The encounter awaiting them just ahead would end in an eradication—Null’s or their own.  And still, despite the gravity bearing down upon her shoulders, all it took was the slightest quirk of one of Link’s eyebrows to drag her back into the contest they’d started all those weeks ago. They both immediately took off into a run, bolting through their separate doors at the same time, and raced in toward the middle of the empty room.

Maybe Lueberry was right. Maybe they were too young to bear such a burden. Surely, only the young would run toward certain danger with such bright rings of laughter pouring from their lips. 

Be together. The words echoed from a timeless place inside her as they met, their hands clasped tight to keep from crashing into one another. They were both gasping and laughing. There wasn’t a book in the castle library that came close to describing what this was. The legend that had been protected and passed down by her family couldn’t be written down for it lived inside her. Inside Link.

“A tie, then?” she proposed breathlessly. 

Link nodded with a grin. 

The walls surrounding them growled, low and anticipatory. Zelda did not release Link’s hands as their collective excitement dissipated. Tri flew forward to join them, their unchanging face fixed on the single black door ahead. 

“You ready, Tri?” Zelda asked. 

Tri shifted their face to Zelda, golden light bright and resolute. “Shit?” they said. 

She grinned. “Shit.”

Tri gave a spin and Zelda let go of Link’s hands to do the same. When she returned to her spot, Link was eying the two of them carefully. 

“Confidence,” she explained. 

Link nodded, bent his knees, and spun. He was grinning when he came around. He reached for the sword when he was done, rotating the hilt in his grip, and then extended his free hand out to her. Before she took it, she noticed his fingers were trembling. 

Zelda squeezed his hand, felt the thrum of their pulsing blend together, and said, “Let’s go save Hyrule, yeah?” 

Chapter Text

A sickly pink current outlined Zelda’s imposter against a wreath of dark shadow. It didn’t seem to care, or even notice, when she, Link, and Tri dropped down into the final chamber. Its eyes remained distant and unfocused at their approach, the copy of the Tri Rod held limply at its side.

It hardly looked like a perfect version of her anymore. It still wore the dress from the fight, the fabric torn and sullied with oil where each Might arrow had struck. Its face was sunken and tired in a way that no amount of sleep would touch. The skin, upon closer inspection, possessed an almost waxen quality, as if it were clay hastily spread over cartilage and bone.

Reflexively, Zelda wiped her mouth with the side of her hand as her eyes traced a smear of greasy black blood arced across the imposter’s cheek. Receiving Nayru’s piece had felt like the deepening of a well already inside her. Since the imposter was her echo, she imagined Din’s had only done the same. But all wells had a bottom. They required replenishing in order to remain full. The imposter probably used a lot of energy navigating the maze of Null’s body injured and alone, nevermind the strength it took to prevent its borrowed face from sliding off.

It seemed like a lot of wasted effort to maintain something that wasn’t real.

“Let's make this quick,” Zelda said.

Link nodded. Gone was the levity and laughter they had just shared racing and twirling. His entire body was a coil ready to spring at her command, the Sword of Might a streak of moonlight in his hand.

“What do you think will happen to your imposter’s piece of the Prime Energy once we defeat it?” Tri asked.

It was a good question. They’d discovered it could be broken, but did that mean it could also be destroyed? Or did it bestow itself upon someone else when its wielder was defeated? Could it even be put back together? Important details she would see written down if they learned the answers and managed to survive.

She opened her mouth to respond but stalled as her eyes snagged on the shadow behind her imposter. It had seemed insignificant before; an eerie trick of the light in an eerie place. Only—she glanced around quickly for confirmation—there was so little light in the chamber to begin with. Not enough to make a shadow shift purposefully at the mention of the Prime Energy. Not enough to make it look like it was lingering.

Like it was standing.

It expanded upon rising, eating away a shape like an ink stain on the very fabric of reality. Familiar clawed hands emerged from the depths of the gathering shadows. They curled one finger at a time, forming a possessive cradle around her imposter.

“The priestess of wisdom and the hero,” Null’s voice poured like syrup from the impossible blackness at its center. “I see you intend to interfere. How vexing.”

“We actually prefer ‘persistent’,” Zelda quipped. Tri chimed approvingly.

“Then again,” Null continued, a faceless dark shifting between her and Link, “you’ve come here and brought the Prime Energy directly to me.”

Her attention suddenly splintered to how they were situated, her mind’s eye tracing the shape in gold: Link to her left, the two of them squared off in front of her imposter with Null looming behind it. A perfect triangle.

Her heart stuttered in her chest. The pieces couldn’t be destroyed. The Prime Energy would see itself reunited one way or another.

A deep, virulent growl rumbled out of the darkness. “The goddesses–they have taken everything from me. Now I will use their power to take it all back!”

Tri let out a sound like an alarm bell as the invisible tether between Zelda and her imposter pulled tight. The claws had snatched the echo up, its body limp and lifeless in its grasp, all except for the eyes. Fixed on Zelda, the initial shock within faded into the same devastating resignation Link’s eyes had held just before he was dragged away in the crystal cage. At the time, she thought it had been a grim acceptance of his fate, but Null did not kill the things it captured. Not right away. It figured out how it could use them first.

But her imposter’s value had been spent, barely able to maintain Zelda’s likeness, nevermind fight. The only thing it had to offer…the only thing Null could use…

A strangled cry escaped her lips. Her imposter was already melting into the inky blackness. She reached for the tether to draw it back. “The Prime Energy! Null’s trying to—”

It snapped.

“No!” Zelda jerked forward, but Link caught her elbow. The same pink energy that had outlined her imposter latticed like heat lightning across the surface of Null’s shape. Shadows bubbled and hissed, dark matter rising to a boil around Null’s rapidly destabilizing core.

For a single, glorious moment, it seemed like Null might be unable to contain the power. Zelda held her breath as rays of golden light punched through the writhing blackness. Sunbeams through a storm cloud. A scale was tilting their way, the darkness nearly eclipsed by the light—

“Ahh…THIS is the Prime Energy!”

A ripple of power slammed into her chest. She stumbled back, held upright only by the vice around her elbow. Link. He tucked in beside her, one arm sliding to brace around her waist while the other held the shield out in front of them. It blocked another forceful wave of energy that lapped off the chaos blossoming in the center of the chamber. Flecks of dark matter burst like lit embers upon contact with the steel.

Between the ribbons of her hair whipping her face, Zelda could see the sunbeams were gone. There was no trace of light within Null’s triumphantly black core.

“I AM OVERFLOWING WITH POWER!” It declared and then, with a roar like a mountain splitting—like the world itself was splitting—a beam of energy surged skyward.

Familiar shapes quickly began to emerge in the ceiling: the roots of the Deku Tree, the well from the center of Kakariko Village, the fence bordering Hyrule Ranch, the stone doors into Lord Jabu Jabu’s temple.

“Null is creating massive rifts!” Tri shouted in her ear. “The towns…Everyone is being pulled in!”

And then, to her horror, people started to appear. Dozens of faces twisted in permanent agony: Gerudo soldiers with their spears out, the missing woman and her husband from Suthorn, a Business Scrub and their last customer, a cluster of Gorons curling in around themselves.

A monstrous constellation of what stood to be lost if they failed.

They continued to speckle the ceiling until the beam narrowed and disappeared.

Null’s laughter bubbled out of the receding vortex. “I understand now. I understand all that is the Prime Energy! Yet it is insufficient. I hunger for more.” Eyes somewhere within the darkness shifted toward them. “I must have everything...I must have all of the Prime Energy.”

The piece residing inside Zelda shivered in protest.

“You can’t have it,” she said.

Phantom flames rippled up her arms as Link drew the sword. There would be no magic barrier to repel any fear in this fight. Nothing to stop the frost spreading out from her middle.

He shifted the bright steel into a defying, two-handed grip.

Null snarled, blazing above them like a blackened sun. “Give it to me!”

But instead of advancing on them, Null’s shadow siphoned inward, swirling like a drain plug had been pulled. Lightning arched along its edges, offering glimpses of the abomination stirring within.

It was wrong. A deliberate and desecrating imitation. Black where it should be gold, eyes wide-set and bulging, seething darkness instead of starlight—like a fallen servant of the goddesses. Zelda couldn’t look at them, couldn’t bring herself to tear her eyes away, but she felt Tri shrink behind her.

The massive dark star-being unfurled its three clawed hands one at a time, testing the reach of each long, sinewy arm. When it seemed satisfied with its configuration, it fixed its frozen face on them and, with an ear-splitting shriek, thrust one of the claws into the floor. The force of the strike shed free a glittering black echo of the hand that barreled toward them, dragging itself along with sharp, eager fingers.

Zelda and Link sprang apart. The echo rushed through the space they created, trapped in the endless loop of a forward crawl until it collided with a wall and vanished.

Link’s first spray of arrows bounced uselessly off Null’s outer shell. It ignored him and sent another echo crawling toward Zelda. She spun out of the way and watched it tear up the ground like a garden tiller all the way to the wall.

A second burst of arrows peppered Null’s shell. Still ineffective, but annoying enough to convince Null to swivel and swipe at Link with a real claw. She frowned, wondering if he was doing it for her benefit again. He dove out of the way, rolled to a knee and took aim at Null’s flank. More arrows ricocheted off the shell.

Null whirled around, but Link was already moving. He got off another shower of arrows before a claw echo scurried after him, scattering him back toward the wall.

When he glanced her way, she scowled.

He had the audacity to roll his eyes at her.

“Zelda!” Tri warned. She zigzagged out of the way of a claw echo and summoned a boulder to temporarily block any others so she could scold Link for babying her, but he was gone. A green blur zipped around Null, firing arrows from every possible angle. Distracting it, yes, but also…

She sank into her hip, feeling stupid. “He’s looking for weak spots.”

“Oh,” Tri mused.

She summoned a spear-wielding moblin to assist. It launched its weapon at the center of Null’s borrowed face and was immediately greeted by a wide swipe of the closest hand. The echo instantly burst into stardust, its reflexes nowhere near as sharp as Link’s. She sighed and summoned another, which took one look at Null and screeched, turning to flee the sweep of another clawed hand.

They weren’t usually her first choice.

Link took advantage of the window her spineless echo created and let loose another pulse of arrows. One of them struck the cords that connected the hands to the body. It wasn’t enough to destroy the limb, but the attached claw flexed in a telling agony.

“Weak spot!” Tri shouted from above.

Null growled and started retracting the claw so the fleshy cords tucked back into its body.

“Oh no you don’t,” Zelda snapped and threw the bind magic out. When it caught, she wrapped both hands around the Tri Rod and began to pull, leaning with her entire weight until the arm was exposed. “The sword! Slice through it!”

Blue winked in her peripheral. The cords snapped free a second later, wriggling in the air like a cluster of headless, cherry red snakes. Link skidded to a halt beside the claw, which dropped to the ground and eroded into nothing but black mist.

Null hissed. The shell pivoted around to take aim with another claw, but Link sidestepped and held the Sword of Might out at a menacing angle in front of him. Smoldering blue eyes flashed to her, his body coiling back into that perfect spring begging for release. Her release. She whipped the echo magic out, caught the claw and stretched the cords out for Link’s attack.

A streak of blue appeared along the floor. Zelda traced the glowing line to where Link stood on the other side of the chamber. The severed claw disintegrated before it even hit the ground.

“One more!” she called to him through the cloud of fading mist. A grin tugged at the corner of her lips.

He grinned back.

The fusion of their momentum was intoxicating. Null barely had time to respond to the attack before the remaining claw was gone. They descended upon its shell as soon as it crashed to the ground, Link with his steel and Zelda’s much braver and stronger lynel summoned to his side.

Hope flickered to life in her chest. Null’s star-being armor was splintering with each strike. They were doing it. They were winning, just like the legend had said. Tri whizzed around her and she chanced a smile. Together. The nightmare displayed above them would be one she would wake from. Hyrule would be saved. Her people had been right to count on her. She was a hero—

A sudden burst of energy knocked Link and the lynel back. Null floated up, the unchanging lines of its stolen face flaring bright as if an internal furnace had finally ignited. Shadows fumed out from the cracks in its armor, quickly engulfing the shell in a protective cloud. It glided toward one of the pulsating chamber walls and disappeared into it.

A cold wind passed through her. Many of the fights in the final rooms had gone this way. The monster would be within an inch of life and somehow unlock a source power within to revitalize and rally with twenty times the strength. How many times would Null get back up? How many times could she and Link?

“Is that really all the power the Prime Energy lent you?”

Zelda whirled around, trying to determine where Null’s voice was coming from. It seemed everywhere and nowhere all at once. Link slowly moved to where she stood, sword poised in front of him. It wasn’t until laughter began to rain down upon them that her gaze finally tilted up.

Though their faces remained frozen, black eyes distant and lifeless, all the people who had been stolen away by the new rifts had turned to face them.

The laughter faded and a hundred rotting puppets spoke with the same voice. “How pathetic.”

—

“Zelda, you need to move,” urged the blur of bright gold in her vision.

She blinked through blood and sweat stinging her eyes. Tri’s face gradually swam into view, sharpened by the pain radiating up her arm from her elbow. She was crumpled on her side and definitely underneath something. The memory of a hand raised high above her, fingers spread wide as if she were a fly that needed swatting flashed in her head, but she wasn't being crushed. Had time slowed down? Was she already dead?

Tri jingled desperately in front of her. Not dead. Yet. Just beyond them, she recognized the underbelly of her lynel. The beast had wedged itself between her and one of Null’s claws. The seventh, no, eighth one they’d faced? She was losing track.

After Null finished taunting them, claws began sprouting from the chamber walls like weeds. It forced them into the center of the room, where she and Link stood back to back, alternating dodging echoes and trying to bind and sever the claws. When they’d finally cleared all the arms from the walls, Null emerged from the wall with three newly regenerated claws and the whole dance restarted again.

The lynel had lost its broadsword to one of the wall claws. It had taken to distracting whichever claw she and Link weren’t targeting and then started charging headfirst at Null’s shell when it reappeared. In addition to the vicious swipes with its claws and the echoes, Null also started creating pools of burning dark matter in the floor to restrict their movements. It had managed to pin Link on the other side of the chamber with a particularly large one and a barrage of claw echoes before turning suddenly on Zelda.
That’s right. Her lynel had knocked her to the ground to shield her.

Jaws clenched tight, muscles rippling with fatigue, the lynel’s knees buckled a few inches under the weight of the hand still bearing down upon it. A yellow eye flashed down at her. She had seconds.

“Thank you,” she gasped and scrambled out from under its legs.

A rallying roar started behind her and then abruptly stopped. Something crashed hard into the ground, but she was already rising and pivoting. She hurled the binding magic down at the claw through the plume of stardust that had been her lynel, feeling oddly like her chest still had been crushed. It was just an echo. She could easily summon another, but it had shown unflinching loyalty. Protected her. Sacrificed itself without instruction to do so.

Null thrashed, trying to free itself from the grasp of her sorcery. She glared down at it, gritted her teeth and wrenched the cords out of its armor as if they were vines threaded into the grate of one of the castle fences.

“Link!” she commanded.

He struck like a bolt of lightning.

A bouquet of cords wriggled away from the dissolving claw. Null screeched and staggered backwards, its last remaining claw dragging open a boiling pit in the floor to temporary’s stop Link’s advance. He moved to Zelda’s side and swung the sword out, a bright extension of his arm.

“Still crying out for his help I see, priestess of legend?” Null snarled.

“It’s not the same,” Zelda shot back, advancing a step.

Null laughed. “Isn’t it?” And then her voice reverberated from inside Null’s armor. “‘Link! Answer me! Talk to me! I’m here!’”

“Oh, shut up!” she and Tri spat in unison.

They glanced at one another for a beat and it was all Zelda needed to steel herself against whatever mind game Null was about to be unleashed upon her.

“I have seen the truth inside of you. Your imposter has shown me what you really are. A sheltered princess forever in need of rescue…”

She tightened her grip around the Tri Rod. It wouldn’t work. Not this time. Tri and Link trusted her. They believed in her. She believed in herself.

“...and a foolish brat incapable of saving anyone but himself.”

She blinked, feeling strangely like she’d been descending a flight of stairs and missed a step. There had been a time when she felt like it was impossible to escape Link’s reputation. His goodness. Hyrule was filled with people he’d helped. He’d saved her. Twice.

“Stop lying,” she said, but something tugged at her from the back of her skull as the words left her lips. Something he said about himself back in the still world, when he was arguing she was the real hero.

The only person I’ve ever saved from inside a rift is myself.

A small black seed of doubt cracked open in her chest.

“You may have the sword, but you are still the same scared little boy who fell into my rift.” Null was completely focused on Link; the wide-set eyes of the damned star-being and the eternal black eyes of the shadow swirling in the exposed core. Predatory. Hungry. “The one who screamed for help at the sight of his petrified friends. Well…until I stole his voice.”

Then, the same voice she’d heard in her head when she and Link were connected through the sword’s magic cried out from within the shell, the lines of its borrowed face glowing to emphasize every word.

“‘Help me! Please!’”

“‘Someone help me!’”

“‘I don’t know what to do! What do I do?’”

‘’I’m afraid!’”

Link’s stolen voice bounced off the walls, overlapping until it formed a nightmarish symphony. Her eyes slid to his face. Pale as bone, his mouth pressed into a hard, tight line, she watched helplessly as the same icy fear that had filled her veins on Holy Mount Lanayru poured into him.

She couldn’t even tell him it wasn’t real.

—

“Not enough. I must have more!”

Though larger patches of its shell had eroded away to reveal more of the volatile core, Null once again surged up from where it had fallen.

“More what?” Zelda groaned and bent forward gulp air into her lungs. Another round of wall arms had followed after they finally took Null down a second time. After that came three more newly regenerated limbs, bigger boiling pits, and onslaughts of tilling claw echoes. Even Link needed to catch his breath. His chest was steadily heaving, his head turned so he could eyeball Null and still avoid her gaze.

Hearing his voice had changed something. Or, maybe it was her hearing that voice that had done it. He was still lethal, but markedly slower and disconnected. Like stones had been shackled to his feet. Like they were fighting in different rooms again. Twice he’d been clipped by a claw, his tunic slashed and stained with fresh blood. He even missed one of the windows to sever a claw entirely, her bind magic reaching its limit and splintering under the pressure.

They needed to remain united. Together. Null couldn’t go on fighting forever, the mangled state of its armor conveyed as much, but neither could they. Her legs wobbled underneath her at the thought, begging for the relief of one of her echo beds. What she wouldn’t give to sit down for a moment. To sleep.

“Null is trying to escape!” Tri cried. She and Link snapped upright at the same time.

Tri was bouncing up and down in front of her, frantically waving their triangles toward a giant black portal yawning open on the wall. “Hurry!”

The melted clump of shell was already disappearing into the darkness. She hurled herself toward the portal, Link hot on her heels. If she could just grab hold of the shell with the bind magic, maybe she could pull it back—

A cry rang out as she reached the threshold of the portal. Unable to halt her momentum, she glanced over her shoulder and felt time slow down enough for her to spot Link through the forest of clawed hands that had sprung up all around him. He wasn’t avoiding her gaze anymore. No, he was staring right at her, wide eyes reflecting the violent rush of panic rising in her throat.

Be together. The words were no longer a comfort, but a warning. Together. They needed to stick together.

She opened her mouth to scream and swallowed a mouthful of black water.

Chapter Text

Zelda plunged deep into the terrifyingly familiar unknown. 

Water crammed the scream to Link back down her throat. Instinctively, she threw out her arms in an attempt to gather her bearings, but everything she grasped just flowed through her fingers. Another submerged cavern. It was Jabul Waters all over again. 

Only, the darkness here was freckled with blurry lights. Fish? Underwater fireflies? All the same, they illuminated no signs of a surface. No way out. Her heart hammered against her chest like a fist pounding on a door, like her fist pounding on the ceiling of that cave. Muted sounds of choking and thrashing filled her ears—her choking, her thrashing. She was going to die if she didn’t calm down, but how was she supposed to do that when she could barely see, could barely think—

“Zelda!” came a muffled voice.

One of the lights was swimming toward her. The scream forced itself back up her throat and out of her mouth in a fountain of bubbles. But instead of blinking into two points like the eyes of the beast in Jabul Waters’ did, the light’s glow became more condensed. Bright. Golden.

Zelda flailed her body forward, chest squeezing tight around the icy panic for air. Tri appeared to be pushing something out in front of them. A translucent, spherical…thing. Black spots blotted her vision as she struggled through the water toward it. The desperate urge to breath smothered every other thought in her head. She needed to open her mouth, needed to let her lungs expand. Her chest was going to burst from the impossible pressure inside her if she didn’t—

And then there was air. Wonderful, glorious, delicious air. Zelda coughed and wretched, her body trying to take in oxygen while expelling the water from her lungs at the same time.

“Here!” shouted Tri from somewhere beside her. The sound of their voice was still muffled. Zelda’s next inhale erased half the spots from her vision, enough so she could see Tri’s light disappearing into the dark water, only to reappear with another sphere.  A bubble. They thrust it toward her head where it combined and expanded the first, which she hadn’t realized had been shrinking in tight to her face with each breath. Not a permanent solution but enough to keep her from drowning. For now. 

“Thank you!” she gasped.

“It's ‘pissing’ bubbles,” Tri said. “You just need to swim into them.”

“That’s not—”She stopped herself from wasting breath. It didn't matter. It was reassuring all the same. “O-okay.” 

Zelda took one last gulp of air and the bubble disappeared. Fully submerged once again, but better able to compose herself now that her lungs no longer burned, she pointed the Tri Rod ahead of her and summoned the tangler echo like she’d done in Jabul Waters. As soon as she bound herself to it, it began pulling her forward through the water to the nearest bubble. 

Tri swam up beside her, their voice small. “Zelda, my friends are here.”

What little life that had begun to restore to her cheeks drained away. The glowing spots brightening the darkness weren’t fish or fireflies, but star-beings. Hundreds of them. Most floated past her helplessly, swept up in a strange current flowing throughout the cavern. Others appeared to be trapped in what looked to be fleshy sacks growing along the cavern walls. 

Her stomach lurched. The current. The warmth. She’d been deposited somewhere in Null’s still world body—some deep, horrific vein filled with Tri’s friends. And twenty yards ahead of her, Null’s melted shell was at the center of a whirlpool drawing them in. The nucleus of deep shadow within its armor constricted like the muscles of a throat around each fleck of gold pulled inside. 

Not enough. I must have more!

More what?

She’d gotten her answer.

“No!” The cry burst from her lips as she hit another bubble of air. Arms erupted from Null’s shell, a star-being clutched tight in each claw. They glowed bright, too bright, like the voltage of an electric current rapidly turned up. 

“It’s using their power! Zelda!” Tri bellowed. 

And then, in a flash of stolen magic, the Jabul Waters beast really was there. Icy fear blossomed in her chest, spilling into the renewed sting for air in her lungs until everything ached. The monster unfurled in the water, an iridescent ribbon of pure dark matter. It did not peel free from its rotten skin, nor did it seem to hunger for light. No, despite the flurry of gold around it, the echo’s black eyes trained on her. Focused and hungry, like she was the brightest star in the sky. A radiant, desert sun. 

“Swim away!” Tri urged frantically. 

But instead of slithering after her with open jaws, the dark echo bowed its spine and called forth long, slender columns of wind from the cave ceiling. They stretched like long swirling fingers into the space between Zelda and Null before sweeping toward her through the water. 

She kicked as hard as she could to aid the tangler, but it wasn’t fast or strong enough to maneuver the competing currents. The magic snapped free and she flung her body through the water, corkscrewing out of the grip of the spouts. It wasn’t exactly swimming, but effective enough. Capable. She repeated the move, colliding with an air bubble so she could catch her breath while the storm passed over her head.

Up ahead, Null was struggling to swim away, arms fluttering behind the shell like a tail. The captive star-beings rang like bells in the motion. Her muscles tensed, fingers curling to first around the Tri Rod. Two chompfin echoes burst forward and she twirled after them, once, twice, three times until she was close enough to bind herself to one of the claws. She latched on with the magic and let her weight stretch the cords out from the core, just like she’d done in the chamber. The faster of her two chompfins tore into it while its twin set to work on another arm, too impatient for strategy. 

Star-beings emerged one by one as the arms came apart, drifting past Zelda like bits of dimly lit driftwood. Alive, but drained. Her stomach twisted. It was as bad as when she’d learned the rifts targeted children or that the still worlds kept pieces of the people it stole away. Everything about Null’s power was twisted. Wrong.

“Always such resistance,” Null growled from within the frenzy of fins and sharp teeth and shreds of dark gore. A violent solar flare of energy pulse out of the core and her chompfins were dispelled into nothing. “Too bad it's too little too late. I’ve already swallowed half your kingdom with my rifts.” 

“Zelda and I will mend them,” Tri countered fiercely. 

“A single, insignificant speck?” The water surrounding Null swirled inward, sucking more of Tri’s friends into shadow. Claws grasping star-beings erupted from the mauled remains of the shell and squeezed, forcing their inner lights to brighten. “I have all your friends. You are alone in your fight, servant of the goddesses. Just like the priestess is once again alone in hers.”

Alone. The word burrowed so easily inside Zelda, a weed seeking to lay roots in a garden it once flourished within. The mirror inside her began to tilt and she had to reach out with both hands in order to right it. 

It’s not true. If only a bubble would float by so she had the air to speak, to refute the lie boldly, out loud, but the water was clear. You are not alone, she reminded herself firmly. Tri was beside her, Hyrule behind her.  And Link—her gut coiled tight as the last image of him flashed in her mind. Blue eyes wide with so much panic, so much fear as too many hands flexed wide above him, ready to strike. Three had proven task enough between the two of them, but she’d left him to fight on his own. 

She wasn’t alone but Link was. 

Almost as if it could read her thoughts, Null laughed again, “Too late to save your kingdom and too late to save your swordsman.” 

The captive star-beings blazed white in the claws. Zelda knew what was coming, knew she should start readying herself for more water spouts, but all she could think about was Link. The words pounding in her skull and her pulse were one in the same: too late, too late, too late. 

A vortex, not slender fingers this time but a fist, engulfed half the length of the cavern. Zelda dove down through the image of Link in her mind, corkscrewing over and over again, deeper and deeper and imagined him doing the same. Link, weaving between claw echoes and greedy fingers; Link, whirling around that miserable chamber with no exit, trying to hold out; Link, glancing over his shoulder as he fought, looking for her—

Too late, too late, too late. 

It would only take a second, a single misstep, and those hands would grab him and never let go. 

“Link!” she gasped his name as a bubble broke over her head. 

Somewhere beyond the storm, Null was laughing. “That’s it, cry out for his help.”

"It's not-" But the air was gone and with it, her rebuttal. Her eyes fell upon the dark echo and she lifted the Tri Rod, determined to snuff it out before another maelstrom came barreling toward her, but the beast was… disintegrating. Burning into itself like the edges of paper set to flame. She frowned. But she hadn’t done anything. She hadn’t introduced any new echoes into the fight, her attention consumed by avoiding the attack and Link. 

Come to think of it, where had the first dark echo gone? It seemed to vanish after the initial attack, leaving Null to defend itself. Had it yielded the same way? How? And why?

The anomaly and her worry collided like fireworks in her head and for a moment, she was back in the Gerudo Sanctum, Link’s imposter on its knees at her feet. His likeness disappeared into rot as dark matter poured out of its skull. In the end, it only had enough strength to hold Link’s shape. 

Her eyes flew open. The last bit of oil that had been the monster flickered into nothing. The echoes were weak. They only had enough power to attack once before coming undone. Weak because Null was weak. It had no new tricks up its sleeve, relying on a monster she’d already faced and old fears she’d subdued, and the same, tired taunts to try and break her down. 

Zelda narrowed her eyes and summoned the chompfins again, unleashing them ahead to free the star-beings. Null was testing for weak spots, probing old wounds to see if they might come unstitched so its shadow could slither inside, but she’d proven time and time again, she was capable. From day one. Capable of discrediting lies scribbled on posters and whispers from the dark and facing her fears. Fighting in spite of it all.

When the last claw disappeared and she was nice and close, she pressed the tip of Tri Rod into her palm. The glossy belly of a bomb fish filled her hand. Link was still fighting. He had to be. He’d built his extraordinary reputation just as she’d built her capable one. She tapped the bomb fish awake and released it just as the water surrounding Null started to swirl. It winked at her, a devastating flash of red, and disappeared into the core. 

Zelda grinned.  

Extraordinary would keep Link safe long enough for her to get back, but capable was going to save Hyrule. 

—

Zelda’s knees buckled and she fell forward onto the chamber floor, waterlogged and gagging on the sudden rush of air. It tasted sweet but wrong, rotten and metallic and heavy. Battlefields and brimstone. The forest of claws was gone, but a map of the struggle it had taken to vanquish it splayed under her fingers. Deep gouges in the floor, broken arrows spread like autumn leaves, splatters of blood glistening in Tri’s light. 

Too late, too late, too late—

A hand found her shoulder. She knew it was him without looking, his touch resonating inside her like the first strum of harp strings into silence. When he moved in front of her, something halfway between a sob and a sigh escaped her lips, her relief deeper than a lifetime. He held her face in his other hand, those eyes still wide and searching, but the panic was rooted in a different kind of fear than last she’d seen. 

“I’m okay,” she reassured, and then the scope of her focus expanded to take in the rest of him and she became a mirror, her hand upon his face. 

Extraordinary looked to be near its limit. His tunic, once as emerald as a forest canopy, was so saturated with blood and gore that it was nearly black. The fabric had been torn away in several spots, including a menacing split like a smile from collarbone to hip. His hat was barely hanging on, blonde hair slick to the sides of his pale face with sweat. In his free hand, the Sword of Might’s glow was sheathed in shadow rot. 

She fumbled for a potion bottle but her pouch was gone. Probably floating listlessly back in Null’s vein. 

Link rose with her as she stood and they steadied one another, hands grasping forearms while Tri buzzed protectively around their heads. 

The chamber rumbled. Something large and unstable descended into the space, but she kept looking at Link. 

“It’s going to start cycling through the monsters I fought in the still worlds. The powerful ones, but they’re weak. Null’s weak.”

An ear splitting screech swallowed the end of her words. Link threw her a look. 

“Trust me,” she insisted. 

His eyes hardened in answer and Zelda turned her head. Armor gone, the throbbing shadow infused with starlight that was Null wore several faces, all of them bobbing on the surface like wooden masks floating atop black water. It boasted five new arms, a star-being prisoner in each claw. 

Her lynel stomped forward into the world with a snarl and she glanced back at Link. “Can you fight?” 

He nodded. 

“The echoes will only have strength enough for one attack. Don’t waste your energy on them. We target Null.”

He rotated the blade at his side and nodded again. 

With a crack, the lynel was thrown sideways, revealing the first monster already unraveling back into darkness: Suthorn’s rock talus, arms wide and spinning like a top. Null took its place again and Zelda lunged forward to bind one of the claws. Link sliced, Zelda spun, and they fell into a sort of dance. Dodge, bind, strike. No matter which half-formed dark echo appeared, they advanced the same. The Faron spider crawling on the walls, Lanayru’s giant beast, the flying Mogryph from the Gerudo Sanctum. Dodge, bind, strike. When Null disappeared, claws burst out from the walls and the floor. Dodge, bind, strike. 

It was starting to grow tedious, and then Ganon appeared.

The energy around Link changed. Charged as if a bolt of lighting were about to strike. He stood on the other side of the chamber, separated from her by the fight, but Zelda felt his stance shifting, her own muscles tensing until she was in a two-handed grip as well. 

“Still cannot believe a boy could give me so much trouble,” the eddy blackness where Ganon’s face should have been sneered. Link gritted his teeth, somewhere between a grin and a snarl. Wolf-like. 

And then the dark matter split, a trio of Demon Kings surrounding Link. Each one wielded a long black spear and a vendetta transcending Null’s control. All the previous echoes had targeted her, but these lunged for Link. She watched him begin to move, his body merging into the space between breaths only he could traverse, but before he could vanish completely, as if they knew the pattern of his movement, the attacks adjusted and—

Link made a horrible sound. Trapped in a prism of sharp rot, he’d avoided two of the blades, but the third impaled his shoulder. Ganon squealed with delight as it burned away into nothing, a final tug on the spear dragging Link to his knees. 

And then she was the one faster than breath, there and then not and then back again, across the room at his side. Her hands pressed against the wound to staunch the flow of blood and it was as if she were holding the hilt of the sword in her hands again, his pulse wild and warm beneath her fingers. It dripped down the length of her forearms to her elbows, tracing where the seam of her gloves had once been. 

“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” she whispered like prayer. 

Null oozed back into the space with laughter. Every round that had passed revealed more of the Prime Energy piece within its core. A fleck of golden sun trying to shine through patches of ink black cloud.

She could grab it. Bind it with Tri’s magic. There were no arms to block her, but the Tri Rod was at her feet, Link was bleeding out in her hands.

“Not much of a hero.” Null made a sound like it was clicking its tongue. The noise echoed throughout the chamber, a hundred birds snapping their beaks. Zelda eyes drifted up. The petrified bodies were speaking with Null’s voice again. “None of your friends that followed you that day can remember,” they continued, “but I do.” Their heads all tilted in a manner very reminiscent of Tri. Ice slid down her spine. “Does the priestess know?”

Link went rigid in her hands.

“What would she think?” They lifted their arms, pointed a finger at Zelda. Then their hands shifted every which way, pointing to one another without looking. “What would they all think about the infamous swordsman from Suthorn if they knew the real reason those kids were swallowed up that day?”

“‘Real reason’?” Tri repeated from Zelda’s side. “It was an accident.” 

“A terrible accident,” jeered Null. 

The illuminated blade flickered like a candle flame in the wind at his side. He was trembling, face shadowed from her by a wet curtain of bangs. Part of her wanted to reach out and grasp the hilt so she could hear his thoughts. Hear him call Null a liar, but it was Lueberry’s voice in her head. 

I think a part of him believes if he can save enough people from being stolen away like he was, his voice will return to him.

The explanation for Link’s behavior hadn’t made much sense to her then, but debts were a new concept and she’d chalked it up to her own naivety. Still, falling into a rift shouldn’t make a person feel like they owe anyone anything…unless it could’ve been prevented. 

It had been so easy to follow him through the still world—to let him lead. She’d trusted every step he took, every turn he made without question. And if they were really as alike as Lueberry insisted, did that mean he too craved adventure? Did he also seek out the unknown—the explicitly forbidden? The only difference being, in her forced isolation, the only people to pursue her were those who would see her promptly returned to it. But Link was free in Suthorn; free to wander and so very easy to follow.

An accident. A mistake. 

“I guess you could say it was because of you that I began to hunger for star-beings. When you started saving people from falling into my rifts, I was forced to search for a means to hunt them down instead. I discovered that if I did not immediately consume star-beings, I could use their magic to steal faces and spread my darkness across the surface.” Link’s stolen voice started echoing above them again, his young cries for help like claps of thunder across the sky while Null continued, “Alas, you are not their hero…but mine.”

Zelda watched Link’s gaze shift up, taking in the bodies suspended above them before his eyes fixed so intensely on Null’s simmering core that she feared he might throw himself into it to escape the feeling. A level of despair she knew all too well. She wanted to scream, to draw Link back into her arms, but she was frozen in place, watching him bleed out every possible way. Body and spirit. 

“You do not deserve to hold a piece of the Prime Energy. You are unworthy,” Null hissed. “Give it to me...” 

Its gravity wasn’t strong enough to draw them in, but she felt Link brace himself under her fingers, his shoulders bent, guilt radiating off him like a desert haze. 

“A burden to your priestess, a plague masked by acts of service upon your people!” The chamber walls shook with Null’s voice. Embers of dark matter fluttered around them like snow. “Give it to me!”

“Zelda, this is ‘anger’,” whispered Tri in her ear.

She dragged her gaze to them, exasperated and in utter disbelief that they would even think to be doing this now, but she wasn’t met with a curious tilt. Tri was floating in the air just off her shoulder, their glow dim and tired but confident. Their words hadn’t been a question but an assertion.

Suddenly, she was back in Link’s house, picking up the shards of the broken cup.

Sometimes, when you are tired or hurt or…soaking wet, those things sort of…build on top of each other.

Like the echoes?

Sure, yeah, like the echoes. I can only stack so many before the magic snaps, right?

Right.

So, anger is how people relieve the build up. Sometimes. I usually end up yelling, or saying things I shouldn't say.

Her mind began rapidly flipping through their journey like the pages of a book. Lessons initiated by acts of anger but always anchored in something deeper: self-doubt or shame or worry or denial or disillusionment. Fear. Tri, in an attempt to reconcile each experience with that first lesson, had finally pinpointed exactly what anger really was: a symptom. A signal flare that something else was going on underneath. 

“GIVE IT TO ME!”

Null loomed over them, dusty tendrils of shadow swirling around its body like the water had done in the submerged cavern. Stripped of all armor and claws, Null was a black mouth yawning wide into reality, the tunnel of its throat a gateway into everlasting darkness. Only the piece of the Prime Energy shown in the nothingness beyond, bright with power and yet…

Zelda tilted her head. Not afraid like she should’ve been but curious.

…unyielding.

She thought of her imposter’s melted face and magic expanding inside her and the fact Null’s voice was so loud, and yet its claws hadn’t reemerged clutching fresh star-beings to attack them.

“Well, shit,” she breathed, lifting her eyebrows as she looked between the pleading darkness and Tri’s beaming face. It was shouting because it had no magic left. No power to fight or flee unless Link could be coerced into giving up his piece. 

They had finally reached the bottom of Null’s well. 

Chapter Text

Zelda had given a lot of thought as to what the end might look like. 

At first, she’d assumed it was whatever awaited her on the other side of the Suthorn rift. Then, it became wherever Link was in the still world and the childish game to mend rifts and find him first. She’d really believed it awaited her in the throne room, her castle cleansed of its shadow, but her kingdom surely in need of someone more experienced to save it. But alas, a legend foretold otherwise, and the end became the soil of the Eternal Forest under her feet with the sanctions of all three goddesses in her heart. Two confrontations with her imposter, a fractured Prime Energy, and one unexpected kiss later, Zelda found herself in the heart of yet another still world, the one within Null itself, standing before the eternal nothing that would swallow all of Hyrule if she didn’t stop it.  

The moment was not unlike the others. Darkness before her, golden light on her shoulder, blood on her hands—but this felt different. Like how final keys felt different. 

At last, this was it. 

Breath heavy and exultant in her chest, her eyes shifted expectantly to Link. He was still on his knees, still transfixed by the commanding, ever-expanding void that was Null. The Sword of Might glowed dully on the floor, dropped at some point in the assault against his spirit. 

I haven’t been able to use many keys.

He couldn’t feel it. He didn’t know how close they were. Skies, they truly needed one another. Courage to fight to the end and wisdom to realize it. 

Ignoring Null’s black maw, she moved around to Link’s side and spoke over the stolen cries still echoing from the petrified bodies up above. “Hey, it doesn’t matter to me.”

He didn’t look at her, but fresh tears rolled down his face, leaving trails in the grime and gore caked over his cheeks. He looked exhausted. One more crack away from being irrevocably broken. 

Zelda drew a steadying breath and glanced down. The way they were situated put her in his shadow, and words that filled it were the same ones that followed her. Coward, liar, fake— how had she missed it? So alike all this time.

“Whatever happened before, it doesn’t matter to me,” she repeated. “I haven’t changed my mind.” Her pulse thundered in her ears. She moved a hand away from the wound on his shoulder and forced his gaze to turn to her with bloody fingers pressed to his cheek. “I’m with you.”

He was breathing like he had been running for a lifetime, the storm-blue of his eyes luminous against the dark inside him. She was staring into a different kind of rift, the only kind that could touch the likes of them. A deep, internal despair from which it felt like there was no escape.

But Zelda knew there was. 

She retrieved the sword from the ground. The magic quickened under her touch, ready for her to take it up, to ignite. 

“I’ve witnessed mistakes being made all over Hyrule, and, also, the vast efforts to right those mistakes.” The quiet undermining by Rhoam’s wanted posters, Chief Seera’s initial distrust folding to her daughter’s leadership, the Zora’s harmony, her father’s plea as king, gratitude extended with a membership card, Dartson’s literal breakthrough. 

The rift behind his eyes shivered. The debt he felt he owed wasn’t something she could absolve completely like she’d originally hoped, but she could help. Could show him there was still a path forward. An end. 

“I’ve made more than I can count, but we learn from our mistakes and try to do better. That’s what makes us exactly right for this destiny. For Hyrule.” She extended the sword back to Link. “You and me.” 

Link swallowed. Slowly, as if he feared some great, final judgment from the steel, he wrapped his trembling fingers around the hilt of the sword. But it was made for him, knew his hand. The blade blazed white, purifying whatever dregs of self-doubt remained. 

“Thanks,” he sighed, his voice echoing through the magic. 

“Anytime.”

Tri spun around, their music like wind chimes. 

Suddenly, Link was looking at her that way again. Like she was made of the same stardust as the magic that flowed through her. Like he couldn’t believe his eyes. His luck. “I know you said not to, but if we survive this, I just might have to kiss—”

Zelda let go of the sword. 

She could feel his surprise at the sudden break in their connection. Warmth spread through her chest as she rose to her feet, trying not to smirk while she dusted off the front of her shirt. Like they were standing in the middle of Hyrule Field and not at the end of the world. 

“I don’t remember telling you not to,” she said, glancing back down at him. The corner of his lip twitched. And for a moment she felt like stardust. Infinite. 

“Frauds! Fools masquerading as the priestess and the hero!” Null shouted, breaking the spell, but there was a new dread beneath its malice. 

Zelda rolled her head on her shoulders, eyes pulling into a glare that she fixed into the very center of Null’s darkness. She felt Link rise beside her, the glow of the sword brightening the edges of her vision. It would be a suitable moment for a speech. For pointed, wise words to cement her place as a true champion of Hyrule. Words worthy of a legendary priestess, a brave hero, a loving daughter, a loyal friend. 

She could only think of two:

“Shut up.”

A bright bolt of magic shot out of the Tri Rod. It caught with a jerk, a tether of light strung between her and the piece of the Prime Energy within Null’s infinite dark. Zelda grasped the center of the wand with both hands and threw herself backwards, her body almost perpendicular to the chamber floor before she eased back up and then craned herself back again, tugging at the piece as if it were a massive fish on a line.

Null shuttered, shadows roiling around the golden power radiating in its throat. No longer able to knit itself back together enough to clamp shut, it funneled its darkness inward like a black hole, trying to pull the Prime Energy deeper into the abyss. Tri was a high-pitched twang in her ear, every ounce of their power channeled into the bind. She gritted her teeth and pulled, her boots slipping in the filth splattered across the chamber floor. 

Her gaze snapped to Link. “Help me!” 

Without hesitation, the Sword of Might clattered to the floor, and he lunged, grabbing hold of the Tri Rod. Null screeched. 

“Pull!” she ordered. 

They leaned back together and found a rhythm. Pull, ease, pull harder , ease. Null flexed around each tug, but the light was growing bright, closer, more brilliant and clear until—

Zelda toppled to the ground. The bind magic fractured into slivers of light that cascaded down around the freed Prime Energy piece like confetti. Null wailed, the mauled remains of its body stretching like one giant hand toward the power source before the last of its strength gave out and it deflated into a dark, throbbing mess on the floor. 

Link touched her arm. He was glowing as if he were lit from within, his calm visage overlaid in gold. Warmth began to blossom in her chest, but instead of looking down, she gazed up. The soft radiance surrounding the Prime Energy piece was pulsing, calling out to the power inside her. Inside him. 

With an exhale, gentle, inevitable, her piece of the Prime Energy drifted out and away from her. It joined Link’s and floated up, forging back together at the corners where the three met with a definitive click.

“Give it…to…me...” Null’s voice bubbled out of the shadow viscera. 

It was Tri that scoffed, chiding, “Fat chance.”

Zelda grinned and shot a glance at Link. This time he was ready. Grinning, too. Darkness before them, golden light on their shoulders, blood on their hands. Together. 

They nodded in unison and extended their hands, her right to his left, toward the Prime Energy. A final, bitter howl filled the chamber, but Zelda reached through it, the shared wish for Hyrule’s deliverance unspoken between them but louder still. 

The moment their fingertips brushed the surface of the Prime Energy, the artifact ignited. Everything made of dark matter turned radiant, driving the shadows inward until Null and the chamber of its body became the perfect inverse of its very nature. An ouroboros of golden light unable to resist consuming itself. It disappeared, bleeding into a vast, bright nothingness that turned into an everything from which Null could never be reborn. 

—

When the light finally faded, Zelda found herself back in the still world composed of all the random, stolen parts of her kingdom. Link stood beside her, his body bent with fatigue but upright. Breathing. Tri whirled around the Prime Energy floating before them, a gleeful, exuberant ringing that beckoned their friends to join in. And join they did.

They always gathered when they were preparing to combine their power and heal a rift, but the magnitude of their numbers in the space left Zelda awestruck. A galaxy of rescued star-beings glittered against the purple sky, their melody one of joyous reunion. Redemption. 

She slid her hand into Link’s and squeezed. “This is the best part.”

Tri burst towards the heavens like a comet. They built power with three tremendous explosions of speed, each adding a different color to the halo of velocity around them—gold, green and then red. The star-beings swirled after them, strands of light fluttering like ribbons in Tri’s wake.

Zelda kept her eyes open for as long as she could, watching as swathes of her kingdom came to life as if she were looking up at a window in the sky. Lush green trees bloomed, and dirt roads crisscrossed like veins across the reforming regions. Sand poured back into the desert, water sloshed down riverbeds and filled lakes back to their brims. Mountains and houses sprang up like daisies.

When the light became too much, she closed her eyes and surrendered to the warm embrace of Tri’s magic. They had done it. Null was gone. Rifts would no longer plague her kingdom. Hyrule and its people would be restored. Healed.  And best of all, she, Link, and Tri would get to see it. 

They were all going home. What had Lueberry called it, a miracle of the greatest kind? 

“Zelda…” said Tri. 

She opened her eyes. 

The still world had vanished. Zelda was standing in a realm of white light, the Prime Energy and Link nowhere to be found, though something reassured her he was fine. Already in Hyrule, waiting for her. She quickly took inventory of herself. Her body felt weightless. Rejuvenated. Her wounds had been mended, the blood and grime that had painted her skin and clothes cleansed. 

Tri and a circle of their friends were drifting around her. They began to move in a slow, gentle ring, reminiscent of a child’s game. Smiling, she yielded to the moment, twirling lazily and letting Link’s cloak flutter from her shoulders. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Lueberry’s face (Impa’s, her father’s) when they all returned.

The other star-beings ascended into the light, leaving only Tri behind. Zelda settled into a relaxed stance, her hands on her hips while her mind continued to buzz with excitement over their future. Her father couldn’t possibly insist she return to a sheltered life behind the castle walls now that she’d traveled into still worlds. No greater danger existed, and she proved herself beyond capable.  

Almost as if they could read her thoughts, Tri spoke,“The rifts will disappear, and your world will be restored to a state of peace.”

Peace. She sighed. Safe. How long had it been since she’d last felt that way? How long since Hyrule could truthfully declare itself so? 

“Me and my friends came here to heal an injured world,” Tri continued. 

Zelda smiled. Everyone in Hyrule would be able to see Tri now. A good thing, she decided. Definitively. They would finally receive the recognition they deserved for all the good they’d done for Hyrule. All the good they would continue to do with Zelda and Link. It wouldn’t be as dire as mending rifts, but Tri’s power would still be a tremendous asset. She imagined the three of them leading the effort to better connect the regions…

“Now that Null isn’t around anymore, everything will be OK…” 

The strange, familiar edge of closure in their voice congealed Zelda’s thoughts until they came to a full stop. She blinked, her heart kicking nervously in her chest. The moment had turned heavy. Important. 

Like she’d been handed one last final key.

“With Null gone, there’s no need for us anymore… We will return to the goddesses to slumber.” 

Zelda was back in Null’s body, walking along the bridge. Link up ahead, Tri at her shoulder, a question of togetherness in her ear. She thought it had come about because of the kiss and whatever Tri concluded that meant for her and Link, but then the conversation had shifted to loneliness. Zelda’s loneliness. 

“This is where we part.” The last note of Tri’s melodious voice stretched into a single, droning tone between Zelda’s ears that melted into the echo from her memory:

I just don’t want you to be alone when this is over.

The fight was finished. Their purpose served. This was why they asked about Link. Why they’d been worried about them being together.

Tri was leaving her. 

Heat prickled up her neck. No. They couldn’t go. Not after everything they’d been through. Not when there was still so much left to do! Trade, and travel, and commonwealth. Echo magic was going to help bring everyone together. 

Together.

Anger flared white-hot inside her, her hands curling into fists so tight they shook. She wanted to shout. How could Tri have kept this from her? Didn’t she have the right to hear important consequences of a fight before she threw all of herself into it? Not that she wouldn’t have done everything to stop Null, but they could’ve planned better. Could have figured out a way to make it so the star-beings could stay…unless it’s what they wanted? What Tri wanted…

“What’s wrong, Zelda?” Tri asked gently with a tilt. 

Zelda felt herself tilting, too, the ground underneath her slanting until she was forced to see her anger for what it really was. 

It was too painful to claim. 

Tri said they were returning to the goddesses to slumber. To rest. The oldest historical texts in the castle library all mentioned the rifts. Generations upon generations of darkness appearing and then disappearing. Sometimes people credited Royal efforts for their salvation; other times, it was attributed to devotion. Prayer. The source of the miracle changed with the seasons,but the darkness remained. They now knew the mending had been the star-beings. All this time, quietly repairing Hyrule, stitching shadow-blown seams back together to protect life from Null. Centuries of fighting. Of course, they would want to rest. They deserved it. 

Nothing had changed. They were all going home. She just hadn’t realized Tri had a different one. 

Tri drifted closer to her, their body tilting the other way, trying to make sense of her silence. “Hyrule is back to normal, and me and my friends have finished our work here. But you seem…like you’re not happy.”

A tear betrayed her and leaked out of the corner of her eye. Wisdom to recognize the end. Now all she needed was the courage to face it. She wished Link were beside her. Not because she had no courage of her own, on the contrary, she had plenty, but it was easier to harness when he was there. 

She shook out her hands and hastily smudged her cheek with the side of her palm. “No, no, I am…I’m…” her voice gave out. Zelda puffed out her cheeks. “I’m really ha—”

Her voice crumbled back into her throat. More tears spilled free, trailing down both sides of her face, and she ducked her head to conceal them. Just say it, she pleaded with herself. Say the stupid word. ‘Happy’. You’re happy for them. Her hands curled into fists again, nails deepening the half moons left moments before.

Her mouth opened for a third time, but there was no sound at all. Just more tears she no longer had the strength to hide. 

“Oh, I understand now,” Tri said. Their light was warm on her face and when she looked up through the blur of her tears, the world was not white, but golden. “We won’t be together anymore. And… that’s kind of sad, huh…”

A confirming sob broke free of her lips. She wiped her eyes and Tri moved back into focus, the pattern of their face unchanged yet deeply contemplative. She wanted to assure them that ‘sad’ wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. That, like anger, it could be rooted in something else—something beautiful—but Tri got there first. 

“Zelda, when I look at you I feel all warm inside!” Tri declared with a twirl. “I think… I want to tell you about this feeling.”

Her voice was still a hostage in her throat. She swallowed, trying to set it free, but the only sound she could muster was another sob. 

Tri bowed their body to her. “I’m feeling ‘thank you’ .”

She laughed and nodded. Pride was a beacon in her heart. 

“I didn’t understand this feeling before, but I do now,” Tri paused, considering her for a moment. No, not considering. Something else. Their shine was more of a glisten. Sunlight on water. 

“I… I have to go.”

She nodded again. It was the only thing she could offer. 

Tri dipped their body forward and then gave an abrupt, confident twirl. “Zelda. I’m grateful to have known you.”

A smile struggled onto her lips. It felt as if she were coming apart and together all at once, but her voice escaped through the space created. “I-I’m grateful to have known you, too” 

“Thank you.”

The air shifted. A quickening, like the sand at the end of an hourglass. Like a door getting ready to close, the hand holding it open growing tired. Ready. 

Tri extended their small arms to Zelda. She reached out a hand, and everything she wanted to say but couldn’t passing through their touch. In return, she felt Tri’s magic flow through her one more time, starlight filling her well until it spilled over. She didn’t know what she would do with all the space inside her when their connection broke and the magic was gone for good. What became of a vessel when what it was designed to carry was laid to rest? Did it cease to be a vessel? Could it occupy itself with different burdens? Perhaps a lighter one? Or did everything feel lighter when it was your choice? 

Tri was beginning to ascend, a distant, gentle song calling them home. Zelda strained, lifting up onto her toes until she couldn’t stretch further, and Tri’s warmth snapped off her fingers. They parted slowly, Zelda fading into the light while Tri rose into the beyond, their last gift a safe passage back to her liberated kingdom, the boy she’d saved, and a reputation that was extraordinary. 

Legendary. 

—

Link’s house was just as ordinary as she remembered, but Zelda wasn’t about to tell him that.

He ushered her inside with a grand flourish of his hand, like the sentry knights did for those visiting the castle. Shortly after their return, the king released an official decree regarding the opening of the castle’s doors. All were welcome to seek comfort within its walls and an audience with their soon-to-be queen, though the trip she and Link were embarking upon would have her coming to them. Nevertheless, the doors stood open, and the entire kingdom was cordially invited to gather within for her coronation next fall. 

It felt a little strange to her, saving the world before becoming queen, but if the truth could be told out of order when need be, so too could her accession. In a way, it felt like she’d earned it. 

Zelda bowed, leaning into Link’s game with a grin as she stepped over the familiar threshold. Her eyes flitted across the various regions, still map-like in their order, and noted the storage pots (markedly better stocked), the stuffed owl (hastily tucked beside the dresser by the angle it was peeking out), and the cobweb (even more impressive) high in the back corner.

“It’s not much, but it’s home,” Link said with a shrug. 

Sunlight glanced off the edge of metal trimmings as she continued to look around, the flashes of gold playing tricks on her eyes. Her heart. In neglecting to mention her familiarity with the place, she’d also been unable to share with Link the real reason she’d wanted to stop before they continued east to Jabul Waters. 

Their tour of Hyrule was meant to be an assessment of the post-Null world. Vanquishing darkness did not simply eradicate all the needs of a kingdom. There were still monsters to clear, bridges to be built between places and people. She’d recommended they start in Suthorn under the guise of having Lueberry check their weapons one last time, but it was really because of Tri.

“It’s…not what I expected,” she admitted, the truth of her words, and her grief, tucked under the teasing in her tone. 

“Oh?” 

She interlocked her arms behind her back and lifted her nose, circling the perimeter of the room in mock scrutiny. “No weapon mounts? No targets or dummies for practice? Bed unmade?” She tutted toward the bedchamber before turning on her heel with militant-like attention that would make General Wright swoon. “What kind of swordsman are you?”

Link was inches from her. He still moved in a way that didn’t seem possible, but it was watching him speak, seeing his lips move with his voice returned to him, that mesmerized her most.

“Same kind as you.” He reached forward to grab the hilt of her sword, guiding her even closer. “Wasn’t the echo of your bed unmade?” 

Her face fell at the mention of Tri’s magic. Not completely, but enough to stall the tension building pleasantly between them.

Link, ever perceptive, let go of her sword and withdrew a step. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. A moment touched by gold turned suddenly heavy. Everyone wondered where the little star-being had gone, so the story of Tri’s departure was told in Castle Town. She imagined she would be telling it over and over again very soon. The tour would also be a retracing of their journey together. All the good they had done. 

“Do…you want something to drink?” Link said.

She swallowed and nodded, attempting to pull together the rapidly fraying threads of her composure. 

As he turned toward the kitchen, Zelda released a shaky breath and wiped her face, blurry eyes drifting down to the sword on her hip. It was an exceptional blade, crafted from resources donated from all over Hyrule when word got out the Princess required a weapon. Link had wanted Lueberry to use what remained of the Might crystals to make it at the expense of his own ever needing repairs, but Zelda declined. It was Link’s magic, like the echoes had been Tri’s. Without Tri, there was nothing to channel through the Tri Rod, so she’d mounted it in her bedroom. It hung in the indirect path of the sun, so when the light hit it in the morning, she awoke to gold behind her eyelids.

This weapon was entirely her own. Ore from the mines of Eldin, bronze from one of Condé’s snow shovels, gem and river stones from the Zora, Gerudo silk and Kakariko leather woven along the grip. Even the Deku’s had provided wood for the scabbard. No magic flowed through her when she held it. The bow Lueberry was making next would not have any, either, and yet when she held it, she felt more powerful than ever. An extension of her people’s faith in her with or without magic. 

“Here.”

Link appeared with a single cup of steaming tea and handed it to her. She accepted it, wrapping it tight with both hands so the warmth anchored her. 

When he just stood there, waiting for her to drink, she frowned. 

“Aren’t you having some?”

“I would, but I could only find one cup. Could’ve sworn I had two, but…” his voice trailed off, his gaze flickering to the desk beside his bed. Zelda’s heart skipped. The replica that had given her the confidence to head to the Suthorn rift was gone a thousand times over.

Another moment touched by gold and yet, with him there, with the sunlight through the window and the sword on her hip and the ordinary house that had been the beginning of it all, it didn’t feel heavy. It felt right. 

“Shit.” She let out a breathy laugh. Another tear escaped down her cheek. 

Link tilted his head, his expression caught somewhere between curiosity and concern. He reached forward and gently swiped the tear with his thumb, undeterred by it or the cursing. 

She took at breath. Slow and steady and sure. She could handle curious. Thanks to Tri, not only was she capable, she was a bit of an expert.

Leaning over the cup, she paused just shy of his lips, speaking softly before she closed the distance.

"I can explain."