Chapter Text
It was difficult to remember the time before. Before his power was sealed. Before everything had gone disastrously wrong. Before his armies had razed the land of Hyrule. Before the land had been granted its extended reprieve. Before he was imprisoned in the land’s depths.
In the ancient past, long before the Sheikah developed their technology that mimicked divine power, long before the Calamity had been born of his malice, and prior even the construction of the castle atop his crypt had been built, the Demon King had waged a relentless campaign against Hyrule and her king. Triumph followed triumph, until treachery, not might, became his undoing.
However, his defeat had neither been conclusive nor without enormous cost. The fact that the kingdom of Hyrule had survived at all had been anything but certain—a testament to the strength of his conviction. The Demon King’s malice endured, his power contained but unyielding, a relentless current flowing through his veins.
And the seal, though strong, bore the weight of impermanence. It fractured, weakening further with every passing day. Though it had been countless millennia since the Demon King last felt sand under his feet and the sun's touch upon his brow, his influence persisted, leaving scars etched deep into the fabric of the land. Oceans surged, mountains sundered, and the very ground disgorged fire—an unequivocal testament to his power, even while he remained confined.
As eons slipped by, the demon’s power grew—an insidious miasma that strangled life wherever it seeped up from beneath the earth. Creatures lived and died. His minions, once feral beasts, became a cohesive force. Hope fled, replaced by discord and fear. An ominous pall seemed to hover over the land, filling all who walked the earth and flew in her skies with indefinable dread.
All the while, the Demon King, a creature of unwavering patience, waited. He did not despair the ages spent in captivity but anticipated his eventual counterstroke. He knew that each day that passed was a day nearer his ultimate prize. The time bought by Hyrule’s protectors approached its end, while his reckoning drew inexorably nearer. His power remained.
Within his emaciated chest, his heart still beat, consuming his limited senses with its rhythmic thumping. With each thud, his power ebbed and flowed in pools and swirling mists. Over the generations, that power had occasionally congealed, coalescing into something closer to a sentient being. Mere phantoms of the true King. They had each been defeated in time, and yet each time their raw, savage power had nearly brought the entire land of Hyrule to her knees.
If they could have, his blackened, cracked lips would have drawn up into a smile. If only the denizens of Hyrule could know the true threat—the power—that lay in wait beneath their feet. Very soon, the people who had scorned and opposed him would witness a true king’s revival and the birth of a new world.
The Demon King knew his captivity would soon come to an end.
For the time now approached that the seal on his power would fail. The ancient magic grew increasingly impotent with each passing moment. He waited with anticipation for the moment of his resurrection while, unbeknownst even to him, the two who would forever oppose him drew near.