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She is a pale ribbon in the blue abyss of the sky when it finally becomes real. Link’s knees hit the Akkalan sand. Pain comes like the merciless ocean, one wave after another, battering him inside and out.
The sun fades into a dim gold band on the western horizon, and the water grows black, and somehow his eyes remain dry. He doesn’t know where to go, so he makes the mistake of going home. Shadows blanket Hateno; he sticks close to their anonymity, uses them to avoid looking at the set table or the framed pictures or anything that might serve as a reminder. But it’s no use. The bed still smells so much of her.
Link supposes he sleeps, because his dreams are violent and red, and he wakes alone to a blinding dawn and a clash of clarity. He stumbles out of bed and into his clothes, reaching for the Purah Pad. His hair is tangled and his eyes are sore and his stomach is roiling, but he will not lay here and render her sacrifice futile.
He goes to the Depths, because his only other path forward involves finding another Sage, and for some reason that thought is unbearable. Much easier to crawl like a rat along the dark path of winged statues. He fights everything in sight, or his body does; he isn’t inside it. Even when the monsters get a few hits in—something he never allows—the pain doesn’t register. He wins anyway. He doesn’t know how to do anything else.
Master Kohga is a joke of a man, a threat Link should be able to vanquish in his sleep. But every breath he draws is thick with gloom. He’s clumsier than he’s ever been, clumsier than he was while dying from Guardian lasers at the end of the world. When the construct slams him into the cold floor and pins him there, Link clings to his last memory of his former self: the mud and the fire, the warmth leeching away, Zelda blazing with golden life even as his own faded. She begged him to stay. He tried, and he failed—not for the last time.
He closes his eyes.
“I’ll go take my rightful place in the darkness below the castle,” Kohga crows, “where the Demon King now dwells—where the end of all things will begin!”
It doesn’t matter. The end has already happened, just inside of Link. He is in the mud of the Ash Swamp, safe in her arms, the Master Sword clutched between his bloody fingers.
The Master Sword.
It will be the weapon that defeats the Demon King.
By the time the construct’s final blow craters the earth, Link is already on his feet.
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The morning sun is garishly bright over Lookout Landing—that means he was in the Depths for at least a day. His vision wavers and swims. His legs shake beneath him.
He finds Josha on the first floor of the quarters she shares with Purah, scribbling wildly on the chalkboard. Link only means to stay only long enough only to deliver the news about Kohga and resupply. But she looks at him, hard, all throughout his brief explanation—and when she calls upstairs, Purah descends from their living quarters, still yawning and twisting her hair into a bun, her hands freezing at the sight of Link.
“He came from the Depths,” Josha tells her. “He says he defeated Master Kohga. But look how pale he is, Doc. Just like that gloomsick guy in the hideout.”
“How long were you down there?” Purah asks Link calmly.
Though he doesn’t look at her face, something in her voice frightens him. He eyes the opening behind her, then the rear door, wondering which will get him away faster.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Purah says. “You know what Zelda would—”
Link jackknifes away, but scholar or no, Purah is Sheikah-trained and fast enough to grab his real arm. He flinches at pain he didn’t feel until now. Even as her hand comes away red, he’s trying to escape again—except Josha is blocking his path, and Purah’s gripping the awful Zonai wrist that doesn’t belong to him, and she’s demanding, “Did you find her? What happened? Link, what happened to her?”
He doesn’t own this secret. Purah grew up alongside the princess, unearthed the mysteries of Hyrule at her side, survived the Calamity to see her again. Besides, Link should be shouting Zelda’s sacrifice from the rooftops, making sure every soul in Hyrule understands what she did for them. Except that it means nothing unless he is worthy of it, and he’s not. He feels smaller with every breath he takes, shrinking down to that single, fatal moment: the dark, the corruption inside him, and Zelda’s fingers slipping through his.
Link takes one step forward, and then his legs fail. Purah’s arms are under his, lowering him carefully to the floor, and she’s saying something that he can’t comprehend—he’s choking on panic, on gloom, on the memory of Zelda being torn asunder. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tries to twist away when Purah starts unbuckling his leathers.
“I’ve seen worse,” she says sternly, and this time he hears her, because she speaks with the weight of one hundred and twenty years.
“Purah,” Link replies feverishly, “I failed her.”
“You said that before I put you in the Shrine of Resurrection too. It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now. Lift your arms, please.”
She pulls the tunic and chainmail off like he’s a child, sighing at the mass of bruises and cuts she finds underneath—nothing serious, nothing that feels real, even as she works on them with practiced patience. Josha returns with a tray of sundelion rice balls, which Link chokes down like ashes at her behest. If they notice that his cheeks are wet, they don’t comment. In his limited memory he has only ever given his tears to one person, and he keeps them silent until he’s alone—then, curled under a blanket on the floor of that cool, quiet room, he cries until he has nothing left.
This time, he drifts into a gentle dream. She stands in the swaying grass, her dress white against the clearing sky, and asks if he remembers her. The answer is yes: she is all the Shrine left him with. Beyond that there is only everything they lost, and the blood under his fingernails, and a terrifying void that swallows more of him every day. But she reaches through it all to cradle his face in her hands.
Link doesn’t feel better upon waking, exactly, but two facts stand out in sharp relief. The first is that he will tear the Demon King limb from limb. The second is that he will bring Zelda back to herself or die trying.
That’s what he tells Purah when she comes to check on him, and when she finishes drying her own tears, she says, “Zelda has so much faith in you. It carried her through the Calamity. It gave her the strength for this decision. And that’s because you have never let her down. Don’t forget that.”
Link isn’t convinced, but he won’t forget. He promised himself he wouldn’t forget anything, ever again.
Later, he watches some vacant imposter disappear into the flames of Death Mountain. Whoever or whatever that is contains no trace of the girl he held in his arms through rain and ruin, or the woman who has spent years piecing their kingdom back together with tireless love and heartbreaking smiles. But far above his head, he swears he sees movement between the thick clouds, white scales glittering in sunlight.
The things we do, Zelda, he thinks. The things they make us do. I can’t stand it.
His real hand touches the burn scars that climb up his neck and jaw, the way she touched him that day they reunited in the field, and so many times since. She found him over and over. He will do the same.
Link glances skyward one last time, and then he throws himself into the Depths.
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