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Chapter Text

Link had come unstuck in time.

He felt it deep in his bones. The currents of time threatened to sweep his era out from under him, and it was only by virtue of his innate magic—empowered by Mineru’s Secret Stone, worn on his wrist—that he remained tenuously lodged in the present. The Stone’s flickering yellow glow cast the Depths’ gray soil in sickly light.

He couldn’t keep it up for much longer, as tired as he was, but if he dropped his hold on time he would slip away, and he couldn’t let that happen. Not yet. He hadn’t slept, expecting he would wake up centuries in the past, and spent the night preparing instead.

Queen Zelda, the other Sages, and their Sheikah friends had thrown everything into supplying him for whatever adventure awaited once he alerted them. They even withheld their comments about Link’s hoarding tendencies—for once—as they loaded his slate’s inventory with elixirs and food and equipment. Robbie tried to slip in the prototype prosthetic arm he had made, only stymied because Link, quite frankly, couldn’t be bothered with maintaining it and they both knew it.

Now he was in the Depths, the dimly lit, cavernous space far below the Spring of Courage and its statue of the goddess. Link stood at the edge of a pool, fed by water trickling down from the spring above, dressed in his old blue leathers, slate at his hip and broadsword on his back. Joining the slate on his belt was an inactive Sheikah-tech short sword, gained from his previous adventure through time.

He had hoped that adventure would be his last. He had hoped that about his second and third adventures, too.

There was only one thing left to do before he left for the fifth.

A voice swept into Link’s mind like mist over a cemetery. My favorite nephew returns. 

Link sighed, bowing his head in exhaustion, and turned to the enormous statue standing at the head of the pond, a dark mirror of the goddess statue above. “I’m not in the mood for another trial, Poe.”

The voice laughed, far lighter than should come from a statue the size of a temple. Floating before the statue was a thin, spectral man with red hair, an elbow propped on a knee and a hand under his chin. He wore a toothy smile, fixed as if painted on his face.

“There is no need. The mask is yours; I am but its caretaker.” Poe’s avatar gestured to the cave opposite his statue.

Link narrowed his eyes as he looked into the dark cave, wondering if there had been a need for a trial the first time. He suspected not. Nevertheless, he relaxed as much as he could while still hanging onto time. His stomach churned from the sustained effort and lack of rest, and to not have to prove himself—again—was a relief.

He took a step towards the dark shrine before turning back to the floating man. “Do you know what’s happened? What’s happening?”

Despite the etched smile, something dark crossed Poe’s face. “What has my sister told you?”

Link tried to rub the ache out of his forehead. He had stopped at a statue of Hylia first, of course. Not just out of habit, but for her expertise as a goddess of time. The visit had been frustratingly unproductive. The goddess seemed…strained. Link had barely finished asking before Hylia directed him here.

She had told him only one other thing: Protect Hyrule at all costs.

Which he thought went without saying, but he wasn’t going to question a goddess whose edict came between gritted teeth.

“Little. All I know is something has happened to time. It took—” Link grimaced.

He found out something was wrong shortly before he felt the tug himself. It was early yesterday when Midori suddenly vanished. One moment Link’s ward was there, filling a waterskin at the river, and he was gone the next. It was so sudden Link thought it was a trick of the light at first, but then he approached the empty spot and felt ethereal sand against his skin—a sure sign of time magic.

When he arrived in Castle Town, crashing into Zelda’s library with the force of a tornado, he felt the pull himself. He slipped then and barely caught onto time before it ripped away any further, but he ended up in the library an hour before he actually arrived, which was extremely surprising for Zelda and Purah, who watched him appear from seemingly nowhere.

He knew then what had happened to Midori, and what would have happened to him if he wasn’t the Sage of Time.

Even then, he could only give himself time to prepare for the inevitable, for his grip to falter, and so here he was.

“Something drew Midori to the past,” he growled, glaring at the cave. This wasn’t supposed to happen—there had been a deal. “It’s trying to take me, too. I need…assurance.”

Poe tilted his head. “I see, I see. That is wise. You understand what it means for you to traverse time.”

Link ducked into the cave mouth, noting the scraps of burnt ofuda lining the walls, the avatar floating behind him. “‘Mine is the Branch,’” he muttered.

He and Zelda both possessed time magic, but from two different originators. Zelda, whose power came from Hylia, entered a causal loop when she traveled to the past. 

Link, however…

When they used his magic to travel to the start of the Calamity a hundred years prior, saving their past selves and the Champions, they had intentionally formed a new timeline—a branch parallel to their own.

They didn’t know which form of time travel this pull took, and Link wasn’t going to risk getting trapped in a parallel branch, unable to return to his home time. He needed a force with far greater control over time than he possessed.

At the back of the cave, sitting on an altar and wreathed in protective seals, was a box. Link rested his hand on it and took a deep breath.

“You didn’t answer me,” Link said, glancing over his shoulder at the avatar. “What’s happening? Surely you know.”

Poe paused, his avatar’s features outlined in stark contrast from the rootlight outside the cave. “It is an entity beyond us custodians—a force equal and opposite to our creator mothers. It is something I, in my capacity as a god of death, have no hold over.”

“What is it?”

The avatar’s held tilted. “Nothing.”

Link’s brows furrowed in confusion, and he opened his mouth to ask further before Poe’s expression gave him pause. The avatar’s mouth was still locked in that painted smile, but its eyes were wide open in a sort of madness—or fear.

“Nothing,” Link repeated.

“That which existed before time and space,” Poe confirmed. “The void. It is all-consuming, forever devouring the world from within. Our mothers left their power of creation to remake that which is lost, but the balance has shifted towards destruction.” Poe’s gaze shifted from Link to the box. “Even time itself cannot escape.”

Link narrowed his eyes. “What do we do?”

Poe rubbed his chin, a gesture strangely human if not for the avatar’s stiff movements and fixed grin. “What Heroes always do, I suppose. Go on an adventure. I have nothing else to offer, only my belief in your abilities.”

Link smiled weakly. He hadn’t expected more than that from Poe, although he had hoped. With a deep breath, he steeled himself and pried open the box. Inside, right where he had left it two years before, lay a mask, adorned with blue and red marks and framed with white hair. Otherwise, the mask’s features mirrored Link’s perfectly.

“One more time,” Link said under his breath. He tapped the mask against his slate, disappearing it into his inventory. With a brief wave to Poe, he let go of the present and fell away.

The sensation hit him like plunging into the chasms of the Gerudo desert, a torrent of sand and shadow slicing past his skin as he fell, weightless, below the surface. Darkness closed in and tossed him through time’s currents like a leaf in river rapids—pulled and pushed, swept towards some unknown time and destination.

Desperate for control—for orientation, for air—Link grabbed onto time once more in the in-between space, and for just a moment he could see a pattern in the currents.

When he had travelled back in time before, he understood its shape as well as any mortal could—a river of infinite distributaries flowing from past to present. A tree of endless branches.

When he looked at time now, as he fought to stay afloat in its currents, it wasn’t a river or a tree.

It was a maelstrom.

△△△

Link had come unstuck in time.

By the time he realized it, it was too late.

He jogged through the castle halls, his speed just shy of impropriety, royal blue scarf trailing in his wake. The sudden summons had him rushing—he hadn’t even taken the time to find his cap—his sword and shield bouncing against his back with each step.

Skidding to a halt outside the Queen’s strategy room, he took a moment to straighten his tunic and brush hair out of his eyes. He knocked on the door and Queen Zelda’s voice called him in.

Zelda stood on the far balcony, silhouetted against the open air, her posture tense. As he passed the map table, Link nodded briefly towards the shadows, suspecting Commander Impa was in the room, and moved to Zelda’s side.

From this vantage, the castle towered over the world below. Castle Town’s rooftops huddled safely behind the city walls like nesting birds. Beyond them, lush forests transitioned into plains and jagged mountains. The view should have been peaceful.

But on the horizon, the land sizzled with purple light.

Link’s shoulders sank. He stared at the rift, disbelief warring with weary resignation. “Again?”

Zelda sighed. “It appears so.”

“Have you heard anything from Lana and Cia?”

“Not yet. I sent a message to them when I sent for you.”

Link leaned forward, resting his forearms on the balcony’s stone wall, eyes fixed on the purple line in the distance.

He never asked to be Hyrule’s foremost expert on warfare across time and space—or as his siblings-in-arms called it, Time Shenanigans—but his previous adventure had forced the experience upon him. He would have liked his experience to never be relevant again.

It had been two years since a rift last opened—since he said goodbye to his comrades across the eras. He missed them dearly, but he’d made his peace with their parting. They belonged to their own times, just as he belonged to his.

Apparently, someone—or something—disagreed.

Zelda rubbed her right hand absently. “It has been some time since I last heard from Lana.”

Link drummed his fingers against the wall. Getting in contact with the seer was paramount, not just because she could open and close rifts with her magic, or because of the piece of the Triforce she guarded. She was a friend, and if the rifts were opening again, something may have happened to her.

The captain turned away from the purple line and ran a hand through his hair, mentally laying out how the next several months of his life would go. After they contacted Lana…

Well, then it was to whatever era the closest rift dropped him and his company, to fight monsters on the other side and sever the connection between eras. Another grueling campaign to patch up holes in reality someone insisted on tearing open.

“I’ll make my preparations immediately,” Link said, bowing with practiced efficiency. “We can be at the Valley of Seers in three days.”

“Thank you, Captain. You have the crown’s full support.” Zelda turned to bid him farewell, but it was too late.

The captain had vanished.

△△△

Link had come unstuck in time.

He knew that. He had long since had what he would describe as an “adversarial” relationship with time. They were not on speaking terms. He was done with Time Shenanigans.

At 4:59am, he woke up, grumbling softly about the shorter days of fall making him work in the dark. Malon mumbled an incoherent but concurring response as she, too, rolled out of bed and stretched away the last vestiges of sleep. She lit lanterns for the both of them and they got dressed for the day.

Link pulled on his boots at the front door, tapping them against the hard ground outside, and crossed the road to the barn. He rumbled good morning to the horses and cattle and went through his morning routine of checking them over for illness, replenishing their food and water, and cleaning the bedding. His wife, in the meantime, would be looking after the cuccos—the little devil birds. Link had a truce with time, not with poultry.

He left the barn around the same time Malon was returning to the house from her work. As they passed each other on the road, he handed her his extinguished lantern and she hip-checked him teasingly. Giggling, she escaped into the house before he could playfully retaliate.

While Malon cooked breakfast, Link did his rounds of the property, checking for damaged fencing. He paused at a suspicious fencepost and gave it an inquisitive tap with his boot. It’d be fine for a few weeks, but he’d have to replace it before winter.

He gasped, his breath visible in the brisk morning air. Something sharp settled into his chest without warning—a dry, sandy feeling he was terribly familiar with.

Link jolted towards the house, vaulting over the garden fence to get there faster. He ripped open the front door and dove into the building, pausing only to give Malon an apologetic look as she stared at him, shocked and startled, from the kitchen.

“Time shit,” he said, and ran up the stairs, muddy boots and all.

Link heard Malon protesting below, but he didn’t have time to explain further; he wasn’t going to let this happen, whatever it was. He didn’t exactly have a plan, only a hope and a prayer. Shoving their bed to the side, he pulled out a heavy, locked chest. With some fumbling and cursing, he found the key in Malon’s nightstand and opened the box.

The magical power locked within the chest erupted out as if releasing a breath held for too long. Link flinched at the rush of magical energy, having avoided the items locked within for so long, and dug into the pile.

Tucked safely in the folds of a few enchanted tunics was a pale blue ocarina. He put it to his mouth, set his fingers against the correct holes—

At 8:33am, Link disappeared from Lon Lon Ranch.

△△△

Link had come unstuck in time.

Zelda felt it in the air when it happened, the miniscule ripple in reality when her chosen hero vanished. She heard the crumbling at the edges of existence, like wind rushing past her ears as she dove from the skies. For a brief moment, she remembered how to look at time not as a mortal, but as a goddess.

She jumped to her feet and ran.

Without a moment of hesitation, she jumped off the sky island from the nearest dock, put her fingers to her mouth, and whistled as loud as she could. Seconds after she fell below the deepest reaches of the floating islands, her loftwing snatched her out of the sky in a flurry of purple feathers. Zelda reoriented herself on the saddle, took hold of Belisana’s reins, and urged her towards the nearest breach in the cloud barrier, to the Sealed Grounds.

They had barely reached the surface, near the statue of Hylia that had once stood vigil over Skyloft, when Zelda jumped off her loftwing’s back, running straight into the temple past a few startled surface settlers and kikwis. The temple itself was empty, as its sacred inhabitants were to be left to their slumber—or so they thought.

She paused by a dip in the central pathway, where a collection of timeshift stone waited dormant. A word, sung in an ancient and unknowable language, caused the stone to rise from the floor as a pillar and shatter into a flurry of glowing cubes. Zelda turned away as the cubes reformed into their true configuration—an enormous gear, the clockwork of reality made manifest—and she walked up the stairs to the dais at the far end of the temple.

Set in the dais, glowing softly in the temple’s dim light, was the Master Sword. Zelda knelt before it, her hand resting on the blade’s cross guard.

“I’m sorry to wake you so soon, Fi,” she whispered.

A chime emanated from the sword, soft and tired. If Link requires my aid, I will go, Your Grace.

“Thank you.” Zelda swallowed the lump in her throat and stood, bracing her feet on either side of the dais, and pulled the blade free from her resting place. She carried the sword reverently towards the reactivated Gate of Time, watching as its central gear turned in time with her heartbeat.

Pausing before the Gate, Zelda raised the hilt of the Master Sword to her mouth and whispered a command: “Save all you can.”

The sword chimed once more, and Zelda raised the blade. With a smooth movement, she flung the sword through the Gate like a javelin.

The Master Sword disappeared into time, following Hylia’s chosen hero into the future.

△△△

Linkle had come unstuck in time.

Her feathered boots crunched on the dirt path as she whistled a merry tune, a wicker basket swinging at her side and her compass dangling loosely on its chain. The forest hummed with birdsong, and golden rays of sunlight filtered through the trees. Her map—hand-drawn and smudged with use—peeked out from the basket’s edge, nestled alongside a bundle of carrots and a fresh loaf of bread.

“Keep up, Coo!” Linkle called over her shoulder.

A disgruntled cluck answered. Grinning, Linkle glanced back to see her favorite cucco, a fluffy white ball of feathers with an eternally grumpy expression, flapping after her. She had tried leaving Coo behind this morning, but the feisty bird had darted through the gate faster than she could shut it.

“You can’t come running after me every time I leave the house, you know,” Linkle scolded teasingly. “What if Grandma wants eggs for breakfast?”

Coo tilted her head and fluffed her feathers indignantly, as if saying not my problem.

Linkle laughed. “Fine, fine. You’re the boss, Mama Cucco.”

The trees parted, revealing a downhill slope that led to the coast. Linkle paused at the crest, taking in the village wrapping around the bay below. Somewhere down there, someone needed help—or so the Seeker’s Guild claimed.

It wouldn’t be a grand adventure—nothing like the war across time and space she stumbled into last year, when a rift opened to the captain’s time. The Guild dealt in…smaller adventures. Side quests, if you will. A missing cat, a delivery to make, maybe someone looking for an extra pair of hands on their fishing boat.

But Linkle didn’t mind. Helping people was what she loved most, whether the quest was big or small.

Although she wouldn’t have minded another big quest.

“Adventure awaits, Coo!” Linkle said, pointing dramatically toward the town.

Coo squawked and waddled past her, unimpressed.

Laughing, Linkle jogged after the bird, clutching her compass to keep it from bouncing too wildly. Her crossbows, strapped securely to her thighs, jangled.

The basket fell to the ground with a soft thump.

Coo paused and looked back, tilting her head at the empty space Linkle once filled. The basket sat alone, its contents lightly shaken but otherwise undisturbed. With an opportunistic cluck, the cucco waddled over and tugged at the loaf of bread, stealing a bite while the going was good.

△△△

Link had come unstuck in time.

And when Tetra figured out where he disappeared to, she was going to strangle him.

Link was climbing the rigging one moment, joking with the rest of the crew, when suddenly the swordsman failed to respond to one of Niko’s jabs. The silence—inasmuch as the open, wind-swept ocean could be silent—was deafening, drawing every nearby crewmate’s attention upward. Heads tilted, eyes squinted.

The blue and orange blur that usually comprised Link, Hero of Winds and Honorary Pirate, was missing.

Tetra’s gut twisted. She sprinted to the starboard railing, leaning far over to scan the ship’s wake. Nothing. She darted to port, squinting into the waves for any sign of her missing swordsman. No splash. No struggling figure. If Link had fallen overboard, he wasn’t making much of a fuss about it. He could swim and he knew to signal them if he had somehow fallen off the ship. He even had his gossip stone, a direct line to her. If something was wrong, why hadn’t he used it?

He couldn’t have drowned…could he? But the ship wasn’t big enough for a teenage boy to simply disappear.

Deep in her chest, something colder and sharper gnawed at her heart: this wasn’t an accident. This was something else.

“Find that idiot, bilge-suckin’ hero!” Tetra bellowed. “Zuko, keep eyes on the wake! The rest of you, tear this ship apart! If he’s hidin’, gut him! No, bring him to me first—I’ll do it myself!”

The crew—those free from critical duties—scattered like rats in a flaming hold. They flipped barrels, shoved ropes aside, and poked their noses into every nook and cranny they could find. Tetra joined them, methodically combing the spots Link liked to haunt—the crow’s nest, the prow, even the galley where he occasionally pilfered snacks—as the futility of her search set in.

That cold gnawing in her chest shifted, sharpening into suspicion. She was starting to recognize the smell of Time Shenanigans, and her ire turned from Link to another captain in a faraway time. If this was more of his time war shite, she was going to have words for the soldier. And they weren’t going to be polite.

△△△

Link had come unstuck in time.

He didn’t know it yet. For now, there was only his grandfather’s shop, the steady rhythm of hammer on steel, and the comforting heat of the forge.

Green’s hammer struck the blade with a sharp clang, sparks leaping off the glowing metal. Sweat darkened his headband, but his strokes remained measured and deliberate. Behind him, the spinning whetstone hummed its low harmony, underscoring the soft tune Red was humming as he sorted through scraps.

Smith leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching his grandson work. Well—grandsons, at the moment. “Watch your angle, Blue,” he said, his voice firm but not unkind.

“I know what I’m doing,” Blue snapped, adjusting his angle. Sparks flew from the blade he was sharpening, the whetstone’s pitch climbing with each turn.

“Sure you do, lad. That’s why you’ve broken three hammers this month,” Smith chuckled.

“I didn’t break three! It was two and a half!”

Vio, bent low over the workbench with a dagger in hand, setting gems in its hilt, didn’t even glance up. “You can’t break only half of something. It’s a binary—broken or not.”

“I’ll break your—”

“Enough, Blue,” Green cut in. “Let’s just finish the sword, alright? The customer’s coming by today.”

Red piped up from the scrap bin. “Do you think we’ll get to work on that big order next week? You know, the ceremonial—”

The shopfront door rattled suddenly, the sound cutting through the banter. Four voices groaned in unison, and Smith pushed off the wall with an exaggerated sigh.

“That’ll be them now,” he said, giving the boys a knowing look. “Keep at it. I’ll handle the customer.”

Green nodded and set his hammer down, taking a step back from the anvil as the others gathered. “Thanks, Grandpa.”

Smith waved him off, already moving toward the shopfront, paying no mind to the brief pulse of magic in the forge. His voice shifted seamlessly into the hearty, welcoming tone he used to greet customers. “Welcome! You here for that blade we talked about?”

Behind him, Link lowered his hand from the hilt of the Four Sword, sheathed snugly on his back. As if nothing had happened, he picked up the hammer Green had left behind and resumed his work on the glowing steel.

The customer stepped inside, and Smith launched into his usual chatter. He gestured toward the workshop, words flowing easily, when the clang of metal striking stone interrupted him.

Smith turned, his brows knitting into a frown. The hammer lay on the floor, the sword beside it still glowing orange-hot.

But Link was gone.

Smith’s stomach dropped. It hadn’t been the first time Link had disappeared without warning. The last time, it had taken far too long for his grandsons to return—and when they did, it hadn’t been all of them.

“Everything alright back there?” the customer asked.

Smith forced his smile back into place. “Oh, aye,” he said, his tone easy as ever. “He probably just stepped out to cool down. The forge gets a bit hot, you know how it is.”

The customer nodded, satisfied, and Smith led them over to a completed blade hanging on the wall. He talked through the finer details of the piece, answering questions, but his thoughts stayed in the empty workshop.

Wherever Link had gone, Smith only hoped he’d come home whole.

△△△

Link had come unstuck in time.

And he hadn’t taken his enchanted adventuring bag with him.

Ravio tapped his finger against his empty teacup, his gaze fixed on the bag sitting by the door, where it always waited in case of emergencies. The merchant sat at the table in their quiet little kitchen, across from an empty seat and another cup of tea slowly cooling to room temperature.

Link had been gone since early morning, last seen tending to the orchard’s hives. It wasn’t unusual for him to vanish for a while—sometimes with little warning. Ravio had been asleep the last time it happened. He woke up afterwards to Link kicking in the door, muttering something about a musical curse before flopping on their bed and passing out. Ravio later learned that he—and most of Hyrule—had been in a cursed sleep for several days while Mr. Hero and the Princess battled a reincarnation of Ganon in the future.

The life of a hero was very strange.

Still, Link usually had the presence of mind to take his gear. He probably had one of his smaller kits tucked under his tunic, Ravio reasoned. Those were for “surprise adventures,” in case a certain Princess teleported him to a faraway country to prevent the demon king’s resurrection. Again.

But it was the principle of the thing that bothered Ravio. If this was another adventure, couldn’t there have been some warning? A note? A shout from the orchard? He could’ve packed Link a lunch. And sent some business cards.

Ravio sighed, rising to clear the untouched tea, glancing at the framed pictograph on the wall as he passed. It was an image of a large group of people in various states of smiling or posing (or giving each other rabbit ears).

The Captain stood front and center, looking harried but fond, surrounded by a crew of mismatched and unlikely soldiers. At his side were the two pirates, little Mask looking put-upon, and Linkle flashing a cheery peace sign. Ravio himself stood to the side of the larger group, hood lowered in one of the rare instances he felt comfortable around Hylians besides Link.

The memory tugged at something in his heart. This felt like that kind of trouble.

“Time Shenanigans,” he muttered, pulling his purple hood over his head and heading for the door. “It’s always Time Shenanigans.”

And with that, Ravio set off for the castle to check in with Zelda.

Just in case.

△△△

Link had come unstuck in time.

But for the moment, he was chasing a bokoblin.

The wolf streaked through the forest, his fur blending into the shadows cast by thick pine branches. His paws struck the earth in a steady rhythm, ears swiveling as he tracked the creature ahead. It wasn’t the first monster to skulk too close to Ordon this week, but it was one too many for Link’s taste.

The chase led him deep into the woods, far from any of the game trails he normally stuck to. This was the wilder edge of the forest, close to Faron and the Lost Woods, where sunlight barely pierced the canopy and the air smelled of damp moss and—

Link’s nose twitched, catching the acrid scent of a second—no, three bokoblins. He slowed, slipping between the trees like a shadow, blue eyes locked on a clearing ahead.

He found the bokoblins gathered around a crude firepit, chattering at the one that had just returned from the hunt, a dead rabbit dangling from its claws. Some other animal, charred beyond recognition, hung over their cookfire.

Link crept closer, his muscles tensing as he prepared to lunge. One of the bokoblins, smaller and wirier than the rest, let out a startled shriek as it spotted him. Before the others could react, Link sprang, taking down the monster in a flurry of panicked yelps.

The fight was quick and brutal, the monsters no match for the wolf’s claws and fangs. Link spat the taste of malice-tainted flesh from his mouth as the last bokoblin dissolved into smoke and sniffed the air again to make sure no others lingered. With a few quick swipes of his paws, he buried the fire and the bokoblins’ misbegotten meal.

Satisfied, he turned back toward the village. Maybe he’d even make it home in time to fix that fence Uli had mentioned—

His ears flicked, his wolf form detecting something before his Hylian brain could comprehend it, and suddenly the world fell away.

△△△

Link had come unstuck in time.

Thousands of years in the past, before the Age of Burning Fields, before the Sheikah and Yiga schism, before the Zonai refounded the lost kingdom, a hero crashed up against the shores of time—spit out from the maelstrom like a ship marooned.

He emerged in a time long-since forgotten and promptly fell unconscious on the roadside.

With his appearance in that era, a new branch formed. In an instant, thousands of years of history rewrote itself from that point, changes from altered variables cascading through time.

Thousands of years later, a hero awakened in a shrine.

“Open your eyes.”

He did.

He left the shrine and the cave, blinking against the light, and his adventure began.

Eight months later, he stood in the center of Hyrule Field, the dust settling from his final battle against Calamity Ganon. The Princess stood before him, her white dress torn and marred with century-old dirt stains.

“May I ask… do you remember me?”

This time, he didn’t.

It was hard, but it was a reality Link had lived with for nearly a year. In fact, he thought he was doing pretty well for an eight-month-old. The shrine had made sacrifices in choosing how and what to restore, but he kept most of his motor skills and vocabulary. And over his adventure, he had remembered a few things! He remembered a couple things about the other Champions and about Zelda and…

He remembered dying.

Link wasn’t going to think about that one, but if he stayed in one place too long his mind would drift over the few memories it had and he’d bump into that one and his throat would close and he’d start spiraling.

So, he kept moving. He still had a lot of shrines and koroks to find, after all, so he had something to keep himself occupied. Every few days, he would teleport back to Hateno or Kakariko—or, later on, the fort they were building near Castle Town—to check in on Zelda before disappearing back into the wilderness.

The only reason anyone knew something was amiss was because he hadn’t appeared in any of his usual spots for a week.

In a far corner of Tabantha, an extinguished cooking fire and pot of cold soup sat untended.

Chapter Text

The world spun and twisted in on itself, forest greens bleeding into a black void before resolving into endless blue.

With a shriek, Linkle fell and hit water, the cold shock driving air from her lungs. She flailed for a moment, her pegasus boots not meant for swimming—the movement made even more difficult by the crossbows on her legs. She finally managed to right herself, gasping as her head broke the surface.

She shrieked again when, mere feet away, a wolf surfaced from the water, its gray-green fur plastered against its face. It shook its head violently, spraying water in all directions, the whites of its eyes visible in panic before they settled on Linkle. The wolf’s ears flattened against its skull.

“Nice…wolfie?” Linkle tried, paddling away in what she hoped was a nonthreatening manner.

Another splash erupted between them as a blur of color fell from the sky, hitting the water with a loud yelp. Linkle wiped fresh spray from her eyes, squinting at the fallen Hylian—not another animal, thank the goddesses—thrashing in the waves. It was a young boy, his breathing quick and shallow, barely keeping his head above the surf. His eyes flickered open—their color shifting strangely—before they rolled back in his head and he dipped below the water.

“Hey!” Linkle shouted, spitting out seawater as she swam towards the boy.

The wolf suddenly dove underwater and resurfaced with the boy’s tunic between its teeth, just keeping his head above water. Linkle paused, stunned, before shaking herself out of it and swimming closer to help support the boy’s head.

This is fine, she told herself. I got teleported into the ocean and I’m helping a wolf save a drowning child. Completely fine.

The ocean wasn’t particularly choppy, but the limp child and the weight of Linkle’s equipment made even treading water a struggle. She looked around desperately for land, or anything floating to grab onto. To her immense relief, there was an island nearby.

“This way!” she yelled.

The wolf made some sort of low growl—a sound she decided meant it agreed—and began paddling toward the island. Linkle swam alongside it, supporting the boy’s head as best she could. His face was pale, drawn in pain even as he remained unconscious. She prayed he wasn’t injured by the fall, but they wouldn’t know until they were on solid ground.

It took longer than Linkle would have liked, the saltwater stinging her eyes and throat, but eventually her feet found purchase and she staggered onto the beach. Behind her, wolf was struggling to haul the boy out of the water. Linkle rushed over to help—lifting the boy by his arms, pulling him above the high-water mark, and confirming he was breathing—before collapsing in a heap herself. The wolf flopped on its side nearby, its chest heaving.

For the first time, as her heart settled from the shock and exertion, Linkle was able to examine her strange companions. The boy seemed uninjured with a cursory glance, although the crease between his brows hinted at lingering pain. His hooded tunic—finely embroidered and split into quadrants of green, blue, red, and violet—was dark with seawater. A beautifully crafted sword was strapped to his back, its hilt’s decorative wrapping trailing on the sand.

The wolf was a massive creature, its gray fur streaked with green as though it had fallen asleep in a forest and woke up covered in moss. It had a white pattern on its forehead, trailing down between its eyes, clearly unnatural and marking the wolf as having some sort of magic.

It stood after a moment of catching its breath, shaking violently and spraying water everywhere. Linkle shielded her face, lowering her arm just in time to catch it looking at her with something akin to curiosity. Then it lowered itself onto its belly, staring at her pleadingly like a dog begging for a treat.

Linkle tilted her head, wondering what it could possibly want when the wolf shimmered, its form turning as black as a shadow, and grew. Startled, Linkle scrambled backwards before she thought to dive to the side, putting herself between the growing shadow and the boy.

In a shower of shadowy sparks, the darkness peeled away, revealing a Hylian man in the wolf’s place. The remnants of the transformation magic condensed into a dark crystal amulet around his neck. “Please don’t attack,” he said quickly, raising his hands placatingly.

Linkle blinked, her mouth falling open, processing what she had just witnessed. Her first coherent thought was envy that the man was dry. Apparently being soaked didn’t carry over in the transformation.

“Uh,” she managed. Her eyes darted between the man’s green tunic, the crystal, the sword on his back, then to the pelt on his shoulders. Was…was that wolf fur? “Okay?”

The man blinked, his eyes flicking to her crossbows. When Linkle made no movement to shoot, he released a long breath, bending over and putting his hands on his knees. “Right. Okay. I guess a wolf turnin’ into a man ain’t the weirdest thing to happen today.”

Linkle laughed weakly at that. “Y-yeah. For all three of us, I guess.” She turned to the boy and brushed hair out of his face—he seemed to relax as whatever ailed him faded into actual sleep—before looking around. They had landed on a small beach at the bottom of a steep hill, in the shadow of a tall mountain. Palm trees swayed in the distance, and she thought she saw a dock at the end of the beach. “Where are we?”

“I was hopin’ you knew,” the man said, straightening back up. Cautiously, he moved closer and knelt by the boy. “Last I knew, I was around Faron.”

“Oh, me too. Ish. Closer to the coast.”

Wolf-man gave her a strange look at that. “Huh. Didn’t know there was a coast anywhere nearby.”

“It’s—well, not really close. A couple days—” She paused, remembering. “That’s not important right now. We should find a town or something. I’m worried about this little guy.”

The man put the back of his hand against the boy’s forehead. “Same. He’s not feverish, at least. I reckon that warp was just rough on him.” He moved closer, his arms out as if ready to scoop, and he glanced at Linkle for permission. She scooted back, letting the broad man gather the boy in his arms, and they started walking off the beach.

Standing and walking exposed Linkle to the wind coming off the sea and she shivered. Her clothes were still soaked and covered in sand, and the boy’s hadn’t fared any better. Wolf-man seemed to realize this, as he was struggling to get his pelt off while still holding the boy. Linkle helped disengage it from his baldric and wrapped the fur around the little figure. The man shot her a smile, his teeth just a little sharper than normal.

“Thank you, miss. And I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself. My name’s Link.”

Linkle, peeling off her cape, stopped with it halfway over her head. “…Huh.”

“Huh?” Link tilted his head, an ear perked wolfishly.

“You’re not the first Link I’ve met after getting teleported somewhere. It’s a small world, isn’t it,” she said, folding the cape. It made the chill worse, but once they got into sunlight it’d help dry her wet blouse and pants. They should probably remove the boy’s clothes, too, but she was still hoping he’d wake up before they stripped him without consent. “I’m Linkle.”

Link gave her a playful look. “And you’re gonna give me bull over my name?”

Linkle snorted. “Like I said, small world.” She took a big step onto the grass overhanging the beach. Now that they were on higher ground, she could see a well-trodden path leading to a bridge in the distance. The island was inhabited, at least.

“I guess it is,” Link chuckled. They reached sunlight and he winced at the sudden brightness. “What about getting teleported? This isn’t your first time?”

“No, it’s not,” Linkle said, grinning. “The last time, I was on an adventure. Well, it was sort of like an adventure. There was a lot of fighting, and not really any, you know, dungeons or treasure or any of that fun stuff.”

Once again, Link’s eyes went to the crossbows, the humor draining from his face. “Ah. Yeah, fun stuff…”

“What about you?” Linkle asked, eyeing the man’s sword and markings. “You look like you have some stories.”

“Mm, you might say that.”

By his tone, Linkle could tell the conversation wasn’t going to lead anywhere good and set it aside. It wasn’t as harsh a shut-down as Mask might’ve given, back in the Captain’s time, but she wasn’t going to test this nice stranger’s boundaries.

“You know, when I got teleported…” she started again, figuring it was safe to chat about her own adventure. “It wasn’t just me, and not just once. It was a bunch of us, going through portals to different places and times. One of the eras we went to was sort of like this.”

Link’s eyes snapped back to her. “Hold on, times?”

Linkle giggled. “Yeah, incredible, right? I was traveling with a captain from the Hyrulean Army and his company all over the place—that’s the other Link I mentioned. There were pirates with us from someplace called the Great Sea. Actually, come to think of it, Sailor’s and Mask’s names were Link, too.” She put a hand to her chin in thought. The Captain, Sailor, and Mask were all Heroes of Courage, though, so it made sense for their names to be Link.

If this was a similar situation… She slowed as the thought gripped her, Link getting ahead of her by a few paces.

“Hey, I’m sorry if you don’t want to talk about it, and you don’t have to answer, but—you…”

Link looked back, his head tilted in confusion, and the words died on her lips. As curious as she was, how could she ask? Hey, was the adventure you’re not willing to talk about divinely mandated, perchance? You didn’t happen to, say, draw the Master Sword or something crazy like that, did you? Besides, Linkle hadn’t wielded the sword herself—it was the Captain who did.

And if Mask’s reaction to seeing the sword was any indication, asking a Hero about the Master Sword was definitely pushing the “talking about your adventure” boundaries.

“It’s nothing,” Linkle said, pressing forward. “I don’t mean to pry.”

Link raised an eyebrow as she passed. “If you’re sure.”

They walked in silence for a while. The sun had dried Linkle’s shoulders, and she could feel its pleasant warmth soaking into her blouse. Her clothes had that stiff feeling of having dried in salt and sand and it was chafing something fierce. If they didn’t find people, she hoped they would at least find a freshwater river to clean up in.

The bridge, unfortunately, crossed a river at a point well above the water’s surface, with steep banks on either side. They could follow it upstream towards the mountain, but she thought she saw a house in the distance, farther up the path. So they continued, Linkle fidgeting at the weird way her blouse landed against her skin.

“I got these marks on my adventure,” Link said suddenly, shortly after the bridge. He raised an arm as if to gesture at the marks on his face, unintentionally lifting the unconscious boy. “And the wolf form. It, uh, wasn’t a great time.”

“I get that,” Linkle said quickly. She chewed on her lip for a moment before asking, “it doesn’t hurt, does it? I’ve heard transformation magic can…”

Link shrugged. “Nah, not—well, it did the first time. And I guess—well, I got used to it. It’s useful, and sometimes I like bein’ a wolf better’n I like bein’ a human.”

“Yeah, and you got to stay dry,” Linkle sniped playfully, trying to keep the mood light. “I hope that kid’s getting your arms all moist.”

That got Link to smile again, his mouth a little crooked. “It’s a travesty. My gauntlets are ruined.” His grin faded as he glanced down. “Speakin’ of, are your crossbows gonna be okay?”

Linkle groaned dramatically. “I hope so. Once we stop somewhere, I’ll give them a look over.”

“I can help, if you want. I’ve got a li’l experience with crossbows.”

“Why thank you, Link,” Linkle said, drifting into his swooping accent a little. He sounded a bit like the people who lived south of Hyrule. The southerners weren’t Hylian like he was, but he could have been raised among them. “You’re not from Ordon, are you? You sound like it.”

Link’s face lit up, and Linkle had to stop attributing his expressions to his wolf form but he looked like a dog spotting a favorite toy. “I am! When did you visit?”

“A couple years ago. I had a request to deliver some things to Kakariko.”

“Huh,” Link said. “I’m surprised I didn’t run into you. It musta been Bo that put up the request. He could’ve asked me.”

“Bo?”

“The mayor. Big guy, no hair. You’d know him by his mustache.”

Oh, this was definitely some Time Shenanigans. The Ordonian mayor she knew was a woman named Risha. “What…year are you from?” Linkle ventured.

Link’s eyes widened as the realization hit him. “Oh, spirits. 121?”

Linkle laughed haplessly. “314 for me. Sorry, this is what we called Time Shenanigans back in the Captain’s time. He was from even further in the future than me. And Sailor—shades, he was from a whole other timeline.”

Color drained from Link’s face, his expression going a little frantic, like when his wolf form first hit the water. “Alright. Time Shenanigans,” he muttered incredulously.

“121 though…wasn’t that around the time of the Twilight Invasion?”

Link didn’t answer, his expression closing off tellingly.

Oh.

Oh.

He’s the Hero of Twilight, Linkle realized, her crossbows suddenly feeling much heavier. If he got a good look at them, he might recognize them. They were a little worn from age, with some of the parts replaced, but they were still mostly his.

And his transformation magic—she thought she had recognized it and knew for sure now. She had encountered similar magic in the time war, fighting alongside the Princess of the Twilight Realm.

Linkle knew—thanks to Lana’s explanation—that what she had experienced in the war was a new timeline branch which had no effect on her own history. The Twilight Invasion still happened and the Hero of Twilight stopped it—this man, Link, walking by her side.

She had been talking to her predecessor. The man whose stories she grew up on.

She thanked Farore and all the other gods that the house was close, just beyond a fence. It was a small, palm-thatched building overlooking the ocean with fishing implements lining the periphery. Linkle jogged towards it, hoping Link—the Hero of Twilight!—didn’t hear her internal screaming.

There wasn’t a door, just a curtain keeping the bugs out. Stilling her heart, Linkle rapped her knuckles on the doorframe. “Excuse me, is anybody home?”

A masculine voice inside called out an invitation. Linkle looked back at Link, gave him a smile, and ducked in.

The inside was chock full of things. A huge, decorative copper plate hugged one corner of the room, fighting a losing battle against verdigris. Shelves lined the walls, covered in tchotchkes and doodads—novelty clocks, ink brushes, figurines, and more. A basket in another corner held fine fabrics, all rolled up. An inked portrait of a fish dominated the back wall.

As Linkle’s eyes adjusted to the lightning, she found the source of the voice: a dark-skinned man with a bushy beard and mustache in the hut’s kitchen. A red-haired woman, significantly younger, sat languidly on a chair closer to the entrance, eyeing Linkle as she walked in before her attention snapped to Link.

“Come in, come in,” the man said as he chopped some sort of green vegetable. “Joanne and I were just about to have brunch.” He looked up to see his guests and his thick eyebrows shot up. “Bellum’s beak, what happened here?”

Link pulled the fur from the boy’s face. He had regained some color and his breathing had evened out, but even the movement didn’t cause him to stir. “We, uh…”

“Fell overboard,” Linkle offered.

“Yeah. He fell with us and he hasn’t woken up.”

Joanne rose from her chair to investigate. She ran a hand over the child’s forehead like Link had done, and didn’t seem to find anything concerning. “You should have taken his clothes off. They’re soaking wet.”

Linkle grimaced. “We were sort of hoping he’d wake up first.”

“The cold probably isn’t helping.” Joanne looked Linkle up and down, noticing the salt crust and lingering damp spots in her clothes. “You, too. I have a dress you can borrow.” Her dark eyes shifted to Link, her brow furrowing in confusion at his relative dryness. She shrugged and pulled a long yellow dress out of a drawer. “There’s a back room, hun. You, bring him and let’s get those wet things off.”

Link carefully carried the boy past a curtain into the backroom, where Joanne spread blankets across the floor. While Link held him up, Joanne and Linkle stripped the boy’s still-damp outer layers, Joanne pausing to examine his fine, multicolor tunic appreciatively. Linkle tried to avert her gaze for the sake of the boy’s privacy, but she saw enough to notice that his arms were surprisingly muscular for his apparent age. He didn’t look older than twelve, but his build told a different story.

Once they had the boy safely cocooned and settled on his side, Joanne shooed Link out and helped Linkle change into the dress, tutting at the state of Linkle’s clothes and hair.

Linkle sighed in relief as she pulled the soft fabric over her head. “Thank you,” she murmured, already feeling warmer. She made a mental note to ask about washing their clothes later, but for now she was content to enjoy the soft, dry fabric.

She gathered her compass, crossbows, and the boy’s sword and went back to the front room, leaving Joanne to keep watch over the boy. Link had removed his own gear and was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, hands wrapped around a drink, watching with fascination as the man rolled up sushi. He looked up as she approached, ears perked.

“How’s he doin’?” Link asked.

“Still asleep. Joanne’s watching him.” Linkle claimed a spot on the floor behind him, setting the compass and weapons down. “Excuse me, sir, do you mind if I clean these here? I don’t want water damage to set in.”

The man leaned over the counter to see what Linkle was doing. “Go ahead, miss. Wouldn’t want you young’ns running around defenseless. The name’s Perry, by the way, and you’ve met my wife, Joanne.”

“Thank you!” Linkle dug through her pack for her tools. She started with the boy’s sword, removing it from its damp sheath and wiping water off the blade. “I’m Linkle. That’s Link. We don’t know the boy’s name. We all sort of wound up together.”

“Link, huh?” Perry said, glancing up at the swordsman. “Funny, we had a boy named Link come round a year or so ago.”

“You’re kiddin’.”

“Swear on my life. He introduced Joanne and me, if you can believe it. I figure he’s out exploring the seas still. That’s a kid after my own heart.”

Link twisted around to catch Linkle’s eye and she returned the look.

“Teenage kid?” Linkle asked, her hand frozen on the sword’s blade. “Bright blond hair, tan, sort of a scamp, no sense of self-preservation?”

“That’s him.” Perry grinned.

“Huh,” Linkle squeaked. “Small world.”

△ △ △

The world tilted sharply, a feeling Link was all too familiar with. The cool breeze and warm sun of Zelda’s balcony vanished, like he had been dropped in dark, lukewarm water, before everything seemed to flip and dump him out unceremoniously. He landed hard on cobblestone, sending a shock through his shoulder, his armor and shield clanging. His instincts kicked in and he rolled to his feet, reaching for his sword.

Instead of the balcony, he found himself standing in the middle of a bustling square, surrounded by startled and gawking townsfolk. Bright blue and gold banners swayed gently in the breeze and the air smelled of fresh bread and dusty streets. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was near home.

Link twisted to look north. Sure enough, there was the castle. He was in Castle Town—but it wasn’t his Castle Town. The castle was the same, maybe lacking a tower or two, but the buildings in this square were wrong—not short, too new, but not that new.

He cursed under his breath. This was the Twilight Era—or near enough.

Behind him, someone yelped, followed by a sharp thud. Link spun to see a teenage boy sprawled on the ground, grimacing in pain as if he, too, had dumped out of the ether. The leaking canteen on the ground and his travel-worn boots suggested he’d been somewhere far from the city before falling. A bow peeked out from behind his shoulder, and Link noted a dagger in his belt.

Watching the dagger, Link stepped forward to help the boy to his feet, but he flinched, scrambling away from Link’s outstretched hand with wide, ice-blue eyes.

“Hey, easy,” Link said, hands raised and empty in a show of peace. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The boy’s eyes darted between Link’s hands, the hilt of his sword, and the people in the square as if searching for something—or someone.

Before Link could press further, a large figure dropped out of thin air and landed squarely on a nearby apple cart with a loud crunch.

“Ow, shit—” The man sat up, shaking bits of apple out of his hair. He was an older man, perhaps in his thirties, with rough-cut blond hair and a scar across one eye. Wincing, he scanned the square and his eye stopped suddenly on Link. His mouth fell slack in disbelief. “Captain?”

Link, who had taken a step forward to help, paused and double checked the man for weapons. Unlike the captain and the teenager, the newcomer seemed to have no weapons and no armor, and his simple clothes were better suited for a farm than the city.

“Have we met?” Link asked cautiously.

Spilling apples all over, the man scrambled out of the cart, eye fixed on the captain. “By the Three, it really is—” He slipped on a piece of fruit, steadying himself on what remained of the cart. He tucked something blue into his collar, ignoring the juice stains on his shirt.

“Hey, take it easy, old man,” Link said.

The stranger shot Link a dirty look. “Oh, very funny, Captain. What a thing to call your little brother.”

“My little—” Link’s stomach dropped as he took in the marks on the man’s face—red lines under his right eye and a blue chevron on his forehead, just like the sealed god who aided his youngest brother in the time war. “Mask?”

A grin spread across the man’s—Mask’s—face.

“Excuse me, gentleman…”

They both turned as a small man approached, his apron covered in fruit shrapnel, gesturing to the wrecked cart and crushed produce.

“Oh, hells,” Link muttered, digging into a pocket. He pulled out a wallet and found it much lighter than needed right now. Hesitating, he pulled a badge off his tunic and pressed it into the grocer’s hands. The royal family would recognize it as a captain’s, even if it was several centuries ahead of its time. “Please accept my apologies. We’ll pay for the damage. Let the castle know Captain Link will cover it.”

Satisfied, the grocer tucked the badge into a pocket and started picking up the remains of his cart. Link and Mask crouched to help pick up pieces.

“Army life not paying?” Mask asked, using his loose shirt as a basket. It was already covered in apple, so more wouldn’t hurt.

Link made an ambivalent noise. “It does. I just send most of it home. I didn’t expect to get teleported into the past today, so I didn’t bring my Smoothing Things Over money. If I had known you’d be here, I would have.”

Mask chuckled. “So this is your past? What year, do you think?”

Link wasn’t sure, so he asked the increasingly perplexed grocer, who answered: “121? 21st of Farore’s Third?”

“Huh,” Mask grunted, craning his head to look around the square. “A hundred years in my future then.”

Link tilted his head in confusion before remembering that Mask had joined the war several months in, after they had closed the main portals to this era. “Right, yeah. It’s good to know we’re only a few years off when I was here last. We may be able to contact Agitha and find out what’s going on.”

“Is there something going on?” Mask asked, his voice suddenly sharper.

Link hesitated picking up a piece of wood and took a deep breath. “It seems like it. There was another rift in my era. I was going to contact Lana when…Hold on, how long has it been for you?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re older than me now! When did that happen?”

Mask smiled pleasantly. “That’s how time works, Captain. People age.”

“You know what I mean. How old are you?”

“Why don’t you guess?”

“Oh no, I know how this works. No matter what number I give, it’s going to be wrong. You did this shit when you were twelve.”

“You thought I was twelve?” Mask’s brows furrowed in concern. “You let a twelve-year-old fight in a war?”

“Fuck off.”

Mask broke into a laugh, and Link couldn’t help but chuckle alongside him. He wasn’t sure at first, too accustomed to tricks and treachery, but this man was either his little brother grown up, or the best damn actor he had ever met with the most convoluted assassination plan ever.

As they picked up the last of the debris, Mask stood and stretched, his knees cracking, before speaking again, his expression more serious. “Captain—Link—I’m glad to see you again. I know I wasn’t the most pleasant kid, but I appreciated what you did for me. You and Sailor both.”

A lump formed in Link’s throat. “I missed you both.”

“Me too, Captain.” Mask’s expression softened, a tinge of remorse in his eye. “But I can’t get mixed up in another time war. I have a life now. If a gate opens to my time, I’m staying there.”

Link fiddled with the scarf around his neck uselessly. “I don’t blame you. You’ve earned your peace.”

“What about you? You’ve earned it, too.” Mask tilted his head, an eyebrow raised knowingly.

“Someone’s gotta keep space-time from falling apart.” Link shrugged, scuffing his boots on the cobblestone. It would be nice if space-time stopped falling apart. But he had long suspected his time as a hero hadn’t ended with the war, even if he didn’t expect Time Shenanigans again. He had only been on one adventure, while Mask and Sailor had been on three each. “This is different, though. Lana and Cia didn’t open a gate this time—as far as I know, anyway.”

Nodding, Mask scanned the square, taller now than the captain and able to see over the crowds. “It did seem different. I felt something coming, but I only had time to grab…” He patted his shirt, where a lump rested above his belt. Link, remembering the blue he had seen before, assumed Mask was talking about his magic ocarina.

“Yeah, the situation isn’t ideal.” Link admitted. He only had what he had brought to Zelda’s strategy room—his sword and shield, his wallet, and a basic medical kit. “We should meet with Agitha first to get the lay of the land—her bugs may have heard something. If not, we can try to get an audience with this era’s queen. She may know if any rifts or strange monsters have appeared. And we can pay for that cart.”

He faced away from the castle and started towards Agitha’s neighborhood. Although he had only visited her townhome once, he thought he recognized the city streets enough to find it. And if they got lost, they could ask around. Her neighbors would almost certainly know of her—she had a big personality for such a small frame.

Mask fell into step beside him, moving like his shadow but with none of the belligerence Link remembered from his youngest brother. “Right. And we’ll need to find out if anyone else got caught in this.”

Link froze mid-stride.

“Fuck,” he hissed, turning to Mask, blood draining from his face. “There was someone else. A kid.”

They took off, all but running in the direction of Agitha’s neighborhood. Finding the kid—dropped in a strange era, all alone—was suddenly priority number one.

Chapter Text

Link groaned as he pushed himself off the hard, rocky ground, rolling onto his back. His head spun, and for a moment he was afraid he had fallen from the rigging, but there would have been a lot of yelling if he had. It was mostly silent, broken only by vague shuffling noises and groans around him. The air was dry, hot, and smelled faintly of sulfur.

He blinked up at the towering cliff face above him.

“What in ‘ell?” he mumbled, his voice scratchy. He didn’t get seasick, but he sure felt like it now, like his stomach was trying to climb up his throat. Groaning, he sat up and examined his surroundings, which proved to be a great distraction from his nausea.

His familiar ocean had disappeared, replaced by a sprawling landscape dotted with thin patches of green and split by a winding river. A town straddled the river far below, nestled into mountain foothills. Link had appeared on the mountainside above, its sides marred by streaks of ancient lava rock and speckled with hardy plant life.

Oh. This must be Death Mountain, came a thought, which Link immediately disregarded. The lands below looked too different from the time periods he had visited in the war. Too...brown.

The noise in his immediate area picked up, and Link turned to find three figures nearby, sprawled across the uneven ground in disarray. One of them, a blond man in a dark hood, sat up and looked around, his bright blue eyes landing on Link and his hand twitching towards the sword strapped to his back.

Before Link could react, another spoke up, asking, “Are you okay?” The voice came from a young man wearing a white cape, half-lying on the ground and braced against an arm, looking between the other three with concern.

“I’m alright,” Link said tentatively, climbing to his feet and dusting off his tunic. He took a big step away from the twitchy guy with the sword. “I think.”

The third figure hadn’t moved at all, splayed on the ground and sounding decidedly not alright. “Fucking hells,” he groaned. “For once, could you warn me first?”

Link approached cautiously to find the man scowling deeply, his eyes screwed shut, muttering a long string of curses under his breath. Link eyed the shiny rings on his fingers, but decided he wasn’t going to poke that dodongo and moved closer to the one with the cape. He seemed much more pleasant.

“How are you?” Cape, sitting up fully, asked the hooded man.

Hood stiffened again, his fingers hovering near his blade. After a moment, he tapped his chest with his thumb, other fingers extended in a deliberate gesture. He winced, seeming to realize something, and gave a thumbs-up.

Face lighting up, Cape responded with a series of motions, pointing to himself, his head, and gripping the air. Hood stiffened, his eyes going wide.

“Wait, is that sign language?” Link asked, tilting his head in interest. He didn’t know it himself, but he’d seen some kids on Windfall using it.

“It is. I learned it back home,” Cape said, smiling. Turning back to Link, he repeated the signs slowly. “This is ‘I know sign language.’ You can use that after you’ve learned a bit more.”

“Cool.” Link tried to emulate the signs and he was pretty sure he got them right, if Cape’s smile was any indication. “What’s your name? I’m Link.”

All three twisted their heads in his direction. Cape’s brows lifted in surprise. Hood tensed right back up and pulled what looked like a stone tablet from his belt, tapping its surface with his fingers. Meanwhile, Rings released a long-suffering sigh, stood up, and started down the slope, holding his skirts away from any rocks that might snag.

“Wait, where are you going?” Link asked.

“To go kill whatever I got teleported here to fight so I can go home,” he replied, not bothering to stop or turn around, only giving them a curt wave as he hopped down a ledge. “Good luck with whatever fresh hell this is.”

“Hold on,” Cape called after him. “You don’t have a weapon. We should stick together.”

Rings paused, his shoulders rising as he took a deep breath. He reached into his tunic, pulled something over a hand, and turned back to them, revealing a glove. With a snap, a little puff of flame appeared by his hand. “Happy? I’ll be fine.” He gave Cape a scrutinizing look, violet eyes narrowing. “Where’s your weapon?”

“I didn’t have her with me,” Cape said pleasantly. “I understand you want to get home, but perhaps you could stay with us until we reach the town below? I don’t have a weapon, and I assume none of us are familiar with the area. I wouldn’t want to burden this man with our safety by himself.” He gestured to Hood, who looked up from his tablet with an affronted expression. Link felt a little offended, too; he had a sword!

But then Cape looked back at him and winked.

Oh.

Well, that’s different then. Link was suddenly the most helpless little child there ever was, all wide eyes and naivete. The Phantom Sword? Just a toy, sir. Although he didn’t really want the grumpy guy around, he knew there was wisdom in sticking together. He really didn’t want to try navigating the mountain alone.

Ring’s eyes moved between the three of them, lingering a bit on Hood, who had looked up from the tablet and was suddenly holding a bunch of bananas, of all things. That seemed to convince Rings that Hood would not be sufficient protection for the other two, because he turned to them fully, hands on his hips. “Fine. Just to the town.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” Cape stood, dusting himself off, and turned to Link. “I think names may be a little difficult. You see, my name is Link, too.”

“Oh, shit,” Link spat out.

Cape blinked, his head slowly tilting.

“I met some other guys named Link, too, sir,” Link said quickly, adding the ‘sir’ to keep up the kid act. “So we just went by nicknames. They called me Sailor, ’cause my name’s Link, too.”

“I see. Okay, Sailor.” Cape raised an eyebrow in thought. “If you’re Sailor, I suppose I’m...Flyer?”

Link cringed, tucking away a question about that for later—was the man a weird sort of beakless Rito? “What about ‘Cape’? We called one of the other guys Mask ’cause, well, he had a mask.”

Cape tugged at his namesake and smiled. “Oh, I suppose that works. What about you?” he asked Rings, who was scrutinizing Link with a curious expression.

“Link.”

“Rings,” Link chirped, ignoring Rings’s huffing and turning to the last of their makeshift group. Instead of offering his name, Hood had broken off a few bananas and was holding one out to Link. Link reached for it excitedly. “Oh, hell yeah.”

Hood’s eyes narrowed, but he allowed Link to take a fruit and held out another to Cape.

“What is it?” Cape asked, watching with interest as Link peeled his.

“How did you get bananas? Does your tablet make them?” Rings came closer, his interest less on the bananas and more on the tablet in Hood’s hands.

Hood clicked the slate back onto his belt and set the rest of the bananas aside, eyeing Link as he set them down. Link shrugged, content with one banana.

 “My name is Link, too,” Hood said, with Cape faltering at the name as he translated. “You can call me Champion. That’s what some people call me.”

“Champion of what?” Rings said, an eyebrow raised.

Hood—Champion?—shrugged.

“Alright, Champion of Equivocation, keep your secrets.” Rings pointed to the town at the foot of the mountain with a thumb. “I’ll take you three to that town. Gods willing, we get there before sundown and you can get a room at an inn. I’ll take out any monsters on the way. Champ, back me up if any get by. Stay close and stay alert.”

Hood scowled but made no motion to argue, tapping the hilt of his sword and signing something else, fingers crossed and hands in front of his chest and then moved outwards.

Rings apparently understood, because he nodded back and started down the mountain. He went a little slower than he had previously, glancing back frequently to make sure they were following. His skirts flared slightly any time he jumped down ledges, and Link was worried for the man’s bare knees—and more than a little interested in his nice, feather-lined boots and fire glove.

Behind Cape and Link, Hood followed like a shadow, moving over the rough terrain with silent grace. Link felt Hood’s eyes boring into his back and it felt like being in a dungeon again, phantom eyes watching and waiting to pounce. Cape didn’t seem to notice, humming intermittently as he picked his way over the terrain, so either he was oblivious, or it was just Link getting glared at.

Was this about the banana? Was Hood mad about that? If he didn’t want people taking his fruit, he shouldn’t have offered! Link decided to ignore Hood the best he could—he had taken men much bigger than him in a fight anyway, if it came to trouble.

“Can you teach me more signs?” Link asked Cape, looking for a distraction. Cape grinned and walked him through basic signs whenever they crossed easier terrain that didn’t take their full attention or require hands to traverse. When they got into what Cape called fingerspelling, Link realized the language Cape was signing was closer to Old Hylian, from before the flood, than his native tongue. A single letter sign in Cape’s language would be two or three in Link’s written alphabet, the syllable split into a consonant and vowel pair.

This seemed to intrigue Hood as well, who crept closer to compare his language with Cape’s. As Link suspected, the New Hylian alphabet—which Link assumed Hood was using—had fewer signs which could be combined to make the syllables of Cape’s. Their basic word signs were close enough, but now that Link knew to look, there were subtle differences—a hand raised a little higher, twisted a little this way. The more abstract signs were wildly different. Hood was also the more fluent of the two, confirming or correcting the signs Cape wasn’t sure of, albeit in the New Hylian sign. Throughout the interaction, the champion’s shoulders slowly lost their tension.

After they had descended partway down the mountain, Rings called back, asking, “Do any of you recognize the area?”

“I don’t,” Cape replied, “but I admit I’ve been a bit...cloistered.”

“I thought it was Death Mountain maybe, ’cause it smells like a volcano.” Link sniffed—yup, still sulfury, his nose burning—and gestured to the lands below. “That doesn’t look like any Hyrule I know, though.”

“Any Hyrule you—” Rings stopped and made a face at him. “What do you mean?”

“Uh. Well, the other Links I met? I kind of got caught up in some time travel.”

“You, too?” Cape asked, brows raised.

“Yeah, me and a bunch of other people.” Link stopped himself before going into more detail—helpless little kids didn’t participate in wars across time and space, after all. The kid act was wearing on him a bit, though. He didn’t think Rings would abandon them at this point, especially with the way he would stare at Link like he was trying to pick apart a puzzle. It was the same sort of look Tetra got reading treasure maps sometimes, and it meant he’d stick around until the puzzle was good and solved.

“Huh,” Rings finally huffed after a moment. He turned back, shading his eyes as he surveyed the land again. “If this is Death Mountain, we would be north of Hyrule. That may be why it doesn’t seem familiar to you. Shit, it might be Hytopia.”

“Is it really called Death Mountain?” Cape asked.

“Yup,” came three voices in response.

They turned to Hood in surprise, who shrugged and signed, “Maybe there’s Gorons nearby?”

“Maybe. I wouldn’t count on it, though.” Rings continued walking, cursing as some rocks slipped beneath his feet.

Link moved closer to Cape, curiosity boiling over. “You travelled through time, too? It wasn’t...well, part of a war, was it?”

Cape’s face flushed, and he hesitated, his lips parting in what looked like a struggle to find the right words. “It was...” he confirmed delicately. “That was the...the overarching thing, anyway. You could say it was a war, but really, I just wanted to save my friend.”

Oh. Link understood that better than he cared to admit. Saving his sister during his first adventure, then Tetra during his second—it was always about them first. Sure, the fate of the world was at stake, but that was secondary to protecting the people he loved right in front of him. If he thought about the role he played in the bigger picture—the war between good and evil—he felt like the burden would crush him, even in retrospect.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice softening. “I get that.”

Cape’s brows furrowed in sympathy. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to fight.”

Link huffed, trying to brush off Cape’s concern with a wave of his hand. He got enough concerned looks from—well, just about everyone except Tetra’s crew. “If not me, who? And it wasn’t all bad. I met Tetra and the Captain and Mask and a bunch of other cool people because of it. Even Hood back there, although I think he’s mad I took a banana.”

Hood perked up, his eyes visible under his bangs again. He signed something to Cape. Oh, fingerspelling! Y-I...

“YI-GA...? Am I reading that right?” Cape asked. “What is a Yiga?”

Link tilted his head and tried fingerspelling the word back. “Is it a friend of yours?”

Hood shook his head furiously. “Bad guys. They like bananas. I thought you were one.”

“Do...do you offer everyone a banana?”

Shaking his head again, Hood signed, “They come after me. You calling yourselves Link sounded like one of their weird schemes.”

Cape fell into step with Hood to review some of the signs that had given him trouble in that sentence. While they were occupied, Rings stopped until Link caught up with him, a question on his face.

“About this time war...” Rings started. “You don’t need to go into detail; it’s none of my business. But, out of curiosity, did you happen to meet a guy...probably wearing a purple hood? Has a thing for rabbits?”

Link immediately knew who Rings was referring to with “time war” and “purple hood” and the rabbit thing was the clincher. “Wait, you know Ravio?”

Rings’s expression suddenly brightened, the puzzle solved. “I thought so—you must be the Sailor in his picture.”

A wide grin spread across Link’s face. “Yeah! That’s the pictograph we took before everyone went home!” He reached into his bag to dig his copy out. It was a little crumpled, but his grandma had a copy safe in a frame back home and Tetra had another. He unfolded it, revealing the company and Ravio on the periphery.

It had taken Ravio a long time to feel comfortable lowering his hood around the others in the Captain’s odd company, so it surprised everyone when he pulled it off moments before they snapped the picto. He was grinning broadly, showing the gap between his front teeth. When his rabbit-eared hood was on, covering his whole head, the only hint they had about his appearance was that he would whistle slightly when he spoke at length or about something he got excited about, like—

“Wait a minute,” Link said, snapping his head up to look at Rings, at the lock of pink hair, his violet eyes, the emerald-set ring on his left hand, and gasped dramatically. “You’re Mr. Hero! Ravio’s husband!”

Rings’s cheeks flashed red as his tunic. “Oh, for the—what did he tell you?”

Link grinned, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Not much. Only that he loved you and he missed you so much and he hoped you weren’t worried that he had gotten pulled into an adventure without you.” He waited just long enough for the blush to fade before delivering the killing blow. “And he called you his husbun.”

Rings tripped, barely catching himself before he hit the ground. The blush went all the way to the tips of his ears, matching the pink in his hair. He sighed heavily and rolled his eyes, but his lips twitched into the slightest, briefest smile, which disappeared as Cape approached.

“That’s so sweet,” Cape cooed, peering over Link’s shoulder at the picto. “May I see that?”

Link handed it over and Cape scanned the company, his expression bright and curious—until his gaze landed on one figure. His smile faltered, and his mouth fell open in stunned recognition. “Fi?”

“You know Fi?” Link asked, leaning over to see the picto as if he hadn’t seen it a hundred times. The blue spirit hovered behind the Captain, one of the few faces in the crowd not smiling; Link wasn’t sure she could, her expression unyielding as steel.

“She...travelled with me on my adventure,” Cape said, his brows knitting together. “I heard there had been a battle back home when I was young, and that Fi had fought in it. I can’t believe...” His words trailed off as tears gathered in his eyes.

Link glanced between the picto and the man. “Do you want to keep the picture? I’ve got another one back home.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Link shrugged. “She means a lot to you, right?”

“She does. She saved my life more times than I can count.” Cape’s voice softened as he gently folded the photo along its creases. He held it out for Link to take back. “Would you mind holding onto it for now? I don’t have a safe place to keep it. I don’t dare keep it with my knife.”

Rings arched an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t have a weapon.”

With an apologetic smile, Cape reached into a pocket and pulled out a small carving knife, its blade dulled from wear. “I wouldn’t like to try this against a bokoblin.”

“Fair,” Rings conceded. His ear twitched and he looked away from the group. “Hey, where are you going, Champ?”

Hood stopped in place, a short distance away from the group in the direction of a cave, and signed back to them. “I want to see where this goes.”

Link expected Rings to tell him off for wandering, but instead Rings grunted lightly and climbed up to stand next to Hood. Hood unclipped his banana-producing tablet and Rings inspected the cave while Cape and Link caught up. The rough rock they had been climbing gave way to fine sand, as if ground down by traffic, in a rill-covered path leading to the cave’s mouth.

“It might lead to the river below—water flowing into the cave has to come out somewhere.” Rings said, examining the jagged edges of the cave with a discerning eye. “Probably monsters, too, of course.”

Cape stepped closer, peering into the gloom. “It’s dark. Unless one of you has a torch, we should stick to the surf—” His voice cut off as Hood silently pressed an unlit torch into his arms. “What—where did you...?”

Hood held up his tablet, as if that explained anything. Link squinted at it. Now that he got a better look, he recognized the symbol etched on its back—a Sheikah eye.

“Oh, it’s like an enchanted bag,” Rings said, inching closer to take a look.

Nodding, Hood tapped the tablet again, angling it so Rings could see. Its surface lit up with a soft blue glow, and with a few quick swipes and taps, a shield materialized in the air. Hood caught it by the straps with practiced ease.

“Holy shit,” Rings breathed, his eyes wide as he stared at the tablet screen. “How much stuff do you have in there?”

Hood tugged his hood lower over his face and stowed the tablet. “I find a lot of things. We can go through the cave now.”

Rings glanced at the torch in Cape’s hands and back at the cave before shrugging. “Alright. Cape, you’re on torch duty. Stay behind us. And Sailor, I know you can use that sword on your back—Ravio told me plenty of stories. Watch Cape’s back.”

Link grinned, the jig officially up. He and Hood drew their swords while Rings lit Cape’s torch with his fire glove and they entered the cave. The temperature dropped drastically as they left sunlight behind. A breeze swept in behind them, making the torch flame flicker wildly and casting dancing shadows on the walls.

Something that could have been dripping water echoed from deep within the cave. Link opened his mouth, ready to call out, but Rings shot him a glare.

“Don’t even think about it, Sailor,” he scolded in a low voice. “There’s only two things in caves—dangerous creatures or fairy fountains, and I doubt this is the latter.”

“Fairy fountains?” Cape asked, keeping his voice quiet.

Rings gestured vaguely, his namesake rings glinting in the torchlight. “They’re...natural pools of magic. Connected to leylines. Fairies congregate around them. And no, I don’t know why they mostly appear in caves.”

“All of mine are on the surface,” Hood said, his voice soft and a little scratchy. His hands were occupied with his sword and shield.

“Huh, is that so? I wonder why—wait.” Rings held up a hand, his body going still. “Shh.”

Link followed his gaze, squinting into the darkness. A shadow moved against the wall, too round and smooth to belong to the jagged rocks. In the silence, they could hear a wet gurgling noise and the slap of something dragging across stone.

“Oh, hells,” Rings hissed.

As if summoned, a dozen octoroks popped their bulbous heads over the rocks, tilting back and ready to fire. Hood moved in front of Cape and Link, shield up just in time to catch the first volley of rocks.

Rings tapped a heel against the ground and, in a surprising burst of speed, closed the gap with the nearest octorok, slamming a hand wreathed in flame against its head and popping it like a balloon. The sudden movement drew the attention of the horde, most turning to chase Rings.

Rocks clanged against Hood’s shield, each impact jarring. He growled when one hit his unguarded thigh, but he couldn’t lower his shield or move closer without exposing Link and Cape. Link wished he had his bow to help—his sword was useless here. He would have to improvise.

While Rings continued fireballing octoroks—dodging their rocks with preternatural grace, as if he had found some rhythm in the chaos—Link fumbled through his bag, his hand closing around rope. He swore as it came out in a tangled mess, the grappling hook caught between rope plies.

A hand suddenly pressed him down as Cape caught a rock from an opportunistic octorok, aimed directly for Link’s head, in his cape. Hood hissed a curse, unable to cover both sides as the monsters moved to surround them.

“I got it!” Link yelled, freeing his grappling hook and launching it with precision at an octorok. With a squeak, the octorok’s head popped and the monster disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“Nice shot!” Cape nudged Link’s shoulder.

Rings finished off most of the octoroks soon after, their corpses dissolving into black mist. Link took out a few more with his grappling hook as they tried to get around Hood’s shield. With a vengeful glint in his eyes, Hood deflected the last rock, sending it back at the startled octorok.

“Yeah! Hurts, doesn’t it!” Link cackled as the last octorok popped. Chuckling wickedly, he stuffed the grappling hook back in his bag—which is probably how it got tangled in the first place.

When Link looked up again, something near the back of the cave caught his eye. A faint, green light bobbed in the air as if watching them—a fairy, its gossamer wings almost invisible in the darkness.

“Hey, there’s fairies in here after all,” he said, pointing.

The fairy froze in midair, its glow intensifying, before darting deeper into the cave. Its light vanished around a bend.

“Do you think it’s going towards one of the fountains you mentioned?” Cape asked, picking dirt off his cape.

Rings, eyes narrowed, stared at the tunnel the fairy had gone down. “Maybe... But it doesn’t feel like there’s one nearby. There’s ambient magic, but it’s all wrong.”

Link was about to ask if they should follow it when he saw Hood already moving in that direction. When the champion got to the edge of the torch’s light, he turned and tilted his head, silently asking if they were coming.

“Guess we’re going to find out.” Rings shrugged, following.

The path the fairy took was smaller and narrower than the one they had been following. Had the fairy not appeared, they might not have found it at all, as the entrance was tucked into a dark corner. It was a much steeper climb, too, forcing them to climb or scoot down on their backsides occasionally. Rocks shifted precariously under their feet, sending little showers of pebbles skittering down the slope.

Link was starting to doubt if taking this route was wise. A fairy could traverse it safely, but maybe not four humans. Blood rushed in his head from the tension of keeping himself from slipping.

Or he was hearing water.

He squinted into the darkness at the bottom of the slope. “Hey, do you guys hear that?”

The others stopped, the roaring sound suddenly much more evident as their shuffling faded.

“Running water,” Hood said.

Rings, the lowest on the slope, looked up with a cocky grin. “Called it. That should lead to the river. Let’s get out of here.”

“Thank the goddesses.” Cape sighed in relief, handing the torch to Link so he could climb down a particularly steep rock.

They continued down the slope to a narrow ledge overlooking a dark, subterranean river. The water’s roar drowned out all other noise, so the three older men signed something to each other, seemed to come to an agreement, and turned to the right. Link followed, humming aimlessly and inaudibly, entertained by the roar swallowing any sound he made.

The ledge was narrow enough that they could only stand two abreast at most, Rings leading the way with Cape and their torch close behind. Hood walked next to Link and, eventually, tapped Link’s hand for attention.

“Huh?” Link asked, almost certainly unheard.

Hood raised his hand towards Link as if to give him something. Curious, Link held out his hand and Hood deposited a rock in it. Link looked at him, confused, but then the torchlight caught the rock just right and it sparkled.

“Ooh!” Link chirped, tilting the rock back and forth and watching its surface glitter. Was this over the banana thing? If so, peace offering accepted. Link tucked the cool rock in his bag and gave Hood a smile and a thumbs up.

The swordsman smiled back, the right side of his mouth twisting a little higher than the left.

After walking along the river for what seemed like forever, Link saw a light ahead—not the fairy, but daylight filtering into the cave. He whooped, jumping in celebration. They hadn’t seen the fairy again, but that was alright—Link wanted to get outside way more than he wanted to find a fairy fountain.

They emerged above a cascade, where water from the cave spilled out onto mossy rocks into the larger river. It cut through a ravine, with steep banks and the husks of old, blackened pine trees clinging to the slopes, as if a fire had burned through recently. While there wasn’t a defined path, the vegetation was sparse enough and the ground flat enough for them to traverse easily.

Cape stretched, unfurling as they exited the cave. He doused the torch in the river and handed it back to Hood. “That was fun, but I’m glad to see the sky again.”

“It’s a shame we didn’t find a fairy fountain, though,” Rings said. “How’s your leg, Champ?”

Hood responded with a so-so gesture and a thumbs up. He had been favoring his right leg after getting shot by the octorok—he probably had a gnarly bruise on his thigh.

“Do you need to take a break?” Cape asked.

Hood shook his head adamantly, waving his hand.

Cape opened his mouth to argue, but stopped, his mouth slightly ajar as he saw something on Hood’s face, before smiling gently. “Okay. Let us know if we need to stop, though. Same with you, Sailor.”

Link scowled, but he had to admit a break sounded nice. The last time he had walked this far in one go was during the war, almost a year ago—Tetra’s ship didn’t call for prolonged walking. But he wasn’t going to be the reason they stopped.

“The town shouldn’t be far from here,” Rings said distantly, a head tilted as if listening and his brows furrowed in concentration. “We’ll just follow... Do you feel that? There’s something...”

A sudden glint cut through the air. Link instinctively ducked as something flew past them, embedding itself in a nearby tree like a harpoon. The others hit the ground, covering their heads, while Rings cursed up a storm.

Cape stared, eyes wide with shock, at whatever had just flown at them. He scrambled to his feet and darted to the tree where the projectile remained firmly lodged in the bark.

It was a sword impaled in the tree, with a blueish-grey steel blade and a winged indigo hilt.

“Is that the fucking—”

“The Master Sword?” Link squawked.

Cape glanced back at them, hesitation flickering across his face. “It is... She’s supposed to be asleep. Zelda must have sent her after me when...” He lifted a hand to grab the blade.

“Wait, don’t—!” Hood shouted, his voice cracking.

Cape’s hand closed around the hilt. With a smooth movement, he pulled the sword from the tree while the others watched in dumb shock.

“You...can touch the sword...” Rings stammered.

Link frowned, his brow knit in confusion. Was that a bad thing? He knew the sword was special, but Rings and Hood stared at Cape like they were expecting him to drop dead.

Cape looked just as confused as Link felt. “Of course I can. She’s my sword.”

“What’s going on?” Link asked. “I can touch the sword, too. Can’t everyone?”

All three of them turned to stare at him, their faces pale.

“No,” Rings said, his voice hollow. “Only the Hero can wield it. For anyone else, it—”

“It burns. Like you’re on fire,” Hood finished quietly. “Why can you...?”

Cape’s eyes flickered between Rings and Link, realization dawning in his expression. He took a step back. “Wait... you can... you’re all—”

The sword in his hands flashed white and Cape jumped, startled. He gripped the hilt with both hands as the Master Sword rattled violently, flickering in sporadic bursts of light. With a strange chiming noise, the reaction subsided as quickly as it came.

Cape held the sword away from his body, staring with concern and alarm. “Fi?” he murmured, bringing the sword close again and inspecting the blade.

The others stared at Cape and the sword in heavy silence.

“Okay,” Rings said, his brisk tone sticking a knife into the tension. “We’re going to go to the town. We’ll get a nice, quiet inn room, where we can sit down and discuss what the fuck just happened and what’s going on without shouting over a river. Got it?”

Hood and Link mumbled vague agreements and followed as Rings marched away. Cape stayed a moment longer, pulling off his cape and carefully wrapping the sword like he was swaddling a newborn. His face was tight with worry, his eyes fixed on the hilt.

It wasn’t just about the sword, Link thought as he trailed after Rings. Cape had realized something, and judging by his dismayed expression, Link wasn’t sure he wanted to find out what.

△△△

Unheard and barely awake, the spirit within the sword chimed as if sleep-talking, her words stripped to bare essentials.

Task received: Encoding Chosen Hero era data. Data saved. Recording.

Chapter Text

Dark.

The word slipped to the surface of Link’s mind like a bubble through mud. A cacophony instantly drowned out any other thoughts, and he fell away again.

Cold. Movement.

More noise—a jumble of words and thoughts falling over themselves. Crashing into each other nonsensically.

Cold.

They could agree on cold.

What—

Nausea and pain seized them, more effective at silencing their thoughts than their thinking over each other. It pushed them down into sleep, but they grabbed onto consciousness, refusing to let it slip away again.

They had been here before. The climb out of their uncooperating, shared brain was a familiar one.

—happened?

Link opened his eyes. There was—

Let me—

Red pushed himself to the forefront, curiosity piqued by their surroundings. He was lying on a woven blanket on a rough wooden floor. His eyes traced the wood grain to the wall, to a collection of colorful pots.

Not the forge. Not the—

His vision spun, and they fell back into the mire of unconsciousness again.

They didn’t know how long it took for them to open their eyes again. It could have been centuries—

—No, it couldn’t have—

—for all they knew. The scenery hadn’t changed save for the warm, orange cast of sunset. They heard voices nearby—unfamiliar voices, not their grandpa’s.

Everything hurt.

Should we split? It might help the—

We don’t know where we are.

Strangers. We can’t.

Their thoughts were finally regaining some sort of order. Defined and no longer bleeding into each other like watercolors. The strange environment was almost helpful in returning order to their shared mental space, as they were unanimous in their confusion and trepidation.

They weren’t home.

So where were they?

Link groaned softly, attempting movement, and his head instantly twinged in pain. He winced, waiting for the pain to subside. It had been a while since he had a migraine this bad. He felt like his brain had been scooped out with a ladle and replaced with steel wool.

Any movement was going to be slow until his head stopped hurting.

He rolled onto his back, which he immediately regretted as it exposed his eyes to light peeking through the curtained window. Muttering a curse, he covered his face with his forearm—

—which was missing its bracer.

Turning away from the treacherous light, he lifted the blanket he was wrapped in to find bare skin. Someone had stripped him of everything but his breeches.

Treatment for hypothermia, Vio supplied. They remembered water and cold.

Blue didn’t care. Someone had taken their things. Were they stolen? Was this a kidnapping? Where were—

Where’s the sword? Red asked.

That silenced all four voices. Icy panic dripped down their spine.

Let’s not assume the worst, Green cautioned and took the lead.

Pushing past the headache and wrapping the blanket around his torso, Link sat up.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

Link jolted in surprise, wincing as his head throbbed in response. Someone approached and put a cool hand against his forehead. He wanted to retreat from the stranger, but the cool touch and pressure felt amazing.

“How are you feeling, hun?”

He cracked an eye open to see a dark-skinned woman looking him over, red hair spilling over her shoulders.

Friendly, probably. She must have treated us.

“Where...?” Link croaked.

There were footsteps. The woman glanced over her shoulder. “Let’s get him something to drink.” As the footsteps disappeared again, she looked back. “Do you think you can manage a drink?”

Link nodded, certainly willing to give it a try. The inside of his mouth was dry and tasted vaguely of salt. A faint, disjointed memory surfaced, of falling out of his grandpa’s forge and into the ocean. It seemed like he had been summoned somewhere, in the most haphazard way possible.

The other person returned, crouching in front of him and holding out a large, green fruit with the top cut off.  Curious, Link took it and found liquid sloshing inside. He took a sip—a little sweet and a little salty, perfect for his condition. “Thank you,” he murmured.

“Glad to see you’re awake,” the second person said—thankfully keeping his voice down. The black marks on his face drew Link’s attention first, at odds with the man’s gentle expression. He wore a simple beige tunic and pants, entirely different in style than the woman’s loose, flowy pareo and not as suited for the warm humidity. His accent, too, marked him as not local to the area.

Link remembered there had been others in the ocean with him—this must be one of them. He set the drink down and licked salt off his lips. “Where are we?”

“You’re on Bannan Island, hun,” the woman answered. “Your friends said you fell off a ship nearby.”

Link shot the man a curious look. He responded with a tight smile and a shrug.

Ah, Vio thought. That makes sense.

What does?

He’s hiding that we were both summoned here. That’s wise, until we understand the situation.

“Right...” Link said. “I’m afraid I don’t remember much. I do know we hadn’t met before, and I thank you for saving me despite that. My name is Link.”

The woman whipped her head to face the man, and the man put a hand over his face. “Ah, spirits, we got another one.”

Link blinked at him.

“I’ll get your other friend,” the woman said, standing, her tone of voice disavowing any part of whatever was going on. “My name is Joanne, hun. If you need anything, my husband Perry will be around.”

As she left, the man’s shoulders fell and he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Right. Sorry ‘bout that. Y’see, my name’s Link, too. It’s gonna get a little confusing around here, I reckon.”

Link stared at the other Link.

Oh. Even Vio was a bit flummoxed.

‘Confusing’ is an understatement, Blue chimed in.

Well, we can figure something out. It’s like when the sword—

“The sword!” Link yelped, remembering its absence and searching the room for it. Please tell me no one tried to use it.

The other Link signaled for him to relax. “It’s in the other room. Linkle—that’s, err, the other person who fell. She was gettin’ the water off. She’s out cleanin’ your clothes now.”

Link relaxed, sinking into the blankets. He took another drink and rubbed his head, the sweet liquid chasing away the last vestiges of his headache. If someone had done anything more than just holding the sword, there would be a lot more alarm in Other-Link’s response.

We have got to think of another name for him.

Beige? Red suggested.

No, came three immediate responses.

Did you catch that other name? Linkle?

Other-Link sighed. “As you mighta guessed, Linkle and I ain’t from around here and we’re presumin’ you ain’t either. She seems to have a better handle of whatever’s goin’ on so—well, speak of the demon—”

With pounding footsteps, a young, blonde woman in a yellow dress burst through the curtain into the room, sliding to a stop. “He’s awake?”

“Eh-yup,” Other-Link said. “Three guesses what his name is.”

The woman, who Link assumed was Linkle, slumped in exacerbation. “Oh. Yeah. It would be.” She plopped on the ground next to them, tucking her legs beneath her. “Hi, Link. I’m Linkle. I guess you’ve already met this Link. There’s another one in this era we might run into. How are you feeling?”

Era.

The word spun around in their head as all four Colors latched onto it.

Well, this...wouldn’t be the first time. Vio conceded.

Link’s face fell. “When are we?”

Linkle and Other-Link looked at each other hesitantly.

“I’m not sure what year it is,” Linkle said slowly. “If I remember right, they use another calendar altogether. We’re in a timeline where...” She paused, her eyes flickering towards Other-Link with concern. “I don’t mean to scare you, but we’re all really far from home. But don’t worry, Link and I will figure out how to get us back.”

Link scowled, noting his exclusion and immediately guessing why. It was, frustratingly, a common problem. “Please, tell me everything. I know what I look like, but I’m nineteen. I’ve trained as a knight.”

“Oh!” Linkle covered her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. We—”

“It’s fine. I’m used to it.”

“Right. Um—” Linkle furrowed her brows in thought. “Well, in this timeline, Hyrule is under the sea, and it has been for a long time. They don’t even remember Hyrule anymore, except in legends. They call this the Great Sea.”

Link’s mouth fell open. The other Link apparently hadn’t heard of this either, as his head snapped around to Linkle in surprise.

“I don’t know how we got here,” Linkle continued. “I’ve traveled through time before, but it was different then. There were portals we could go through, and some eras were just...” She clapped her hands together. “Mushed together. It was a whole thing. But this time, I just...sort of fell.”

“It was the same for me,” Other-Link said. “I was out in the forest when—” He made a vague gesture which Link took to mean the world falling away. That was similar to what Link had felt, anyway.

“Same.” Link drew the blankets tighter around his shoulders. When he had been pulled into another time before, at least the Princess of the era had been there to explain things. Linkle and Other-Link were as lost as he was. “You said there was another person named Link here?”

Linkle shook her head. “Not here here, but somewhere in this time. When I got pulled into the future—err, my future—the Hero incarnation from this time got pulled across timelines, too. His name was Link, but there were two others so...we gave them nicknames. You know. Since it got confusing.”

There was a lot to unpack in there.

Vio? Green asked. Please tell me you’re unpacking that.

Taking a deep breath, Vio took the lead. The others were well out of their depths as the discussion crossed into Figuring Things Out.

We don’t know enough yet. Hold on.

“Hero incarnation?” Other-Link asked.

Linkle’s bright eyes widened with the expression of someone about to tell a long, long story. “Oh, boy. Where do I start?”

She started with a war across time. A witch had wished on the Triforce, and her desire resulted in several eras across history colliding. Ganondorf, the Demon King, had manipulated the witch to restore his soul, which had been split into four and cast across history. As the eras conjoined, their warriors and champions joined the fight, including four incarnations of the “Hero”.

A perpetually reincarnating figure, reborn to fight evil when darkness returned to the world. All of them were named Link.

Or Linkle, in her case. “Close enough,” she said, waving a hand dismissively.

Link stared at his now-empty drink, running his thumb along the rough-cut rim. Judging by the fading light in the window, the sun had just set by the time Linkle finished her story. Joanne and her husband had left them alone, only popping in to give them a lamp and to let them know their clothes had been brought in from drying. Despite being effectively naked under the blanket, Link was far more interested in hearing the rest of Linkle’s tale than getting dressed.

How have we not heard of this? Blue asked, filling the silence he had expected Vio to break with some sort of explanation or insight.

Vio was thinking on it, hard enough that the headache threatened to return.

Other-Link seemed to be in a similar state of dumbfounded shock, staring at a spot on the floor in front of him. Linkle was looking between the two of them apologetically, fidgeting with the fabric of her dress.

One part of the story stuck out to Link. “Four parts. Ganondorf was split into four.”

“That’s right,” Linkle said. “From what Lana told us, the previous Hero did it to seal him away, hoping it’d prevent his return.”

Link swallowed. “When you say ‘previous Hero’...do you know anything more about them?”

Linkle tilted her head in thought. “Only a little. He wasn’t pulled into the war, so I didn’t meet him. We assumed he came after me and before the Captain in the timeline. Lana said he was known as the Hero of the Four Sword.”

Blood drained from Link’s face. In a flash, he remembered dealing the final blow to Ganon, his and his brother’s strikes empowered by the Princess’s sealing magic. Their sword—the Four Sword—sundered the demon king. After the fight, the Princess sent Link back to the past, to his home with his grandpa and father and the Princess Zelda he grew up with.

It wasn’t a stretch to assume the future Princess sent Ganon’s split soul across time as well—four pieces of evil, spread across history to be forever separated. Or so she might have thought.

“That was me,” Link said. “I’m the Hero of the Four Sword.”

“What?” Linkle squeaked.

“Your story matches mine, unless there was another Hero who also wielded the Four Sword and split Ganondorf into four.” Link flexed his hand, missing the weight of the sword. He had to remind himself it was in the next room over and no one was likely to take it. “I would have liked that to have been the end of it.”

“I know what you mean,” Other-Link said. He was slumped forward, sitting cross-legged and gripping his hands together in his lap, his eyes exhausted. “I fought Ganondorf, too. A different one.” His expression drew tight. “No, I didn’t just fight him—I killed him. And you’re tellin’ me he came back?”

Linkle gingerly put a hand on his knee. “He reincarnates, too. I’m sorry. But I promise, what you did mattered—you kept the world safe from his evil for the next two hundred years.”

Other-Link glanced at her, a weak smile on his lips. “Thanks.”

“I assume you came after him then?” Link asked, looking between them.

Linkle nodded. “In my time, there are stories about the Hero of Twilight saving Hyrule from an invasion.”

The Hero of Twilight nodded vaguely and waved a hand in a so-so gesture. So that was mostly true, but Link figured there was a lot more to the story.

“And then you come after me—”

Link cut her off. “Sorry, I don’t think that’s the case. I was brought forward in time to fight Ganondorf.” He chewed the inside of his cheek, deciding how much to share. “After my first adventure, I left the Four Sword in its sanctuary to seal a demon. Ganondorf meddled with the seal in the future, so the Princess pulled me forward to check on it. She sent me back to my time afterwards.”

If the Hero reincarnates to fight evil, why were we summoned? Vio thought. If her story is true, there should have been a Hero incarnation in that time period.

“Oh! So maybe you’re before...” Linkle looked at Other-Link. Twilight. Link—Red, mostly—decided that was a sensible nickname.

Twilight shook his head. “I met my predecessor—his, er, ghost anyway. Somethin’ like that. He might be earlier’n that.”

Link groaned weakly. Counting the four in the war Linkle described, Twilight, his predecessor, and Link himself, that was seven incarnations of the Hero. One more, if he included the founding Hero-King he had been named after. Had evil, threatening enough to warrant a reincarnating hero, really risen that often? The thought turned his stomach.

Did all of his successive incarnations fight a demon like Ganondorf? And what of the Picori-turned-demon Vaati? Was the malice in his soul free to return too, now that the sword no longer held it captive? Did they make some mistake, allowing evil to return?

What were they doing wrong?

Vio, remember what she said. Red cut into Vio’s thoughts before they could spiral. Vaati was sealed for hundreds of years. What we did mattered. This is bigger than us.

Link clenched his fist, nails digging into his palm, and sighed. “Right...”

Linkle and Twilight looked at him expectantly, ears perked.

“Let’s review. We have the same spirit, reincarnated.” Link gestured between himself and the other two. “We seem to come from the same timeline, separated by hundreds of years. For reasons unknown, we’ve been brought together into an alternate timeline, in which exists another incarnation.”

“That’s right.” Linkle nodded.

“Presumably, we’ve been pulled into another quest to fight evil.”

Twilight winced. “I hope not, but I get your thinkin’.”

Tapping a finger against his leg, Link continued. “While that mission would obviously take precedence, should we discover what evil is threatening the Great Sea, we don’t have any leads on it yet. We should ask Joanne and Perry, but otherwise...I think we should start by searching for a way back to our timeline.”

“And leave ‘em defenseless? When there might be a monster out there?” Twilight asked, scowling.

“No, of course not. But we can look for leads while we’re pursuing our own goal,” Link said. “If someone like the Princess exists in this timeline, they may be able to return us home.”

Linkle hummed, putting a finger to her chin. “If anyone knows, it’d be the Sailor. Perry might know how to find him.”

“Perfect. We’ll start there.”

Link looked to Twilight, to see if he agreed with the plan. Instead, the man was shifting uncomfortably, the dim lamplight amplifying the unease on his face. Eventually, he cleared his throat. “I might have another idea for travelin’ through time.”

“You do?” Linkle perked up, leaning forward eagerly.

“Yeah,” Twilight said, looking more uncomfortable by the second. “During my adventure, I went back in time once. I don’t understand how, only that I opened a door to the past with the Master Sword.”

Linkle gasped softly. “Sailor used the sword in his adventure, too. I bet he knows where to find it.”

Link raised an eyebrow, unfamiliar with the sword they were talking about. Still, he shrugged—it was the best lead they had so far, and it felt good to have a plan.

It also felt good to not tackle the problem alone—not that he was ever truly alone anymore. But this time there were other people—other Heroes—familiar with the daunting work of saving Hyrule at his side. It was surprisingly reassuring.

“Alright,” he said. “Tomorrow morning, we look for the Sailor and the Master Sword.”

Plan set and spirits lifted, they gathered their things from the front room—giving Link a moment of privacy to get dressed—and set up a hammock, hooked against the wall, and a blanket nest. An argument over the hammock devolved into a game of rock-paper-scissors, which Linkle lost and was therefore assigned the hammock, despite her insistence that Link was still sick and needed it more. Link was content to curl up in the blankets he had already warmed, and Twilight had his pelt, which he burrowed under in a corner.

Link’s new companions drifted into sleep, their breathing evening out as their borrowed lamp slowly dimmed. Its oil was burning low, the light flickering in its final moments.

Sleep wouldn’t come easily for Link—not when he had just woken up, and not with each of his Colors quietly processing everything they had learned.

It had been a long time since they let themselves think about their last adventure, but the day’s revelations brought it all rushing back. Drawing the Four Sword for the first time in seven years. The Colors separated and pursued across Hyrule by corrupted knights. The shattering of a dark mirror.

Link turned away from the light to stare at the wall instead. The uneven shadows cast by his blankets stretched across the surface, their shape just slightly wrong.

He hesitated, then freed one hand from the covers, holding it up to the light and forming a ‘V’ shape with his fingers.

The blankets cast a shadow—his hand didn’t.

Chapter Text

Link stirred, the grip of sleep finally loosening, and blinked his eyes open to the dark ceiling of a cave. Daylight cut long, straight lines against the opposite wall, catching motes of dust floating in a faint breeze. The cool wind smelled like pine and grass, mixed with the dry, coppery scent he associated with old Sheikah tech. Under his fingers, the floor felt rough and ropey, like volcanic stone.

His breath caught in his chest as recognition lanced through him.

Jumping to his feet, Link scrambled out of the cave and braced his hand against the stone wall outside. His heart pounded against his ribs, its rhythm too loud in his ears.

He woke up in the Shrine of Resurrection.

Like the mouth of a hungry beast, the cave threatened to swallow him whole, to drag him back into the Shrine. In desperation, Link reached for the sensations around him, anything to stave off the rising panic. He focused on the wind tugging at his hair, listened to rustling leaves, counted pebbles on the ground...

The ground was disturbed, as if there had been a great deal of foot traffic in and out of the Shrine recently—a stark contrast to the lonely place in which he had awakened. It was just different enough to break him from his spiral.

He gathered the courage to look at the entrance again and found none of the age he knew should be there. None of the settled dust and erosion or fallen rocks. The walls looked freshly carved, the Shrine whole and untouched by time.

Despite the discrepancies, he didn’t dare explore deeper—not if he didn’t have to. Instead, he turned away, facing the overlook where he had his first view of the country after his hundred-year sleep.

A figure sat at the edge of the cliff, a long white braid trailing down his back.

Link froze. He dug his fingers into the wall, asking the sensation for assurance that this was real.

Of course, it could have been a dream anyway—a dream that was real. A vision shared with a god trapped in a mask.

Swallowing hard, Link stepped forward. The land of Hyrule rose into view over the cliff’s edge, vast and achingly familiar. In the distant valley basin sat the castle, surrounded by five Sheikah spires and a glistening lake. The Great Plateau tower loomed nearby, its interior glowing electric blue, matching the other towers scattered across the horizon.

Farther east, where Link expected to see the ruins of an ancient temple, stood an intact building, aged but whole. Even in the time of the Calamity, the building had fallen into disrepair.

Link drew closer to the figure at the cliff’s edge. Red warpaint marked the god’s cheeks, just visible under the silvery hair framing his face. He wore his armor beneath a loose cloak, its folds catching in the faint breeze. A gauntleted hand rested on a drum by his side, and though he made no motion to acknowledge Link, his presence felt crushingly heavy. The air was thick with time magic.

“Sheik,” Link said, naming the god—the forgotten patron of the Sheikah.

The Fierce Deity blinked as if awakened from a trance. He turned slightly, his eyes locking onto Link’s with an expression of deep regret. A faint, apologetic smile tugged at his lips.

“It’s too soon, friend,” Sheik said. “You’re not meant to be here yet.”

As if shoved, Link fell backwards, tumbling into a void—

He snapped awake, jolting out of bed and choking back a yell.

Stars filled his vision, and he dropped his head into his hand until the world stopped spinning and his heart settled. He squeezed his eyes shut and let his other senses take over. The faint scent of herbs, sharp and medicinal, filled the air, mingling with smoke and the tang of metal.

Robbie’s workshop? No, he didn’t remember falling asleep there. He had been in the Depths...

After a moment, he dared to open his eyes and surveyed the room—unfamiliar yet filled with familiar trappings. He was sitting on a futon spread over tatami flooring, in a minimalist living space tucked into the corner of a larger workshop. A furnace dominated another corner, surrounded by cluttered worktables piled high with tools and curling parchment.

That explained why it smelled like Robbie’s place, but it didn’t explain where he actually was.

Or when.

He glanced around and took inventory of his belongings. His baldric had been removed and rested on a nearby table, his broadsword sheathed beside it. Otherwise, he was still fully clothed in his blue leathers. He patted his belt for his other sword, slate, and energy cell and found them missing.

Shit. Of all things to lose—

“Ah, you’re awake.”

Startled, Link whipped his head toward the voice. An elderly white-haired man with comically large spectacles poked his head out of a cellar door, looking something like a mole emerging from its den. The man climbed out of the cellar and ambled over to the living space, towards a kettle hanging over a fire. He poured steaming green liquid into a cup as he spoke.

“Good timing,” he said amicably. “I’d just finished making tea.”

Link watched warily as he approached. Behind the thick glasses, the man’s red eyes marked him as a Sheikah—a potential friend, or a deadly enemy. Link’s eyes swept the room for any signs of Yiga iconography.

“You were out for a while,” the man continued, setting the cup beside Link’s futon. “We found you on the road just after sun-up. You looked like you’d gone a few rounds with a Lynel.”

Link felt like it, too. He sniffed cautiously at the tea—it smelled like green tea with a bit of honey and lemon—and took a sip. If the man was Yiga, he’d had plenty of opportunity to attack already. That, and Link was pretty sure he was resistant to most poisons by now.

“Thank you,” Link rasped. “Where am I?”

The Sheikah settled onto the floor nearby. “My home,” he said simply. “Name’s Lueberry. And you’re... not from around here, I take it?”

Link hesitated, his mind racing for a plausible response. The truth was a lot to drop on a stranger, even a Sheikah. “I...got lost,” he said carefully, testing the words as they left his mouth. It wasn’t exactly a lie.

Lueberry raised an eyebrow but didn’t press the matter. “Well, lost or not, any friend of the Sheikah is welcome here. I, ah, noticed the Eye on that device you had.”

“The slate?” Link asked, heart jumping into his throat. “Where—?”

“Don’t worry, lad, I’ve got it in the basement.” Lueberry gestured towards the stairs. “You’re free to take it back, although I’d love to keep poking at it if you’re not in a hurry. That and your other doodads. Where did you get such things?”

Link opened his mouth, trying to find a way to explain without revealing too much. He didn’t get far, because someone pounded at the door.

Lueberry frowned, pushing to his feet. “Hold on a moment, that must be—”

The door burst open before Lueberry could reach it. Two figures crashed inside, stumbling over each other in a tangle of limbs—a teenage girl in a dark blue cloak and a boy in a green tunic.

The girl was the first to notice Link, her eyes widening in surprise. “Oh, he’s awake?”

Before Lueberry could answer, the blond boy detangled himself and started signing furiously. Link leaned over to see, but Lueberry’s back obstructed his view.

“Slow down, lad, I’m not as fluent as you two.” Lueberry paused as the boy repeated the signs. “You sense a rift? Is that right?”

The boy signed something else, and Lueberry patted his shoulder with a fond chuckle. “I’m fine, my boy. Come on in, you two. We can talk over tea.”

The boy hesitated, his brow furrowing, but the girl placed a hand on his back, guiding him toward the kitchen. “The rift can wait a few moments,” she said gently. She handed the staff she carried to her companion, nudged him towards the kettle, and grabbed three teacups from a shelf, her eyes flicking toward Link. “I hope you haven’t been bothering him about his things too much, Lueberry.”

“I’ll have you know he just woke up,” Lueberry said with a huff, reclaiming his seat on the floor and pulling the disgruntled boy down with him. “I haven’t had time to be a bother.”

The girl smiled, filling the cups from the kettle before handing one to the boy and another to Lueberry. Then she turned to Link.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” she said, her voice warm. “Link and I found you on the road to Suthorn. When we saw the Sheikah Eye on your tablet, we thought it best to bring you here to Lueberry’s.” She lowered herself gracefully onto the floor. “My name is Zelda.”

Link’s breath caught, though he wasn’t entirely surprised—who else could she be? He saw so much of his own Zelda in her face, the same inquisitive gaze. He stared, his eyes flicking between her and the boy in green.

The boy—the other Link—met his eyes, his expression guarded but curious. He wore a sword strapped to his back—not the Master Sword, judging by its hilt, but a sword nonetheless.

Link’s shoulders fell in relief. Of all the people he could have run into, the Princess and Hero were the best possible—the people he could trust the most in a strange era. “Thank the goddesses,” he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. His eyes lingered on the younger Hero, wondering if the boy had already faced whatever evil he was born to fight. A pang tugged at Link’s heart, but he shoved the feeling down for now and considered the problem of his name. “This is a bit awkward, but my name is also Link. You can call me Sage, if you like. It’s a...title I have.”

“Oh, like the sages of legend?” Zelda asked, tilting her head.

“I suppose,” Sage said with a weak smile, wondering if this era’s legendary sages were anyone he was familiar with. “I was looking for someone—my ward—when I passed out. He disappeared suddenly, and then….”

Zelda and Lueberry both glanced knowingly at Link. Between them, the young swordsman stiffened, his hands twitching in his lap.

“Disappeared, you say….” Lueberry pulled at his mustache thoughtfully.

“It might have been the rift?” Link said, his signs small and close to his chest.

Zelda frowned and signed back. “Maybe. But we haven’t found it yet.”

Sage raised a hand, interrupting their private exchange. “I can understand sign language,” he admitted guiltily. “What about these rifts? It might be related to my search.”

Both teenagers blushed, their hands pausing mid-sign.

Zelda took refuge in a long sip of tea, her brows furrowing. When she finally set the cup down, her level voice was reminiscent of a doctor speaking to a patient. “Sage, do you happen to have any gaps in your memory?”

Tilting his head, Sage considered the question. He knew well what a hole in his memory felt like, the ache of something just out of reach. Other than the period in which he was passed out on the road, he could remember his previous days with clarity. Beyond that, he had no trouble recalling the major events of his life. By the end of his first adventure, he remembered everything the Shrine of Resurrection took from him.

“No,” he said slowly. “I don’t think so.”

Zelda’s shoulders eased. “That’s good. You see, the rifts we are investigating...take things from people. Most often, their memories. Sometimes....” She hesitated, resting a hand on Link’s knee. “About a year or so ago, rifts appeared across Hyrule. Sometimes, they would open under people, or people would go missing to be found later, most frequently without their memories. Link and I closed all the rifts, but then....”

“I can sense when rifts form,” Link explained, his brows furrowed. “It feels like there’s one now, but I can’t tell where. It’s like it’s everywhere, but—” He gestured broadly, frustration evident at the lack of omnipresent rift.

Zelda sighed, her fingers tapping absently against her teacup. “After...everything, there shouldn’t be any rifts left. This doesn’t make sense.”

So they’ve had their adventure, Sage thought with a grimace. They must have been younger than he and his Zelda were when the Calamity struck.

Seeming to catch his pained expression, Zelda drew herself up, a mask of gentle authority falling over her face. “I apologize for burdening you with our troubles, Sage. Link and I will be traveling Hyrule in search of this rift, and I’m sure we can keep an eye out for your ward as well.”

“Could I join you?” Sage asked. “The rift you’re looking for might be connected to his disappearance.”

The Princess and Hero glanced at each other, their ears twitching in surprise. Zelda’s gaze drifted to the broadsword resting on the side table. “Are you sure? While I’m certain you’re a capable swordsman, Link and I have unique experience with rifts.”

Sage smiled apologetically. “I appreciate your concern. But to tell you the truth, I think we have more in common than our name.” His eyes met Link’s. “I’ve traveled through time to be here. In my era, I’m called the Hero of the Wild. I’m an inheritor of the Hero’s Spirit, like you.”

Link’s shoulders rose to his ears. “What do you mean?”

“Traveled through time?” Zelda asked, disbelieving.

Without a word, Lueberry jumped to his feet and rushed down the cellar stairs.

Sage opened his mouth and closed it. Maybe that was too much to drop on them at once after all, but Link’s question worried him the most. Did they not know about the cycle—the curse—in this era? Sage’s stomach sank and he looked away, running his hand through his hair nervously.

“It’s a...a legend. Or a cycle. Whenever evil rises, a Hero and a Princess appear to face it,” he recited. “In my time, Zelda—the Princess Zelda of my era—and I defeated a monster called Calamity Ganon.”

“Ganon?” Zelda glanced at Link, her hands wringing the shaft of her staff. “I believe that was the name of a monster we faced—an echo of Ganon, that is. Our records say the Hero of Legend defeated the original monster after it escaped its seal....”

Sage nodded. “The Hero of Legend alongside the Princess of the era, I assume.”

Link stared at Sage as if trying to piece together a puzzle, skepticism and worry tugging at his expression. “This has happened multiple times? Fighting Ganon?”

“And will again,” Sage answered softly, staring into his half-drained teacup. “It’s not your fault—it’s a curse from a very long time ago. Before Hyrule existed.”

Lueberry appeared from the cellar door again, huffing as he climbed the steps. “Your tech! That explains everything—they’re not from this time!” He rose above the floor level, revealing the sword, slate, and cells in his arms. “This technology is far beyond what we can do now. You could only be from the age of the gods, or from far in the future.”

Sage chuckled weakly. “Probably the latter. In my era, this technology has been long forgotten—we’re just now rediscovering it.” If this technology was beyond them, he was likely in the Era of Myth—before Rauru and Sonia reformed the country. Untold centuries in his past.

He was far from home indeed.

Taking a deep breath, he faced Link and Zelda fully. “Please, let me accompany you. We can work together to investigate the rift and find my ward—Midori.”

The Princess and Hero looked at each other, an unspoken conversation passing between their eyes. Eventually, Link shrugged in acquiescence, and Zelda smiled brightly.

“Very well, Sage,” she said, outstretching a hand—her left, after a brief hesitation and a quick glance at Sage’s missing right arm. “You may join us, but...with all due respect, I ask that you let us lead. If you’re lost to a rift, we will do everything in our power to rescue you, but we cannot guarantee your safety.”

Sage lit up and took Zelda’s hand. “Thank you.”

Collecting his things from Lueberry, Sage pulled on his baldric, attached the slate and sword to his belt, and began his fifth adventure.

Although he had been in a similar position in his adventure to the time of the Calamity, accompanying a younger Hero and Princess, it still felt odd to not take the lead when he was at least ten years their elder and an experienced adventurer. But in his previous adventure, he was exploring a Hyrule he knew like the back of his hand.

This Hyrule was very, very different. Bafflingly so.

Sage accompanied Link and Zelda to Hyrule Castle, several hours north of Lueberry’s house across marshy grasslands and hills. For that leg of the journey, the country seemed vaguely familiar. Sage assumed they were in the Faron region, and Zelda confirmed Lake Hylia was nearby—about half a day from their location at the time.

But when they arrived at the castle—which was an entirely different building to the one Sage knew—and retrieved a map of the country, Sage stared at it, unsure if someone was playing a strange joke.

“Eldin is northwest?” he croaked, eventually.

“Should it not be?” Zelda asked, looking up from the fluffy cat in her lap.

Sage pulled out the map on his Sheikah Slate, ignoring the ‘no signal’ warning beep, and showed it to the young Princess and Hero. They craned their necks over the device, looking as baffled as Sage felt.

“Are you sure you’re from Hyrule?” Link asked, squinting at the screen.

Over the next day of travel, riding horses borrowed from the castle’s livery, they started to form a working theory regarding the ridiculous geographical shift between their eras.

It started with Zelda and Link recounting their adventure. After Ganon captured Zelda, Link freed her—only to fall into a rift immediately after. Zelda escaped the rift and met a creature she called a Tri.

Tris, Zelda explained, were creatures—invisible to most—that could regenerate anything consumed by the rifts; such was their power and purpose granted by the Golden Goddesses. Empowered by the goddesses’ Prime Energy, the Tris perpetually recreated bits of the world as the void consumed it from within, maintaining the delicate balance of creation and destruction. If too much had been destroyed at once, leaving nothing to reference, the Tris could err in their recreation and over time errors could compound and change the country’s geography.

Sage wasn’t entirely sure he believed the theory, though he couldn’t deny its plausibility. Regardless, he knew his wife would be fascinated by it. He snapped a picture of the map to share with her later—alongside the growing collection of photos he’d already taken of the era’s flora.

But it wasn’t the geography that preoccupied his thoughts—it was the balance Zelda described. Creation and destruction in a perpetual cycle. Poe had warned him about that balance shifting.

The entity causing the rifts, they explained, was called Null—a manifestation of the void that existed before creation, that ever sought a return to the nothingnesss.

As Link and Zelda described the entity they had defeated, Sage chewed the inside of his cheek, unhappy with what this resurgence meant for the young heroes. “If a rift is forming again.... I’m sorry, but it may be that Null has returned.”

Zelda gripped her horse’s reins tightly, her knuckles turning white. “I can’t deny the possibility, but we sealed Null deep within the world. Creation itself is its prison.”

“Deep?” Cold realization washed over Sage. “As in...underground?”

“Yes? That is how I understand it.”

“Ah.” Sage groaned wearily. “It may have escaped in my time.... In my era, chasms opened to the Depths below Hyrule….”

Zelda stared at him, aghast. “You think it escaped? But why would that affect us now?”

Sage hummed thoughtfully and explained the best he could. In his experience, gods didn’t follow the linear time the way mortals did. The vision he had days before seemed to be in Sage’s future, but Sheik’s present—or something like that. Null likely followed similar rules.

He hoped Sheik would pull him into another dream soon so they could speak properly. Both Hylia and Sheik were gods of time, of day and night. If Hylia was too busy to answer him, perhaps Sheik could.

A couple days after leaving Castle Town, while Link and Zelda slept and Sage kept watch over their camp, he pulled the god’s mask out of his slate. He held it facing himself as if the inanimate face could explain what was happening. It couldn’t, of course—not like it was. The firelight cast its still features in sharp contrast.

Sage ran his thumb over the mask’s smooth surface—not wood, he remembered—and flipped it over absently as if to put it on. He had fit it over his face once, in a moment of desperation. It let him speak with the god in the mask, to bargain for Midori’s freedom from their shared curse—from the destiny of a Hero.

Something stopped him from putting it on now. When he raised the mask, it felt impossibly heavy, as if resisting his attempt.

He suspected Sheik was as busy as his sister. Something had both gods of time—the creators of time—occupied.

Something—or Nothing.

Null was destroying time itself.

The realization struck Sage like a punch to the gut, leaving him breathless.

It was little wonder they couldn’t find the rift Link sensed—it was in time, not space.

Sage jolted when a loud snap pulled him from his thoughts. His hand twitched towards his sword and stopped when he saw Link rising from his bedroll with bleary eyes. The boy wasn’t due to wake for his watch for another hour or two.

“Are you okay?” Link signed.

Sage sighed and responded with a low chuckle. “I’m fine. I have...a theory about the rift, but I’ll save it for the morning. You should be asleep.”

“Awake now.” Link shrugged, sitting up fully. He tilted his head, catching a glimpse of the mask in Sage’s hands. “What is that?”

“Mm?” Sage glanced down at the mask and back to Link. “Oh. It’s a—well, a mask, obviously. It’s a magical artifact left by an old god. It contains what’s left of his spirit.”

“Good god? Bad?”

Sage huffed in amusement. “Good. He helped Midori and me.” He flipped the mask back over, facing it back up. After a moment of thought, he handed it to Link. “Don’t put it on—not that he’ll let you. I think he’s busy.”

Scrunching his face in bewilderment, Link gingerly took the mask and turned it over in his hands. He rested it on his knees and asked, “Why does it look like you if it’s a god?”

“That’s a long story,” Sage said with a smile. It only looked like him because it was from his era. The same mask likely existed in Link’s era, with the young hero’s face instead. “He...doesn’t have a face of his own anymore, so he borrows ours. The Hero’s.”

Link gave the mask a look of skepticism and cautiously handed it back. Sage tapped it against his slate, vanishing it into his inventory.

They fell into a companionable silence around their dwindling campfire. A cool spring breeze playfully tossed embers into the air. Link drew his blanket tighter around himself, still sitting up despite the bags under his eyes.

“Are you alright?” Sage asked.

Link’s ear twitched and he looked up. “Yes. Why?”

“You have a few hours before your watch. You can sleep.”

Link shrugged. After a moment, he signed, “Don’t think I can.”

Silent, Sage waited for him to continue. The boy wrung his hands as if he could knead the words out of his fingers. In the distance, an owl gave a low hoot as the wind picked up. The trees around them swayed, their rustling leaves sounding like ocean waves.

“What if Null really is back?” Link asked finally.

Sage’s lips pulled into a tight line, the question all too familiar. He let out a deep breath and patted the log next to where he was sitting. Link held his gaze for a moment before sighing and climbing out of his bedroll entirely, carrying his blanket to the log.

“I can’t assure you it won’t happen again,” Sage said when Link sat down. “I.... This is my fifth adventure. The first two times, it was Ganondorf. The third, too, sort of. The fourth time, we went back in time to beat him again, just for good measure.” He laughed under his breath, keeping his voice low to avoid waking the Princess. “I really hope you two only have to go through this once. If I can turn Null’s attention from your era, I’ll do it.”

“You beat him four times?” Link’s face creased with horror. “How do you do it?”

Sage was about to answer, but stopped when he thought of something better. He unclipped his slate and flipped to the album. With a few quick gestures, he pulled up an image of himself and some of his friends and family: Zelda, Sidon, Tulin and Teba, Yunobo, and Riju—the group that accompanied him to stop the Calamity in another timeline.

“I stopped doing things on my own,” Sage said. “I was afraid of letting others carry my burden. They couldn’t do everything for me, of course, but...I realized I was asking myself to do things I would never ask someone else to do alone.”

You don’t have to fight all by yourself, you know. Tulin’s words were seared on his heart. He had gone to fight Ganondorf alone at the end of his second adventure, and his friends arrived just in time to save him. Riju gave him the berating of a lifetime after the battle, especially after he had been such a mess when she last saw him.

Sage nodded towards Zelda. “You’ve got Zelda and Lueberry. If anything does happen, don’t forget they have your back. You don’t have to fight by yourself.”

Link stared, his eyes flitting between Sage’s. “Okay,” he said, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Zelda was always there with me, even if we were a world apart. She’s got lots of friends, too.” The smile faded, his brows furrowing again as he faced the fire. “I don’t want her to go through that again, either.”

“I know,” Sage murmured. “You and Zelda shouldn’t have had to in the first place.”

The boy nodded, pulling his blanket tighter and not meeting Sage’s eyes.

After another quiet moment, Sage raised his arm invitingly. Link startled, glancing at Sage’s arm and back up to the man, his expression going through a series of decisions before he finally landed on one. He scooted closer and let Sage pull him into a side hug.

Link ended up staying awake until his watch started. Sage stayed with him a little longer after the handover, until Link called him an old man and told him to go sleep. Tugging the boy’s hat a little lopsided, Sage chuckled and rose from the log to go burrow into his bedroll.

They mercifully let him sleep in a bit since they weren’t in a hurry to find the rift. He suspected they wouldn’t be able to find the rift at all—not if it only existed in time. While Sage cooked breakfast, he shared his late-night revelation with Link and Zelda, who exchanged troubled glances but decided to press on anyway. If nothing else, they might find Midori, assuming he landed in this era. They turned their search towards the forest, hoping the Great Deku Tree could provide guidance and let them access the Prime Energy he protected.

They found the rift after leaving Kakariko the next day.

It sat innocuously on the road between Kakariko and the forest, a dark purple dot no larger than a fist seared into a boulder. If not for Link’s attuned senses, they might have passed it entirely.

“Thank the goddesses,” Zelda murmured, sliding off her horse with a sigh. Legs wobbly from the long ride, she leaned heavily on her staff—a gift from the Tris—as she approached the rift. Link followed close behind, eyeing the rift like he expected it to bite.

Sage remained mounted, staring at the rift with unease. “It’s...smaller than I expected.”

“Small, but dangerous,” Zelda said. “I’m thankful we found it—I don’t know what we could have done to close it otherwise.”

Link stared at the spot skeptically. “It feels...bigger. On the inside.”

“Bigger?” Zelda echoed, tilting her head.

He nodded, eyes fixed on the gently pulsating hole in reality.

Sage dismounted, his boots crunching against loose gravel as he stepped closer. A low noise reached his ears, faint at first but growing louder as he approached, discordant and grating. Like the ancient mechanisms of the Divine Beasts grinding together after centuries of disuse.

“We won’t be able to close it from within,” Zelda said after a moment, gripping her staff tightly. “Even in the larger rifts we’ve encountered, there were only a few points where I could safely enter. But this... it’s too small. We’ll need to close it from here.”

“What if the Tris are trapped inside again?” Link signed.

“That’s...possible,” Zelda admitted. “And we will need their power to close it. But without the Prime Energy—”

“We need the Deku Tree.”

While the younger adventurers debated, Sage inched closer to the rift. The sound turned into feeling, a gentle tug like a river’s current. Out of curiosity—and against his better judgment—he drew a thread of time magic from his Secret Stone. Its yellow glow flickered faintly in his palm. Immediately, the rift reacted, swiping at his magic like a cat at a toy.

Sage gasped and yanked his hand back, but not before the wisp of energy was sucked into the rift. “It’s definitely eating time,” he said weakly.

The hum deepened into something like a growl. The pull intensified and Sage backed away. The rift was distorting, its edges wobbling and growing—

“Sage? What did you—?!” Zelda ran towards him.

Before she could reach him—before he could react—the rift exploded in size, consuming the entire boulder and the ground under Sage’s feet. Sage stumbled as he lost his balance, and then all sensation in his legs vanished. Before he knew what was happening, he had fallen chest-deep in the rift.

“Sage!” Zelda yelled, and it was the last thing he heard before the rift took him entirely.

Sage’s stomach lurched as the falling sensation suddenly stopped. The world around him was dim, full of dark shapes drifting in a violet abyss. He strained to pick up sound, but it was deathly quiet despite the grinding noise outside. His limbs were going stiff, resisting movement, and he didn’t feel any warmth or cold—just nothing, his senses screaming to feel something.

He had to get out.

Twisting against nothing, he somehow managed to turn around—which didn’t help. There was more nothing, save for a black blob. It moved through the void easily, gliding like a fish in water—or, more accurately, a shark. It noticed Sage, and immediately rammed into him as he floated helplessly.

He wished he could feel it attack him. Somehow, the blob felt even more like nothing. It had surpassed nothingness and became a vacuum, devouring his existence—his very soul—and everything that made him.

When he felt it tearing at his memory and the too-familiar gaps forming, he revolted. Instinctively, he latched onto the only thing he could: time.

The Secret Stone on his wrist flashed brilliant yellow in the darkness. The inky blob shivered, a grumbling noise filling the void, but it still held him tight.

We’ll see about that, Sage growled internally. The river of time rushed under his fingers, flowing one second at a time. The blob seemed to sense what he was doing, its hold on his paralyzed body tightening.

Sage grabbed onto the stream of time and held tight as it swept him out of the moment and out of Null’s inky tendrils.

In the void he left behind, the blob warped and shifted, reshaping itself into a new, humanoid form. Black ink oozed off the yellow, comma-shaped stone forming on its wrist.