Chapter Text
Across two realities, a symphony of shattered magic echoes through the heavens.
In a world of dusk and friendly shadows, a desperate people make an even more desperate wish. To protect a golden power from being misused, they sought to destroy it. Breaking the link between the heavens and their homeland spells a yet unforeseen doom.
In a palace above the clouds, shards of glass glitter in the morning sun. Four colorful heroes cluster around a fifth, darker shape. Their dying companion smiles at his first real taste of sunlight. Though they begged him to stay, fractures grew in his form like the mirror shards surrounding him. He slipped through their fingers.
Falling, falling.
A goddess and a shade, their links to the living world fading as fog does in the morning sun.
As the goddess’s tether grew thinner, she called for a hero. Her people knew not what they did. She would not consign them to darkness and death.
At the edge of her awareness, she found the shade. Her last act pulled his scattered essence together in a wash of silver light.
You’ll do.
***
Ravio was sure he’d left his stomach behind him somewhere. His heartbeat pounded in his ears as he dove behind a large tree. Was it a tree? The plants were so weird in this place!
Hoofbeats thundered past, heralding the pack of monsters he’d been trying so hard to evade.
I just wanted to help her! He thought to himself, hand clamped over his mouth to stop the desperate gasps. Ravio and the young Princess Hilda had been friends as long as he could remember. Ravio’s big brother, Aryn—his only family—had been a knight serving in the Royal Guard when he and the Princess had become fast friends.
Monsters had attacked the castle earlier that day. Similar events had become more and more frequent throughout Ravio’s twelve years of life, but never at that scale. The knights had been whispering of a coming doom when they thought Ravio couldn’t hear them. The land was dying, they said. The goddesses had forsaken Lorule for daring to destroy the Triforce centuries ago. Resources were becoming scarcer and fewer children were born each year.
That morning, Ravio had once again been evading his brother’s attempts to teach him swordplay. They’d been in the knights’ training hall when alarm bells had tolled throughout the castle. Ravio froze where he’d wedged himself behind a rack of weapons. Three tolls. Repeated again and again.
The bells tolled once when monsters were spotted on the edge of Castle Town. Twice when danger had entered the city.
Three tolls, and they were within the castle walls.
Aryn sheathed his sword, grabbed a shield and tugged his little brother out from his hiding place. “We need to find Princess Hilda. Come on!”
Ravio saw snatches of the sky through palace windows as they raced forward. Black clouds choked the sky above. Something terrible has happened , he’d thought in the moment. There should have been more people in these halls. The place should be swarming with knights and courtiers! But their frantic footsteps echoed in the cold and empty halls, only shadows in the candlelight to accompany them.
They’d just reached the staircase leading to the royal apartments when a roar shook the hall around them. Aryn spun, pulling Ravio behind him and drawing his sword with a confidence Ravio could never hope to match
A horde of monsters were rushing toward them unopposed. Blood stained the crude spears of Moblins, Bokoblins, and a fucking Hinox leading the pack. Aryn could take any of the monsters, Ravio had seen him fight plenty of times before! But the sheer number…and Aryn was unarmored. He only wore a padded cloth gambeson, meant to soften blunt blows from a practice sword! It would do nothing against monster claws and teeth.
“Get Hilda out of here! I’ll hold them off!” His brother shouted. Ravio shook his head, tugging on Aryn’s uniform. He shoulder checked the boy hard enough to send him sprawling across the stairs. Ravio winced as hot pain shot through him on impact. “Don’t look back, just run!”
Ravio liked to think of himself as a good kid. Hopeless with a blade, a little bit scrawny, but able to charm just about anyone and he stayed well out of trouble. So he listened to his brother and didn’t look back as he flew up the marble staircase. Not even when he heard the thump of a body against the walls and a shout of pain. Please be careful!
He found Hilda in her bedchamber. She pulled him in by the shirt and together they shoved a dresser in front of the door. They’d be safe there, they had thought. They’d wait until the knights cleared out the invaders and Aryn came to get them.
Minutes passed. No one came. The baying of monsters only grew closer.
“The servant corridor!” Ravio gasped when they heard a rattling at the door. They were out of time. Hilda’s hand in his, they raced for the simple door covered by a tapestry. Her maids used it to bring food and linens, among other things. The dim hallway beyond was empty, as were the kitchen and laundry facilities it led to. With any luck the castle staff had already fled.
The sounds of fighting were concentrated towards the front of Lorule Castle, so Ravio and Hilda made for the back gardens. Darkness floated just above their heads now. The clouds Ravio had spied earlier rapidly descended, hungry tongues of blackness grasping for the lands below. Was that where the monsters had come from? He’d never seen darkness so deep.
“Halt!” A voice called from behind them. “Release the Princess!”
Ravio and Hilda spun around to find a…knight? He wore the royal coat of arms, sure, but his helmet shadowed his face in a way Ravio didn’t like. “What are you talking about?”
“You shan’t take one more step, intruder! Release the Princess and come quietly, or face execution!” The knight advanced, blade drawn. Ravio’s mouth fell open. Intruder? Execution ? The knights knew Ravio, they should know he’d never harm Hilda! He didn’t even have any weapons on him!
The Princess’s hand tightened in his. “Oh, thank goodness! I had no idea what he was planning to do with me!” She cried, before turning and giving Ravio a look . Her eyes flicked towards a bank of bushes at the far end of the garden, cleverly concealing a passage just large enough for a person to fit through. They’d used it on more than one less fraught occasion to sneak away from their responsibilities. Hilda released him and stepped forward.
Go, the look had said. They won’t hurt me. I’ll figure this out.
And Ravio, coward that he was, ran again. The shadows overhead had descended on the streets of Castle Town like fog. He tripped over something in the gloom, hardly able to see his own feet. But instead of crashing into cobblestone, he fell.
Deeper, deeper, darker.
Ravio had heard tales. about the Dark World. Stories told to children to keep them by the fireside at night. It used to exist in balance with Lorule’s Sacred Realm, back when they had enough divine light to fill one. Light couldn’t exist without shadow, after all. But the destruction of the Triforce broke that balance, leaving the power of Darkness to sweep across holy lands like a disease. Malice would seep out into Lorule, snatching away children who strayed too far from their parents’ hearths. When Ravio picked himself up off the ground, he knew those stories had held a core of truth.
Faded though Lorule was, the purple sky always held a bit of light, be it sun or moon. Plants were sparse, yes, but healthy. Things made sense.
This place…
Nothing above but swirling black, far as the eye could see. Where there should have been buildings, twisted rock formations hemmed Ravio in. Odd, curling grass crunched beneath his fingers. In the distance, a howl echoed across the land.
Monsters no doubt, picking up the scent of an easy meal. Tears stung Ravio’s eyes. He was so tired. His lungs burned. His body ached, no doubt bruised from his crash into the stairs.
His brother, his only family. The princess, his only friend. And Ravio had just left them.
Useless, useless! Ravio tugged at his hair, rising on legs that trembled with exhaustion. More crestures joined the chorus of howls behind him. Wolfos, maybe. Good for nothing coward! Ravio’s feet pounded the ground for the third time that day.
That’s what led him here, hidden amongst a twisted copse of trees, hot tears sliding silently down his cheeks. Trembling, hopelessly lost in the dark and utterly alone.
A snuffling came from close behind him. Ravio froze, heart in his throat. No, no! It must be following his scent. Dead leaves crunched underfoot. The monster was so close now that if Ravio tried to bolt he’d undoubtedly be caught in its jaws. And that was ignoring the burning in his legs and the stitch in his side. Ravio couldn’t run another step. His only hope was for it to pass him over. Hot breath wafted past his cheek. Ravio shut his eyes, trying not to gag at the putrid scent. A growl to the right of him. Goddess, this is it…
The sound of breaking ice–or was it glass?–reverberated around him, accompanied by a rush of cold. Ravio cracked his eyes open only to find his hands and body stained black. Before he could spiral into the ramifications of what may or may not be a Dark curse, the looming monster huffed in disappointment. Seconds later it began shambling away.
“What in Lolia’s name…” He whispered, uncurling where he sat. He raised a hand before him, marveling at the perfect blackness that coated his skin. Cold, yes, but it didn’t feel malicious. Ravio let out a wet laugh. Moments later, as his heart calmed from its rabbit-quick pace, the shadow began bleeding out of his skin. It settled in a pool on the floor, not too dissimilar from how his normal shadow would look, provided there was any light in this forsaken place.
“What are you?” Ravio asked, leaning forwards on his hands and knees. A second later the dark stain copied his movement, one hand pressed against Ravio’s on the ground. The shadow’s other hand extended in a slow wave. It almost seemed sleepy, to Ravio. He smiled. At least one thing in this goddess-forsaken place didn’t want to kill him.
He could really use a friend.
***
The thing about dying nobody told you?
The afterlife was so horribly, insufferably long. The shadow didn’t know if it was properly dead—had it even been alive in the first place?—but its sense of time had been skewed from day one. It’d felt itself dissolve. There had been a hand grasping for nothing, a voice it’d been too far gone to understand, but it got the feeling it had been begging the goddess to let it stay.
And then, oblivion. Essence scattered like the shards of the Dark Mirror. A flash of silver light and a voice.
You’ll do.
Moments of clarity arose here and there. A haunting melody. Monsters howling through the gloom. Flickering shapes, always just out of reach before whatever awareness it found itself with dissipated like fog in the morning sun.
“What the fuck? Where is it going?”
“The warmth from the sun’s rays causes the water in fog to evaporate. It’s warmer closer to the ground, so fog closer down dissipates more quickly than that above, creating an illusion that it will lift from the earth”. Vio had explained one early morning, hand clasped in Shadow’s.
Who had those people been?
It was never able to gather more than a vague sense that something wasn’t right. It was missing something, a piece of itself. How long had it been here in the dark world, a shade of a shade, barely able to think or feel? It was here for a reason, he knew that. It’d made a choice, and so had that silver light. Every day that they existed in the world above was a day victorious. But…who were they again?
Day. Hmm. No proper cycle of day and night existed here. Shades of black and purple painted the sky no matter the hour, staining the lands below in perpetual twisted gloom. It was but one more stain upon the landscape.
Until it felt the kid. He’d been crying, a proper, snotty cry as he dove behind a tree, a pack of monsters behind him. A silver skinned moblin broke off from the group as they passed the trees, its head angled towards the ground. No doubt sniffing for its potential meal.
Stupid kid.
The shadow drifted closer. Any moment now there’d be the crunch of bone. The spray of blood as the lost soul met its demise. It’d seen this scene play out countless times before. Whatever people that managed to fall into his resting place were invariably eaten by monsters, or lived long enough for the cursed magic of the ream to turn them into one.
The kid felt…warm. Familiar, even through the crackling aura of fear.
A hand in his. Laughter. Nights spent together beneath endless stars. Quiet wishes whispered in the dark.
Nothing felt warm down here.
The shadow rushed forward with a speed it didn’t know it had. It enveloped the crying boy just as the moblin’s head turned towards him. A rush of adrenaline coursed through its– his –system at the contact. He hadn’t felt such clarity since that flash of silver light.
You’ll do, it had said. Was this what it had meant? Find this boy, protect him?
The boy let out a shuddering breath when the monster retreated. Whatever rush of power the shadow had found was beginning to fade, and he found himself sliding back onto the ground.
Points of warmth registered though the shadow’s exhaustion. The boy was trying to get a closer look. Amused, the shadow waved. He could wave! He could move!
The boy giggled and waved back. Green eyes shone with relief. His lips parted in a grin, revealing front teeth with a slight gap between them. “My name is Ravio.” He whispered, voice hoarse.
“Who are you?”