Chapter Text
Open your eyes…
You wake to a pounding head and a body that feels foreign.
The world is a muddled, empty void at your feet in one second. In the next, your senses are flooding the vacuum left by the emptiness, fighting for attention all at once. The stinging crispness of sterile mint assaults your nose. The sounds of sluicing water and birdsong in the distance hum deep within your ears. You feel the remains of a damp, sticky residue left across your skin. In your chest, your heart hammers violently against your ribcage, fit to break through—as if it’s been given another chance to beat, and it refuses to squander a single second of it.
And maybe that isn’t too far from the truth. Because when you attempt to pry open your eyes, skin clings to skin—sealed shut like you had already once committed yourself to eternal sleep. It takes a great effort to curl your fingers; even greater still to will your limbs to listen when you command them, to test the fatigue and stiffness in muscles left disused. Perhaps that’s exactly what you are: a corpse, reanimated and reborn.
It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, then, when the blurred film over your vision finally dissipates and your eyes begin to adjust and you see the flickering of firelights above. Hundreds of synapses in your brain firing—celebratory explosions of nascence.
No, that’s not quite it, is it? The shimmering lights linger too long. You wrack your cobwebbed brain, trying to find anything left salvageable there to bind connections between. The pickings are slim, but a scene flashes in your mind, some knowledge so instinctually primative, even the first creatures who ever walked this planet would understand: the night sky, blanketed by glowing stars.
It’s a conclusion you’re almost satisfied with, but something still nags at you—the scene not quite right—and you find that you’re not too pleased with the notion of settling. No, not when there’s evidence to the contrary still laid out in front of you. It can’t be a sky, because the contraption suspended from the ceiling is anything but a tree or the shining moon above. It doesn’t seem natural at all. You examine the contours of porous slate, blooming out like petals, and trace the pathways of luminous blue.
And something primal flares within you, so close you fear you may be burned by it if you linger much longer. Feelings of surprise, of exhilaration, of a sticky-sweet pride that makes your heart feel both full and warm all at once, all twisting and transfiguring into bone-chilling fear, into anger so explosive you can feel it splinter you right in two, into the need to protect, protect at all costs, because whatever you may sacrifice will never be worse than what else stands to be lost.
And yet, despite it all—or perhaps, exactly because of it all—you still pull that flaming thread, following it deeper and deeper until it’s nothing more than cinders at the edge. And you’re left marooned, no better off than where you started.
And where was that exactly?
Your joints creak and crack when you shift your weight onto your forearm and force yourself up to a sit. A groan escapes your lips with the motion, and the deep, scratchy sound echoes.
Not an open sky at all. The rock walls are both unpolished and not—etched with the same markings as the mechanism that hangs above your head. A cave of some sort, you deduce.
The basin that holds you like a womb feels almost just as alive as you are—the blue pathways shift and flow with glowing light, like blood flowing through arteries. Dampness clings to the bottom of its surface, pools there in the corners, and it glistens whenever you move your head. When you touch the liquid, some of it clings to your fingers, viscous. Whatever it is, it feels cool—soothing against your skin.
A vessel once filled with an odd sort of liquid, hidden deep within a cave. It solves the most pressing issue of where it is you are, but it fails to answer the ever-needling question as ignorable as a hammer to the head: just who are you?
You wrack your mind, searching for something—anything—that could possibly illuminate a lead. If not a name, then maybe another instinctive feeling to chase down.
Try as you might, nothing sparks recognition. It’s just empty hallway after empty hallway—not a single memory to latch onto.
So, you make do with what you have; in the absence of memory, physical evidence becomes key. With the absence of clothes besides your undershorts, you must examine closer for a hint of your past life. A chilled wind tumbles into the room, pricking your skin with goosebumps. Underneath, you trace the lines of raised scars across your arms, your legs, your torso. Corded muscle carves a striking physique. Athletic—or, at least physically active.
Your hands are calloused and strong, and when you flex them, you can just feel the adroitness hidden within—each movement controlled and smooth, despite the lethargy that plagues you. You were a fighter, perhaps, or a laborer involved in risky work.
Your forehead feels particularly exposed.
With the evidence in mind, you make the attempt once again—stubborn, you think. You feel you were someone who wouldn’t be denied quite that easily without putting up a fight first. You search for your name, and it’s static buzzing against your skin. You feel it there, so close that it’s on the tip of your tongue, yet you can’t seem to wrap it around the correct sounds. Dexterous, sturdy, dogged. A name, a name—
It’s no use; nothing surfaces. You’re just simply you.
But, you don’t come up entirely empty-handed. No, there’s something else you uncover with a vague clarity: you feel you were a complicated, conflicted person—a mottled mess of contradictions. The specifics continue to escape you, yet you know in the same way that you know to breathe that you were once someone with an ironclad sense of self—something that you wore as armor to protect the other side of you that was anything but unassailable.
It’s made obvious when your feet hit the freezing stone floor and a voice peals within your ears, so enthralling that you feel yourself torn between following it like a child to a piper or recoiling away from it entirely:
“You must hurry. You have something you have to do. Something no one else can know about. Go to Hyrule Castle. What you seek awaits you there.”
When you stand, your body lurches to the right—unbalanced, your stance compensating for something you haven’t a clue what it could be. Either way, your legs shake beneath you. You can’t discern if it’s due to the weakness in your muscles or in your conviction.
Three minutes you’ve been alive again, and you’re already questioning if this is truly the person you’d wish to be. How fulfilling of a life must you have led before this if, in the absence of all other memories, your first cogent thoughts revolve around secrecy? How bad was it that those secrets extend to yourself—left as much in the dark as whoever else you were hiding this information from?
You shake your head to clear the jumble of thoughts, but all it does is make you more dizzy. You sway like a drunken sailor towards the exit of the room, and even this surprises you with the knowledge that follows: after getting your sea legs, each step becomes disciplined, silent with precision. You creep to the archway and it’s instinctual how you duck your body behind it, exposing your face just enough to sweep the room. Your right hand twitches, grasping empty air in front of your left hip.
The pressure doesn’t leave even when you’ve established that you are the only breathing body left in this cavern. And, for a worrying moment, you think that maybe whatever necessitated all this—all this secrecy, all this vigilance—is a blessing in disguise. After all, if all you have to survive are your wiles and your intuition, you’d rather have a self familiar with those tactics than one left naïve and vulnerable.
A shimmering pool bisects the room. Empty, but not uninhabited, for the only other thing here is something completely incongruous with the rest of it: a small table set in the corner. A lit candle sits still burning next to a pile of scattered papers. An ink pen lies abandoned on its side, out of its well. Crumpled papers litter the ground at the table’s feet.
Deserted and in disarray. And in a moment of weakness, you almost empathize with the sorry sight—are you not both in a similar situation?
You stamp out that line of thinking immediately. You may not know much of yourself, but you know that you do have standards. The only person who would make such an uninspired joke like that is—
The name is nothing but a pulsing drone behind your eyes. You can hear it, ringing in your ears like a crystal bell: that laugh—the one that wheezes at the end, much too pleased to remember to breathe—and it aches in your chest. On your right hand, something itches, scratching deep under the skin. It aches, it aches.
No matter.
Whoever that was here before hasn’t been gone for too long. Either they were scatterbrained enough to leave without extinguishing the candle, or they’re set to return. Panic spikes in you—you must hurry.
You search the desk further, yet all you see are papers filled with Cucco-scratch. Impossible to decipher. That is, until you come across a small trunk in the corner with a porcelain, white mask sitting atop it. Plastered against its wooden outside: a note with the only legible writing in this entire area, though it’s only just so.
Don this mask and the accompanying clothes within this chest before you depart. What awaits you outside is dangerous, and those nefarious sorts who seek you undisguised will prove to be most unkind.
You scoff at the message. So, whoever it is thinks of you as a gullible fool, then. Even an amnesiac like yourself can identify a trap when you see it.
Instead, you follow the path of the sparkling water until you see sunlight bleeding through a passageway ahead and above. Brisk wind flows through the cavern, and you wish you had the protection of clothing. It’s not enough to make you turn back and risk the trunk.
It’s just this wall of slate that stands between you and freedom. You make the attempt to scale it: too high to jump at rest, too slippery to get any sort of foothold with a running start. It’s only after you’ve exhausted all your options—leveraging yourself off the side of the cave on one foot and pushing yourself up the wall with the other, or stacking the table and the trunk into a precarious ladder—and you're left catching your breath, splayed out on the floor, that you notice the small indentation in the wall.
Your fingers press against the smooth slate and, with a click, a section flips out from the façade: a small, wooden chest with a thick note stuck to its outside. This, too, you can just make out:
Stubborn as always. I expected this. Yes, the professor—and something catches in your throat, so bitter you almost choke on it—had warned me of such much prior to our formal introduction. At the very least, it will serve you well to have that sort of vigilance, my dear fellow! Take this as you passing that very important test of skepticism.
Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, I must insist that you proceed to drop that wall of unhealthy paranoia you’ve built up and heed my words, for we don’t have much time.
As I’ve stated before, there are those who wish to deal you great harm. This place grants you some protection, but the moment you step out past this cave’s threshold, you will become a target.
That is, without my help.
That is exactly why it’s imperative that you wear the enclosed mask at all times. You must become a shadow, disguised from the world all without speaking a single word to anyone, until the time comes and we can meet once more.
(P.S. Though I’ve no doubt you’ve attempted it, no, the wall cannot be scaled unless you wear the clothing within this trunk. You can make the choice whether to trust me, or live out the rest of your days in a wet cave like a Hot-Footed Frog!)
And it’s ridiculous. Whoever wrote this—expects you to listen to them, despite sounding like they’ve got a screw or two loose—sounds ridiculous. Trust them? They couldn’t even be bothered to sign their name at the end.
But what’s the most ridiculous of all is that you believe them when they say that you’ll be forced to take whatever clothing is inside that trunk before you’re able to leave, as odd as the notion seems. So, begrudgingly, you flip the table to use as a makeshift shield, you steel yourself as you huddle off to the side, and you flip open the top only to be met with—
Exactly what was promised: a sheer-looking shirt, dark pants, white scarf, leather boots, a dark cloak. And sitting nestled atop them all, as ivory as bone: a half-faced mask, sharp at the nose tip. Three stacked circles mark a third eye at the brow.
The clothes fit perfectly. Almost too perfectly, in fact, as they hug your figure—and yet, you find you almost prefer the fit. Tight, but not restrictive; secure, but not encumbering. The cloak will provide ample coverage, especially when compensating for the thin shirt.
Yet your mind stays fixated on that mask. The disguise, the deceit, the evasion. What have you done to require this level of protection? What exactly lies out there, waiting for you?
For all this warning, you wish that the mystery letter-writer at least left you a weapon to defend yourself with.
It’s a wish too late. You raise the mask to your face and—
“…a… Is, is that really you?” A voice in your head. Frail, tinny. Fit to break. Recognition ignites in your chest, yet it’s a smoky thing—still agonizingly obfuscated. “Goddess,” is muttered out with a shaky, incredulous laugh, “I must seem like such a fool to think I’m somehow actually speaking to him right now… I guess it doesn’t really matter, though, does it?” Louder, then, clearer: “I-If you’re really there, I’m—I’m in Hateno Village for now. I don’t know where you are or how you could even—” The voice falters. “I just—If it’s really you, find me. Please.”
Something stabs you, right in the heart. So deep, you can feel each throb as it carves deeper and deeper. It echoes, it echoes.
The first voice felt close—close enough, you felt it settle within your bones, so wholly you even when you knew next to nothing about who that you was. You’ll need to listen to it. You’ll have to—it rages like a wildfire inside your being, unable to be ignored.
But this voice? It sits beside you. It lingers there, forever at your side, near enough you feel like you can touch it. And you get the sense that you have, before. That you’ve been given the honor to reach out and feel that gentle pressure wrapped around your fingers—that you’ve let it guide you exactly to where you needed to go many times before. Always bright, but never blinding. A light steering you in your persistent darkness, even when that umbra threatened to swallow you whole—especially when.
Oh, it aches and aches and aches.
That’s all that’s needed to settle it: to Hyrule Castle you’ll go. But what’s a more worthwhile detour than seeking out the one who can help guide you there?
You fix the mask onto your face. There’s only silence in your mind, though your thoughts race and rumble against their confines.
The wall blocking your path falls away, piece by piece, until only a dirt ramp leads you towards birdsong and dazzling sunlight. Branches crack underfoot; the wild spans out before you, endless and full of possibility. You hope it isn’t wasted on you.
And you move forward.