Chapter Text
Hyrule Castle does not greet Zelda like an old friend—more like an acquaintance she has since had a falling out with. She stares up at its dark spires and wrinkles her nose, wondering what kinds of problems it’s going to cause for her today.
She and Link cross the river into Central Hyrule, passing through the Forest Park. Their horses trot forward happily, unaware of any danger that lies buried beneath the ground.
Based on Purah’s letter, Zelda is expecting some sort of drastic change in the castle’s outward appearance, but it looks the same as it has for years now. Still, she suppresses a shiver as they lead their horses across Boneyard Bridge, heading towards Castle Town. Purah called it gloom, and described it as a low, red fog that crept out from within the lower reaches of the keep, tainting the air and spreading sickness among the members of the Survey Team.
“What do you think?” Zelda asks Link as they make their way through Central Square. “Feel anything?”
Link turns his head towards the castle, the breeze blowing his hair across his cheeks. The deep blue of his eyes matches the tunic he wears beneath his leather armor, and both stand out against the pale gray sky. His brow furrows as he considers the structure for a long moment before he turns back to her with a shrug. “Nothing.”
Zelda studies the castle for a moment longer. For a century, she held a connection to it so strong that she felt as if it were her own body. But she feels nothing now except for unease. When she closes her eyes, she has no sense of what lies beyond her. Nothing tugs at her consciousness. Nothing calls out to her at all. She doesn’t know if it’s a good omen, a bad one, or any sort of omen at all. She opens her eyes to see Link looking at her curiously. She gives him a small smile and urges her horse forward.
They tether their horses to a tree at the edge of town, then head towards the castle. Zelda takes a shuddering breath, steadying herself. Link takes her hand, squeezes it gently, and leads her through the castle gates. There’s a haphazard encampment gathered around the Skyview Tower at the Sacred Grounds, but Purah has set up a separate center of operations at the First Gatehouse, a pop-up tent that has already devolved into a state of chaos even though they’ve only been monitoring the castle for less than a week.
Josha, Purah’s bright-eyed and youthful assistant, stands in front of the tent absentmindedly tugging at her pigtails. She looks up as they approach, her face breaking into a huge grin. “Princess!” she says, waving. “Swordsman!” Her eyes grow wide as she catches sight of the sword hilt poking out over Link’s shoulder. “Woah,” she says quietly, stepping forward and circling around him until she faces his back. “Is this the Master Sword?”
Link nods.
“Can I see it?”
Link shrugs, then draws the blade from its scabbard. The blade rings as it cuts through the sunlight, shimmering before them.
“Can I touch it?” Josha asks.
“No,” Link says.
Zelda slips free of his hand, giggling to herself as she follows a trail of scattered papers through the entrance of the tent. It’s cool inside, dimly lit by a lantern set atop a desk that’s already overrun with crumpled notes and books lying open on their spines. Purah’s feet are on the desk, crossed at the ankles as she leans back in her chair, staring at the canvas ceiling. When she hears Zelda enter, she lets the chair fall forward with a thump that sends her glasses falling down from where they perch atop her head to land precariously on her nose. She smiles as she adjusts them. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite princess.”
There’s nowhere else to sit, so Zelda pushes a journal to the side and perches on the edge of the desk. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite mad scientist.”
“Mad? Who’s mad? I’m a genius.”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“You’ll be changing your tune once you see this. Check it!” Purah holds a thin, dark rectangle in her outstretched hands and Zelda accepts it.
“A new Sheikah Slate?” Zelda asks, feeling a grin overtake her face.
“Nuh-uh. Even better. This baby is called the Purah Pad!”
Zelda winces, then glances up at Purah. “The…Purah Pad?”
“Yep!”
“And are you…completely set on that name?”
“Well I couldn’t exactly call it the Purah Slate, could I? That has no ring to it.”
“Right.” Zelda lowers her eyes back to the new Slate, turning it over in her hands. The material is different from that of the original Slate, obviously, as all of that turned into dust. Instead of the handle the original Slate sported, the newer model has grips on either side in an earth-toned red. The Sheikah eye on the back of the device has carried over from the original, but has been integrated into a new, tricky-looking bit of machinery resembling a mechanical eye. As Zelda watches it, it blinks. “It’s gorgeous!” she gushes, because it’s true. Purah and Robbie have truly outdone themselves with this one.
“Yes, yes, thank you, thank you. Robbie and I have been testing it and we think it’s about ready to hand off to you! Besides, I think you’ll find it quite useful down there. You can take pictures with it, just like the last, and we went ahead and doubled the storage space. It even has a travel function like the original. If anything goes wrong, you click this button and you’ll warp right back to our travel gate at the Sacred Grounds.”
“Do you…think anything is going to go wrong?”
Purah leans back in her chair. “Of course not. But at least we can be prepared for every outcome.”
“Do we have any idea what the gloom is yet?”
“I know what you’re thinking, Princess, and we haven’t found a connection to anything that was here before.” The unsaid words hang heavy between them. Purah shifts uncomfortably, leaning forward to take Zelda’s hands in hers.
“If I'm being perfectly honest, it frightens me,” Zelda admits. “I don't want to find out what's causing it. I want to bury it all so that this castle never sees the light of day again. It's the one time I haven't felt curious about something. I want...to leave it alone.”
“It doesn’t have to be you, you know,” Purah says softly.
Zelda shakes her head. “It does have to be me. Link, too. Who else is better equipped to handle something like this?” She stands up, clipping the new Slate to her belt. “Another question, Purah.”
“Yeah, shoot.”
“Why…why did you call it gloom?”
She thinks for a moment, pressing the tip of her perfectly manicured, cherry-red nail to her lower lip. “It just…fit. I think I have quite a knack for naming things, don’t you?”
Zelda meets Link just outside the tent, slipping her hand into his again. His sword is sheathed, and Josha must have wandered off somewhere else when she realized she wouldn’t be able to inspect the sword she covets so much.
“Ready?” Link asks.
“What use is putting it off?” Zelda sighs.
There’s a hidden passageway that they’re to make use of as they enter the castle. One of the Zonai Survey Team members shoves aside the grate for them with a small grunt, then steps back to allow them to enter.
“What’s this?” Link asks as they crawl through the small opening.
“The Royal Hidden Passage,” Zelda says, dusting her hands off as they arrive on the other end. Only a few feet above them, she knows, is the walls of the First Gatehouse, where Purah’s base is abuzz with activity. But here in the passage, it is already quiet and cold. “It was a sort of security measure for the Royal Family. There are entrances all around the castle. In the event of a crisis, we were meant to use these tunnels to escape.”
“I wonder if they came in handy during the Calamity.”
“Oh,” Zelda says. She stares around at the walls, lost in thought. Is it possible some people made it out when Ganon attacked? She hopes so. “The main tunnel leads out through the emergency shelter, but some continue quite far underground.”
She leads the way, though she’s never been in the hidden passage before, herself. She just knows which way will lead her to where she wants to go, as if the map of her castle will be etched on her heart always, the lines tangled with her veins. Zelda knows this part of the castle. Zelda knows every part of the castle.
It’s cold, but there’s no sign yet of the gloom. Zelda wonders if she’ll know it when she sees it. Here, the hallways are nearly indistinguishable from the more unsavory parts of the castle, such as the dungeon or sewage tunnels. But the farther they follow the path, the more the stone-brick walls begin to cede to bedrock. The deeper they go, the dimmer it gets. Link strikes a match against the rough stone wall and helps her light a torch, which she holds above her head. She doesn’t need light to find the path, but it helps with other things—fear, mostly, which she’s almost ashamed to admit.
“The vaults are down almost this deep,” Link says. “And that’s where we found the Zonai texts.”
“It is strange that my family would house them there, instead of in the Royal Library. I wonder if that means we’ll uncover other secrets down here as well.”
“Your family sure has a lot of them.”
Zelda can only sigh and nod in agreement. The path begins to slope downwards, curving deeper into the foundation of the castle. Link and Zelda stick close to each other—she hopes he’s as grateful for her company as she is for his. She can’t imagine doing this alone.
Eventually, they begin to leave all pretense of familiar stonework behind. Here, the walls are not the slate gray of the castle she knows above, but a pale brown stone. The crumbled pillars and archways that appear seem even older than the centuries-old walls of her castle, revealing what came before. Layers upon layers of history, and how deep does it go?
“Hold on,” Link says. He stops in front of a wall, frowning at it.
“Something wrong?”
“Do you feel that?”
She shakes her head. “What is it?”
“Wind.” He runs his fingers along the rock, feeling. “There’s a tunnel behind here.”
“Do we need to destroy the rock?”
“Nah, not when we’re down this deep. Wouldn’t want to cause a cave-in.”
Zelda shudders, suddenly contending with a new fear as she realizes how much earth they’re currently buried under.
“Besides, I don’t think we need to.” He crosses to the other side of the hallway, looking at the wall up and down. He presses his finger into an innocuous looking indent in the rock, and the wall slides open, revealing a stone passage that leads deeper underground. Cold air rushes past them, as if trying to pull them further into the darkness. A dark cloud of miasma spews forth, a substance that can only be the dreaded gloom. There’s something horribly familiar about it, and when it touches her skin Zelda remembers the long century spent locked away in the castle. She winces, frozen for a moment as the memory fades, and then opens her eyes to face down the darkness looming ahead.
“A secret passage,” Zelda breathes. The temperature drops faster than the pit in her stomach as she takes a couple steps down the passage, holding her torch aloft in front of her. Red mist swirls around her, permeating her with a bone-deep chill. She glances back at Link.
“Must be the place,” he says. He steps forward to stand next to her, looking with her into the darkness.
Zelda closes her eyes and reaches out with a sense she used to have, but feels only her own dread closing in on her. Her power, once a force that enveloped this whole castle, does not answer her call. There is no light within her to push back the darkness. There is only her.
She opens her eyes and raises her torch higher above her head, illuminating the passageway ahead of them.
“I’ll be by your side,” Link says. “The whole time.”
She smiles at him. “Alright. Let’s go.”
Link reaches out, takes her hand, and together they descend into the darkness. Anticipation and apprehension fill her. She’s terrified of what they might find at the end of this tunnel. Gloom rises in tendrils of mist, making her shiver whenever she passes through it, and each step further into the darkness beneath Hyrule Castle feels more and more awful.
Even so, she’s brave enough. And Link, as always, is with her. With him, she can face anything.
But in the end, it isn’t enough.
She falls back through the darkness, can only watch as Link’s burned and blackened hand slips through her fingers. She watches his eyes go wide, and his mouth opens as he cries out. She watches the world end around her. After everything—everything they did to get here—this is the culmination of their future.
All roads end here.
She falls through the darkness, watching her teardrops dance in the air above her like glimmering stars.
And then something within her awakens.
Within her grasp, the gemstone pulses, and she sees in front of her, a new, gleaming path carved open on the road. But she doesn’t know where it will lead.
It’s too late.
The stone pulses again, and Zelda feels its vibration hit her and then travel through the air around her. She feels Link, feels where he falls through the air, feels the sword where it lays, broken upon the cliff, feels the body shrouded in evil, and a tiny thread of light moving like a small fish in rapid waters. For a moment, time stands still. Not slowed, but absolutely stopped. But only for a split second and then the stone—
It wrenches her back. But not through space—through something else. Light and dark flash across her vision, faster and faster. It’s too much. She can’t see the road anymore. Can’t see where the stone is taking her. The only thing she knows with certainty is that it’s away.
She is falling through so much more than space. She is falling through everything.
But I made a promise, she thinks as the light bends backward above her. She struggles to move, to breathe, to blink. She is being swallowed whole.
The last thing she hears before losing consciousness is Link screaming her name.