Chapter Text
Malice and gloom tasted different. Link had spent his fair share of time surrounded by malice, and the sour, sickly sweet heaviness on his tongue when it hung thick in the air would be something he would never forget, just like the feeling of it on his skin, eating through the Champion tunic’s linen and leather as the malice seared his flesh down to the very bone. His year spent pushing back against the Calamity had left him with malice burns and scar tissue thick enough to last a lifetime, but with the Calamity sealed, the thick, black tar had withered away, leaving Hyrule purged of its rancid touch. All was well—until the gloom.
More viscous than malice, with an eerie red glow, the substance had been creeping out of caves and underground fissures in the past few weeks, and Link hated it even more than he did malice. It smelled like rot, and tasted like ash and death when it grew heavy in the air, and while malice burned, gloom stole, leached into you, and ripped the very air from your lungs and strength from your heart with its red-black fingers. People were getting sick, and as the gloom thickened throughout Hyrule, Link’s concern had grown to dread. It looked too much like malice to be a coincidence, even if it didn’t burn as Ganon’s corporeal influence had, and Link knew better than to assume anything but the worst. They had sealed the Calamity, that much was certain, but this… this spoke of vile, evil things that brought up horrid memories of Blights and sanctums and giant boars that left Link’s breath thick with unease.
The gloom was thick in the air as Link walked, footsteps away from Zelda. He trusted her judgment, and she’d shown she was more than capable of defending herself with the holy power hovering just beneath her skin, but the sheer amount of almost-malice in the air made Link nervous, and he hovered close by. Ganon was gone. He’d seen it with his own eyes, marveled at Zelda’s sheer power as she sealed the beast away. So why was something so close to its oozing creation coming to the surface? Link adjusted the cloth he’d tied over his mouth and nose. With the life-sapping abilities that gloom seemed to carry, he and Zelda had agreed it would be unwise to venture below Hyrule Castle without at least a little bit of protection. Still, the mask didn’t seem to do much, and the taste of gloom was thick and vile on Link’s tongue.
“Can’t stand this damn thing,” Zelda muttered from ahead of him, messing with the cloth. She’d put on weight in the five years past the Calamity, her atrophied muscles and ashy skin from her hundred years inside the beast long since healed and forgotten, and Link couldn’t be prouder. Things had been tense at first. While Zelda had promised she was happy with whoever he had become while moving through Hyrule without his memory, it had clearly hurt her to see how little he remembered, or that he was more comfortable signing than speaking to her. Their friendship had been hard won, with years of trial and error, and Link was proud to say that even if they would never be the same as they had been a century prior, the devotion they had towards each other never wavered. He may not have been Link, the Champion and loyal knight that she had been hoping for, but she wasn’t the Princess Zelda of Hyrule he had been dreading meeting—that century had changed them both, for better or for worse. That blank slate had left them with an opportunity to relearn each other and create a closeness not based on half-memories and false expectations. He loved her. She was his best friend, his closest confidant, and Link was certain that he would do anything for her.
Zelda huffed and finally yanked off the mask. Link grabbed her wrist, and she gave him a reassuring smile. “I don’t think it’s concentrated enough to harm us. It’s just mist.”
Link narrowed his eyes, and Zelda’s smile grew, still soft, but bright. “Relax, everything is fine. Besides, I have you.” She shook off his grip and Link sighed before pulling down his own mask.
“It’s coming up from beneath the castle,” Zelda said, more to herself than him. “People have been becoming ill when in contact with it, but I don’t understand why it would make someone sick instead of burning them like malice did. They seem so similar…”
Link took her torch as she knelt by a patch of the stuff and pulled a vial. “Maybe its properties will be different when it’s closer to the source.”
Link hmmed in acknowledgment, taking in the ruins around them. They still felt regal, the pillars eroded but still intricately carved, but the further down the winding steps they went, the less the structures resembled Hylian royal architecture and instead something old, something strange. Link vaguely recognized the hieroglyphs and figure carvings from the ruins in Faron—dragon motifs, wide ears, and third eyes littered the carvings. It was strange to see something that should be above ground deep in the jungle under Hyrule Castle.
Behind him, Zelda continued to mutter to herself, carefully scraping up samples of gloom. Link raised a hand to a glyph on the wall: a dragon with rolling eyes ate its own tail, surrounded by soldiers. It appeared to maybe have been painted, once long, long ago, but now the paint had all but chipped away, leaving nothing behind but flecks of green and red.
“Zelda.” He called, voice scratchy. He’d had a hard time with words the past few days, even with her, and Zelda’s ears perked as soon as the word left his mouth. Link knew, objectively, that the past him from a century ago had also struggled with speech, though to what degree he would never know. Link wasn’t sure if that Link also went days, weeks, on end without a word passing his lips, if his voice was also reserved only for the closest, safest of people, if he found more comfort in signing than he did speaking. It had taken months after sealing the Calamity for Link to speak to Zelda, and he remembered well her wide, bright eyes when he called her by her name for the first time. Zelda didn’t mind his silence, his signs, and seemed to treasure the knowledge that his voice was so often reserved only for her, and Link loved her for it.
“What? Did you find something?” She said, standing and dusting off her pants. She pocketed a few vials into Purah’s pad. It wasn’t as elegant or as sophisticated as the Sheikah slate it was based on, but it worked in a pinch, and its camera was far superior.
“I recognize there. The Zonai ruins in Faron look the same.”
Zelda stepped closer, squinting at the carvings, and Link tilted the torch flame closer to the wall.
“A dragon eating its tail… rebirth, perhaps? Or a cycle of life? Death? A cultural connection to cannibalism?”
“Maybe it just thought it tasted good.”
Zelda snorted. “Then I suppose we’ll be on the lookout for tasty dragons.” She said, bumping his shoulder, and Link laughed, bumping her back.
“Careful! Don’t drop the torch.”
She raised Purah’s pad and with a ‘click’ snapped a photo. “I’m sure Tauro will be fascinated by all this.” She said, taking another photo. “Once we clear this area, I’m sure he’ll be chomping at the bit to get in.”
“Are you sure that’s safe?”
Zelda glanced over her shoulder at Link. “I won’t send any of my people to a gloomy death, Link. Of course, I’ll make sure it’s safe first. Oh, look! Another one!”
Zelda scurried further down the corridor, and Link jogged after. It was sweet to see her so excited, especially with the weight all this gloom shit had placed on her shoulders.
“Careful!” Link called after her, “I think I heard keese earlier.”
Zelda spun, walking backward, and rolled her eyes. “I’m with you. I know I’ll be okay.” Still, she waited for him to catch up. “We may not know what’s down below all this, or what we’re walking into, but together, I know we’ll succeed. Now, let’s go solve this mystery.”
Link bit down a strange unease that came with her words. He didn’t consider himself a superstitious man, but something about speaking a promise of safety out into the world felt like bad luck. Zelda took his free hand, squeezing it softly, and began leading him further down into the gloom.
“Relax. All is well.”
Together they walked, and Link’s chest grew tight, though if it was from the gloom in the air or the bad memories the red-black substance brought up, he wasn’t sure. The burn scars that littered his body from malice burned just by looking at the poisonous vaper, and the taste of it, the smell of it, was nauseating. He debated pulling his mask back up but knew if he covered his mouth now, he’d be done with words for the day and he was enjoying speaking verbally with Zelda. It had been too long.
“I never imagined this was all deep below Hyrule Castle…” Zelda said softly, snapping another photo of a glyph. “Fascinating. All the way down here…”
Suddenly, Link’s back grew hot. He froze, hand going to the hilt of the Master Sword, and Zelda looked at him in confusion.
“Is everything alright?”
“The Sword. She’s sensing something,” Link said, carefully drawing the blade. It glowed with holy light, illuminating the room a brilliant blue, and Link frowned. “That’s no good.”
“Maybe the concentration of gloom has triggered something. She’s always been protective.”
Link rolled the hilt around the back of his hand. It thrummed with power, purifying and righteous, and the unease in his chest grew. “Maybe,” he murmured, tightening his grip on the hilt. “Maybe.”
He and Zelda stood still for a moment, both pairs of eyes lingering on the blade before Zelda cleared her throat. “With such a sword beside us, we’re plenty safe. Let’s keep going—unless you want to turn back?”
Link shook his head. “No, no. It’s fine. Just be on your guard.”
Zelda nodded. “Always.”
She nearly tripped over a fallen column, catching herself and steading her footing.
“Definitely Zonai.” Link said, tilting his head for a better look at the carvings along the stone. “It looks just like the ruins in Faron.”
“Wait…” she crouched down to the column. “There’s writing here… I can’t… Ugh!” She stood, crossing her arms. “We should have brought Tauro. He could have translated this.”
She looked up at the arching stone carvings where the column had once stood with bright eyes. Link bit back a grin. He knew that look, knew it all too well. Zelda the Princess was no longer in the building, replaced with the fanaticism of Zelda the Researcher. She snapped another picture.
“It looks just like the carvings found in my studies, but so much more intricate. The castle has protected them from the elements—Link, think of how much information we can find that hasn’t been chipped away by time like the ruins in Faron have!”
Link offered a hand and helped her stand. “According to the writings I’ve been able to salvage from the castle library, the Zonai were a race of people that lived long ago in the Skies. They had a prosperous civilization and godlike powers and—”
There was a rumble somewhere from below and Link’s grip on Zelda’s hand became tight as a vice.
“Just the stone settling, I’m sure,” she said softly, and Link let her go. “Just the stone…”
She steeled herself and continued walking with a purpose, Link jogging behind, until they came to a stone archway. Two creatures carved in stone flanked either side: impossibly tall, with a goat-like face, intricate robes, and long, long ears dripping with jewels. Diamonds and luminous stones were inlaid delicately in the stone, creating a calming glow around the statue, and Zelda gasped, once again yanking up the pad. Her hands shook with excitement as she crept closer and closer, taking picture after picture, her voice going higher and higher and faster and faster.
“Fascinating! Look, Link, so tall… this must be a carving of a Zonai, I’ve never seen any such creature before in all of my studies! Do you think they’re really so tall or is it artistic liberties? And the ears, the ears! So elegant, and with the glow of the stones… How in Hylia’s green earth did statues from a civilization high in the sky get below Hyrule Castle—?”
The rumbling came again, this time strong enough to knock Zelda off balance, and Link caught her by the bicep, holding her upright. It seemed to go on for ages, three seconds, five, seven, before cutting off abruptly. Zelda let out a shaky breath.
“You’re not hurt, are you Link?”
Link shook his head, flashing her a small smile.
“All in one piece.”
Zelda nodded. “We should figure out what that was, shouldn’t we?”
“We should.”
“If we need to turn back, get reinforcements—”
“Do you want to turn back?” Link asked, and Zelda shook her head wildly.
“No. Not at all.”
“Then lead the way.”
Zelda gave a stiff nod, then passed through the archway, Link following at her heels.
The doorway opened to a vast, wide room filled ceiling to floor with carvings so intricate they took Link’s breath away. Diamond and luminous stone illuminated the room enough to not need a torch, and Zelda marched right up to a wall, pad in hand, eyes alight. Gone was any doubt or hesitance, replaced by the enthusiasm of a researcher.
Link drank in the glowing glyphs. A carving of a Zonai man, far larger and more detailed than the Zonai around him. Nobility perhaps? A king? A god? Beside him stood a woman with lines of inlaid opal making markings across her skin, and between them, a short, simple figure with one arm and a broken sword. They were surrounded by soldiers and five figures, almost too worn to make out. A Zora, maybe? And a Rito? That one could be a Goron…?
“Look at these murals…” Zelda breathed. Link reached forwards to touch a carved curve and Zelda slapped his hand away. “Careful. The oils from your skin could damage the artwork.”
Zelda crept even closer, till she was almost nose to nose with the godlike Zonai man.
“The written histories of the royal family include stories of a great war fought long ago. It was a bloody conflict between allied tribes and a creature only ever referred to as the Demon King. Is it possible? Do these carvings depict the same legend?”
She moved along the wall, taking picture after picture. Link held the torch a little higher, providing her more light, and she threw a thankful smile over her shoulder.
“These figures, they resemble the statues we saw earlier, they must be Zonai! And these here, they look almost like Hylians! These depictions certainly suggest that the Zonai descended from the heavens. And there… look, a Zonai and a Hylian!” She pointed to the god-king and the opal-inlaid woman. “It’s said that my ancestors, the first of the Hyrulian royal family, descended from a union between the first Hylian and a god descended from the heavens. These murals seem to tell a similar story, and if they were accurate…” Zelda leaned forward till her nose nearly brushed the figures, fingers hovering over the inlaid opals. The light of the luminous stones on the gemstones that littered the picture of the woman lit up Zelda’s eyes, like a candle before a mirror. “Then! Then! Then we are witnessing the creation of the kingdom of Hyrule! Link!”
She spun to face him. “Do you know what this means? This changes everything! Every history book, every ancient scroll, all of it!” she bounded over to a new wall, babbling excitedly about potential races and intermingling blood, before coming to a sharp stop. She looked up—and up, and up, the figure represented taking up floor to ceiling. It was massive, a man unlike any Link had ever seen, with horns and flames for hair. Not a man, a monster.
Something about the monster’s gaze made Link’s stomach tighten. The warmth of the torch fire was gone, replaced by a burning cold in his lungs. The creature’s eyes seemed to fix themselves onto him, leering and predatory. Link shook out his free hand. It was a mural. Nothing more, nothing less.
“This figure…” Zelda whispered, gesturing Link closer. Link held the torch high for her, allowing better light to snap a photo. “He appears to be stealing something of great power from the Hylian woman, hobbling the young kingdom.”
Her eyes went wide. “I know this. I’ve read about it in the sacred texts.”
“There was a war,” Link said softly. Zelda turned to him, eyebrow raised, and Link gestured with the torch to the creatures spilling from fissures painted blood red. “A fierce battle between him, the Zonai, and the Hylians… but the Hylians and Zonai are losing. Badly.”
Zelda snapped a photo and Link stepped closer. Eye-level with him was the one-armed figure. He was simply carved, more so than the rest, with a single arm, the stump painted red and black. His eyes were sapphires, and in his whole hand was a sword with a purple hilt, shattered beyond belief.
That hilt… Link leaned closer, nose almost touching, squinting at the sword hilt. It looked almost familiar… it looked like…
“The rest of the mural is obscured!” Zelda called from across the room, and Link looked up, the mural temporarily forgotten. It was, indeed, obscured, a rock slide having covered the entire far-right wall. Zelda frowned. “Pity. We’ll have to bring some hammers down here later.”
She spun on her heels to him, her hand on her hip. “Well then, let’s keep going. I’m sure we’ll find even more further down. Are you ready?”
Link glanced back toward the male figure with the broken sword. He nodded.
“Fantastic. Let’s go.”
The stairs ended once they left the room, turning instead into a rubble and ruin-filled hole. The temperature dropped dramatically, and after noticing Zelda’s pace slowing, Link gently raised her mask.
“I’m fine—”
Link raised an eyebrow, his own mask already reapplied.
“Fine. The gloom has gotten awfully thick.”
Soon the hole became too narrow to walk side by side, and Link was left walking in front, hoisting the torch high. The light seemed dim, frozen, not lighting up the gloom as it should. The black air was so thick with the shit that it seemed to be more gloom than oxygen, and Zelda began to cough.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” She rasped when Link rushed to her side. “Just a little dizzy.”
Link frowned. “We should go back.”
“No! No, we’re so close. Just a little farther.”
Link gave her a hard look that was lost in the darkness, but sighed and conceded. “Fine. Ten more minutes.”
Zelda’s eyebrows turned down. “Fifteen.”
“Ten.”
“Seven!”
Zelda groaned. “Fine. Seven.”
He could feel Zelda’s smile, even through the mask and gloom. “I love you,” she said with a sing-song voice, and Link rolled his eyes, his own lips quirking up. They continued walking, and soon Link’s mind began to cloud, chest burning, head dizzy. There was just too much gloom in the air—this wasn’t safe. They needed to leave, seven minutes be damned. He had just begun to reach for Zelda’s arm to tell her so when they rounded a corner and the blackness turned… green?
Green wisps swirled in the darkness, far, far below, and the air here was impossible to breathe.
“Zelda—”
“No.”
“Zelda, we need to leave—”
“No, no, just a quick look, please—”
“Zelda--!”
But his princess had already started climbing down the wall, her breath loud and panting. Link’s feeling of unease had turned from paranoia to panic, and the Master Sword burned on his back. Zelda dropped down and landed on the ground with a huff. She looked at and beckoned him. Damn it, this woman would be the death of them both. Link started down the wall, hurrying to catch up to Zelda, who had almost reached the light. It swirled, lighting up the cavern with a ghostly glow, and Zelda’s silhouette glowed green, pale and ominous.
They weren’t alone.
There was a mummy. It arched back, frozen mid-stager, dressed in gold and red finery. Its face was frozen midscream, and strings of long, red hair clung limply to its husk of a skull. The most eye-catching of all, however, was the hand that gripped its chest, the source of the green light. Its design reminded Link vaguely of Sheikah tech designs, though the curves of the wrist were too organic to truly be Sheikah tech. A mummy and a hand. A mummy and a hand. Link struggled to process that, too busy trying to fit ‘mummy’ into the same sentence as ‘Hyrule Castle’ to notice Zelda creeping closer. She raised the Purah Pad, zooming in on the mummy’s face.
“Who are you?” She breathed, leaning forward. “How did you get all the way down here?”
There was a soft clink, clink, clink as a small, glowing stone popped free from the hand holding the mummy tight. Zelda flinched, startled by the sudden movement, and glanced over her shoulder to where Link hovered nearby, brow tight. Her eyes crinkled as she squeezed his hand before crouching down to look at the stone. “It’s dead, Link, it can’t hurt anyone. Come look at this.”
Link bit back a snippy reply. If he knew anything, it was that danger didn’t stop with death. Zelda beckoned him again and he finally moved closer. He subtly placed himself between Zelda and the mummy—or not so subtly, if the flicker of amusement in her eyes meant anything—and knelt down to look at the stone.
It was larger than he had thought at first glance, just a little shorter than his middle finger and big enough to cover most of his palm were he to pick it up. It glowed with pale green, almost white light, and it seemed to call to Link, daring him to pick it up. So he did.
It felt warm. The smooth exterior was chilly and cool to the touch, like glass windows on a cold night, but it still radiated warmth from deep inside. It almost thrummed in his palm, and Link could swear that if he strained his ears enough, it was… singing? A soft, humming tune he could barely make out, lost in the gloom, and it seemed to call to him. Link stood, stone in hand, and handed the torch to Zelda. She took it wordlessly, watching with awe as Link passed the stone from hand to hand.
“There are engravings on here…” he murmured, and Zelda pressed closer to get a better look.
Behind them, something cracked.
Link spun, slipping the stone into his pocket and drawing the Master Sword in one smooth motion. He stepped further between Zelda and the mummy, just in time to see its fingers flex, then its elbow, then its spine, each joint crackling like embers in a too-hot fire as dust and ash dripped from the mummy’s awakening limbs.
“What in Din’s name…” Zelda breathed, taking a step back.
The mummy jerked forward to its full, towering height before jerking backward, almost bent back in two. Link pushed Zelda back even farther behind him just as the mummy’s neck snapped, the sound echoing in the cavern as its head whipped around to them. There was a beat where the only noise in the room was Link and Zelda’s breaths, and then the mummy opened its eyes. Link knew those eyes. Those were the eyes of malice, of a giant boar, of Calamity.
Ganon.
“Run,” He said, shoving Zelda back, and the princess didn’t need to be asked twice. The room was suddenly filled with an echoing, ear-splitting screech, and Link glanced over his shoulder just in time to see a massive limb of… something… hurtle itself toward Zelda. He threw her to the side, thrusting the Master Sword into the rotten malice—gloom?—flesh. He wasn’t sure if Zelda screamed or he did as it ate away at the metal, surging up across the holy blade effortlessly and swallowing his sword arm whole.
Link knew burns, knew the feeling of malice eating into skin, of Guardian lasers ripping flesh off bone—Link was intimately familiar with burns, and yet he’d never experienced anything like this. It was as if the gloom had gripped his very soul, searing into it and sucking the strength from the very pit of what made up his being. The smell of melted leather and burning linen was overshadowed by the putrid, meaty smell of cooking flesh, and it took all of Link to keep standing as his arm burned, burned, burned. He had to stay standing, stay strong. He was the only thing between Zelda and that thing. The gloom retreated for a moment, only to surge forward again with twice the speed and ferocity. Link swung the Master Sword down, calling forward one of its holy beams, but instead of a flash of blue-white light—
Instead of a flash of blue-white light—
Instead of--!
Zelda screamed as the holy blade shattered. Link’s knees gave, and the only thing keeping his grip on the Master Sword’s hilt was the fact that the leather of the grip had melted into his palm. Still, he forced his body over Zelda’s.
“Get out,” He yelled, shaking her off as she tried to drag him back. “Run, go, get out of here! I’ll hold it off!”
“Link—!”
“Link…”
Link and Zelda both froze at the new voice. The mummy was standing now, towering in its regalia.
“Link…” It said again, and the humor and loathing in its voice was a terrifying combination. “Was that the Sword the Seals the Darkness? After all that effort, all that whining, that is what you planned to wield against me? So it was I that ravaged that blade… I see. Rauru placed his faith in you, and yet this was all you could do, after all this time.”
The mummy took a staggering step forward. Despite its unsteady gait, Link had no doubt the thing was more than capable of killing them both.
“Zelda, go,” He hissed, shoving her back, “I’ll be fine—”
“So, this is your precious Zelda…” The mummy spat. Zelda flinched.
“How… how do you know our names?” She said, trying to force authority into her voice as she held Link up. He couldn’t feel his arm anymore—that should be concerning, but the numbness was a relief from the burning, and for that Link was grateful.
The mummy didn’t answer, instead throwing its arms up and conjuring more gloom, forcing it up, up into the air. The entire cavern began to shake, the ground splitting beneath them as the mummy howled with some bastardized form of laughter.
“Run!”
Link didn’t hear the words come out of his mouth, but Zelda did, and took off towards the cavern entrance. The ground began to crumble under her feet, and Link saw it fall away before she did. Body numb, Link did what he was always meant to do—thrust her forward, out of harm's way, back against the wall, and suck in foul air as his feet met nothing. And then he was falling.
“Link!” Zelda shrieked, jerking forward with an outstretched hand. For a moment her fingers almost brushed his ruined hand, and then she was gone. There was the rumble of falling rock, the echo of vile laughter, of her screams, then gold, gold, gold—and then nothing.