Prologue: The Old Refrain
A young girl skipped through the woods happily, her bare feet sinking into the soft damp grass. She moved through the forest with a care free smile on her face following the sounds of soft music from deep within the trees. The girl looked no older than fourteen. Her flawless, ivory skin seemed to glow in the midday light. Her hair was palest silver matched in purity only by the sheen of the summer dress that fell to her knees, bouncing with each step she took. She scanned the trees with eyes the color of a clear summer sky. Their light seemed to pervade her entire body giving her pale form a subtle luminescence nearly invisible to the naked eye.
The melody she chased was beautiful, it evoked images of the lush trees around her, of clean flowing streams, of the purity and the wild abandon of nature left entirely to itself. As she moved gracefully through the green something changed. The music became harsher, wilder. The grass beneath the girl's feet became thick and coarse, biting at the girl's feet as though to ensnare her. The sun so high in the sky a moment before fell behind the trees far too fast leaving the woods in shadow. With the dark came malice, as though each tree were watching the girl, biding their time...
The girl sensed the change even before the light vanished. She began to run, her carefree step replaced with urgency and fear. She glanced behind her more than once fearing that something was following her, knowing it was there, keeping her pace but never showing a trace of itself. Waiting till she faltered before it struck. She ran hard and fast for so long that she could feel her soles cut open. The hot white blood coated her feet, staining the grass she tred on as she ran.
She could hear it now, even as she spent every ounce of strength she possessed to escape. She could hear its slow steady footfall that despite its lack of speed never seemed to lose her. She pushed herself onward desperate to get away, desperate to escape, desperate never to see the face of what chased her.
As the girl ran she passed through a clearing where something made her stop dead in her tracks. It was another girl, short and young with golden blonde hair done up in two ponytails tied back with a band knitted together out of deku leaves. Like all the children of the forest she wore brown leather boots and a green tunic. Fear flooded the pursued girl's stomach as the forest child simply looked on with an amused smile on her face.
Unconcerned with the malice of her surroundings the forest child smiled with a sickening grin, cocking her head to the side as though sizing up the one who stood opposite her.
"That guy isn't here anymore." The forest child began to skip around the clearing singing a nursery rhyme to the trees.
"Anybody who comes into the forest will be lost.
Everybody will become a Stalfos.
Everybody...
Stalfos..."
As the forest child finished her rhyme the girl heard heavy set footsteps stop behind her. She knew who was standing there, what was standing there. She couldn't turn around, couldn't face him. She couldn't bear to see his dilapidated vine covered armour, his cracked and rusted sword. She didn't want to see the empty holes that were now his eyes, sinister red light spilling out of them accusingly.
The girl felt a hard dead claw of a hand grab her by the shoulder and she heard a voice, high, cold and hollow echoing from the depths of a throat that had rotted away. "Where are you... Navi...?"
The girl heard the forest child's laughter fill the clearing. "Are you going to be lost... too?"
Navi sat bolt upright in bed gasping for breath, covered in a cold sweat, the voice of a skeletal knight echoing in her mind.