This is but one of the legends of which the people speak...
Long ago, there existed a kingdom in which the power of the gods was said to slumber. It was a vast and prosperous land, blessed with green forests, fertile fields, tall mountains, and waters of plentiful catch. This was known as the land of Hyrule.
One fateful day, a man rose from the neighboring desert; a land where the winds were harsh, where the people knew no kindness from the land, from the gods. This man, in his desire for the bountiful land of the Hyruleans, seized the golden relic the gods had left to them. Blinded by his newfound power, he spread darkness across the kingdom. But then, when despair was nigh and all hope seemed lost...
...a young boy in green appeared as if from nowhere. Wielding the blade of evil's bane, he sealed the darkness away and restored light to the land.
This boy, who called time on a whim, altering between past and present to save the kingdom, became known as the Hero of Time. The boy's tale was handed down, generation after generation, until it faded into legend...It was when the details of the hero's tale had been lost to the very time he had commanded, that the desert king arose, again attempting to take the land by force.
The people believed that their long-forgotten hero would return to save them, to seal away the embodiment of pure power for all time...but their cries were for naught. Much like his adventures, the Hero of Time existed only in the memories of those who listened to his tale. Faced with an onslaught of terror, the people despaired, and turned to the gods. In their final hour, as their last hope dwindled, they left their fate to the winds.
The gods heeded their prayers at last. They selected their chosen and instructed them to go to the mountaintops to escape the wrath that would be wrought on the dark one's forces. The Hylian King conducted a symphony of storms with those left behind, and the sky was opened, tears of the divine pouring forth.
Hyrule was lost in that hour.
But despite best efforts, the wielder of power escaped the oncoming flood, fleeing to a mountaintop of his own.
Hundreds of years passed. Even the noble kingdom was no more than the faintest memory in the oldest of entities. The area was known as the Great Sea, and the mountains, as the islands scattered across it. The name of Hyrule was no more than a breath on the wind, with no meaning to anyone hearing it.
The desert king persevered through these years, power sealed underwater by the blade that had felled him in his first attempt to take the golden relic. For years he searched for the other pieces, those destined to make him whole again; one with the blood of the sky goddess and one with the spirit of the reborn hero. Truly, the reunion would be bittersweet, for while it was their destiny to restore him, it was also their destiny to crush him.
Such was this cursed cycle, older than the land itself.
The two were one day found in a pirate captain and an island boy. As anticipated, the cycle continued. The desert king was reunited with his power, but was destroyed before he could reclaim the land.
He was buried with the land he loved, the land he coveted. And the cycle continued on, leaving him behind, a stone monument to those who attempt to challenge destiny.