Legend of Zelda: Link's Reawakening
Prologue- Sleep, Hero… sleep…

The forest… it is dark.

Not a night-dark, no… something else.

There is magic at work here… deep magic.

From beyond the Dawn of Time…

Link shivered in his sleep. Then he subsided again. Zelda put her hand on his forehead; it felt cold. It was Zelda's turn to shiver.

He had slept like this for days now, on and off. Every day, his body grew colder, but he still breathed, his heart kept on beating. It wasn't natural, whatever it was.

She thought back to the day he had come in, shivering uncontrollably and muttering about horrors from beyond time…

"My lady! My lady!" She turned sharply, alarmed at the tone of the guard's voice. "Yes, Captain? What is it?" "It's your husband, my lady! He's back, but something's wrong with him!" "What? No, he can't be…"

She ran to the stables as fast as her dress would let her. And when that got to be too much of an encumbrance, she changed into Sheik, the mysterious man who had aided Link so many years ago. He would aid him again.

Sheik was much faster than Zelda; he arrived there within moments. Impa was there, holding Link up. He could barely stand, and his eyes had that wide, haunted look of one who had seen his own death. And the whole time he was shivering, shivering…

Rauru had been sent for, to attempt to translate what Link was saying. He had listened to fifteen seconds' worth of babble, went pale, then he turned to Zelda, firmly grasped her by the shoulders, and led her over to a chair, which he forced her to sit in.

Then he told her what Link was saying, the thing that was so important he couldn't bother to translate into the modern tongue. "He's saying, 'The Shadow will return in a blast of cold and ice, and there will be no Hero to stand and fight. Woe be unto your fair land…' The rest is unintelligible, but that sentence comes up every five seconds or so. You know, Princess, that it could only mean one thing…" She went pale, too, for she knew what he meant; Ganondorf was coming back, and Link wouldn't be there to help them.

She turned to him again. "Isn't there anything we can do?" He nodded. "Perhaps there is something to the rest of what he is saying. If only I could hear it… but I know of no device that can enable such a thing.

"There is one other way. You, Princess. You will have to take his place as the Hero. Don't say it can't be done; you have your training as a Sheikah warrior. This is the time to put it to use."

Zelda stopped to consider it. It sounded like a bad idea, on the surface. If one didn't know that the mysterious man who had aided Link in that campaign against Ganondorf so many years ago had really been Zelda. Once that was known, the idea suddenly sounded plausible. So she nodded. "Where should I begin?" "Hmm. You should probably retrace the steps Link took when he was in the future. Temple to temple, gathering what you find there. There may well be some things in them; no one's been to any of them since Link cleaned them out.

"I will deal with your father. You must begin immediately; we do not know when Ganondorf will come. Only how. So hurry, Princess!"

She didn't reply. She was already changing into Sheik. And then he cast his teleport spell, the one that would take him to the Temple of Time…