Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading this far! I really appreciate it! This chapter is one of my personal favorites so I hope you enjoy it.

Warning: This chapter is heavy with themes of death and existentialism, as well being one of the longest I've written. If anything about these things is uncomfortable to you, please do not feel pressured to keep reading. I love what I have done with Ikana Canyon in this chapter, but I just wanted to put out a warning in case those dark themes make you uneasy.

Woodfall was populous with life, plants, animals, critters, creatures. Even Snowhead and Great Bay had smatterings of trees, remnants of being, and small reminders of Hyrule.

Ikana simply ached of death. A certain smell in the air, an ominous atmosphere, an unshakable feeling that the end of life was not only prevalent, but continuous.

I walked the dirt path of a dismal graveyard, leading me to an odd structure with a wooden door to the left and a large skeleton to the right.

The plaque next to the lifeless skeleton read:

'Ye who awaken me, battle me. Then shall I extinguish the furious flame'

Acting on instinct, I took out my ocarina and played the 'Sonata of Awakening'.

The large skeleton soon awakened, breaking the structure as it stood up.

'What was I thinking? I can't fight something this huge! And it's already dead!'

The skeleton started to walk up the hill. I caught up to him and swung my sword, damaging him until he leapt into the air and sat down.

"Wait!" he exclaimed, "It is my loss! Sheathe your weapon…"

I did as he said.

"Follow me."

I followed him back to the structure, only now I was on top of it and he was standing in the hole he made, facing me.

"I commanded the Ikana Army of Ikana Kingdom atop the hill. I am called Skull Keeta. Since being shamed by loss in a battle within my kingdom…I have waited here for one to come and awaken my soul. Young swordsman who has awakened and deftly defeated me…I shall rely on your power to fulfill my request. I ask you to take my soul, which rests in the fiercely burning flame…And convey my words to my men who, even in death, remain loyal to me. Tell them the war has ended…Then I shall be able to drift quietly into sleep…"

My eyes had been filled with a deep sadness and regard for the skeleton.

"Captain sir!" Captain Keeta said as he saluted me.

'He…he's regarding me as his captain…I…I…'

"May I take leave sir?"

'I can't explain it…but…although we just met…I feel a kinship…a bond. His glowing, orange eyes seem to somehow connect to the sad blue eyes through which I am seeing the last deed of a dying warrior…to pass his unexpected amount of life to me…his hopes…his goals…his trusting promise to the world that had pronounced him deceased.'

I saluted him back with a look of assurance.

"Yes, sir!" replied the captain before he disintegrated away into nothing.

I just stood there for a moment, rendered speechless, thoughtless even, by an unexplainable empathy and an unmistakeable sadness.

I had made my way through an underground cave to a strange room with multicolored patterns and a dark red curtain. The curtain rose to reveal a large stone with etchings below a symbol resembling a Keese. The stone was enshrouded in an ocean blue and I heard a voice.

"Are you the one who freed my soul?"

A Poe suddenly appeared from nowhere, spinning above the revealed stone.

"I served the Ikana Royal family. I am the composer called Flat. The songs connected to the Royal Family that remain here were all composed by my brother and I. Oh…Sharp, my dear brother. He sold his soul to the devil and was the one who locked me in here…"

I soon discovered that the sad eyes that regarded the sorrow and anguish of the deceased would be a common reaction in this canyon of dead souls.

'This compelling empathy I feel…is it just because I am not afraid of those who have passed on…or is it something more?'

"You who do not fear the dead, learn well the song that is inscribed behind me…And if you ever meet my brother, I'd like you to inform him…The thousand years of raindrops summoned by my song are my tears. The thunder that strikes the earth is my anger!"

Flat paused as if he wanted to say something else, yet decided not to.

"…I have made my request," said the Poe before disappearing.

My eyes started to water.

'He is dead, the skeleton was too, yet…those souls…they still felt sad, they were still filled with regrets…'

'What does death really mean? Are the ends of our lives measured by the destruction of the physical body, or is it rather measured by the demoralization of spirit, the discontinuation of a feeling, the loss of optimism…'

'No…this burning anguish…this continuous dissatisfaction…it's too powerful to not outlive the grasp of death. I have proof of that now…they both had regrets…'

'Heartache really must be so immortal, so sorely painful, to transcend this existence that we call life, crawling past any gathering of hope, festering for eternity.'

'It is the great punishment of us all to have to live and die with our regrets. So physical death is simply a means to an end. After every misdeed, every slight step out of one's own established morality, every thought that strays from happiness, every aspect of ourselves that we've come to despise, every moment in our lives that made us question what we really deserve…death is certainly inevitable.'

'As the hero…as someone who has avoided this final exit time and time again…Will I die when my body decomposes, or will I die when my legacy is forgotten, when my name means nothing…'

'Will my regrets outlive me, too?'

I stepped in front of the stone and relearned the 'Song of Storms'. A familiar melody, a type of familiar that was welcomed, especially at that time.

After journeying through Ikana Canyon, I found a small cave with stalactites that dipped into a misty purple fog.
"What business have you in Ikana Kingdom, land where only the dead roam?" I heard an echoing voice say.

A Poe, much like the one before, yet slightly different, suddenly appeared before me, spinning until facing me.

"This is no place for one as full of life as you."

'Yes, I am still alive. I need to remember that.'

"Or do you say that you wish to join the dead?"

'No! Goddesses, no!'

"That is fine…If that is the case, then sleep gently to the melody of darkness that the great composer, Sharp, shall play…and join the ranks of the dead."

'NOW WOULD BE THE TIME TO SAY ANYTHING'

But I couldn't. I was rendered speechless by an overwhelming pain that seemed to seep the very life out of me.

'The…song…play…the…song…' I thought to myself with great difficulty, as I was distracted by the deathly pain.

I struggled to pull out my ocarina as my vision went hazy and just as it started to fade out, I was able to play the simple, yet crucial melody of the 'Song of Storms'.

The pain stopped.

"W-What is this?…This song?…N-No, it can be. This song…"

Sharp began to spin around ferociously as the purple hued cave transitioned into shades of yellow and green. The hole in the middle filled up with water, resulting in it flowing outside the cave as a source of water for Ikana Canyon.

Sharp appeared again above the now rippling waters.

"Flat, my dear brother. Forgive your foolish brother who dreamt of the revival of the Royal Family…Ye who do not fear the dead…With my brother's song, you have broken the curse that was placed upon me. It is all thanks to you. We dead should not be lingering here in this land. It was all a trick of the masked one who had upset things."

'Oh'

"If you truly do not fear the dead…I wish for you to go to the temple in this land and sever the root of the evil curse that torments us. To do that…I, the only one who knows the way into the temple, shall direct you to the King. The King is in the ruins of Ikana Castle, awaiting the coming of the one who will break the curse."

Sharp paused, just like his brother.

'What did they want to say to me that they refrained from?'

"…I have made my final request," said the poe before disappearing.

'A broken soul…' I thought to myself as I exited the cave.

The bright sunlight shone on an ancient throne room. It was very large, with a haunting similarity to the regality of Hyrule Castle. The stone walls were painted with different shapes and patterns, like the rest of Ikana Castle.

Once I had reached the center of the room, I felt the ground beneath my boots shake vigorously.

I soon heard a deep voice.

"Oh insolent one who has brought the unthinkable into a land as dark as Ikana…"

The shining light that poured through the windows was now being darkened by old, ripped curtains.

"My servants have fallen namelessly before the light that guides you. However…"

My focus was pulled to a resplendent Stalfos, a skeleton warrior, who now sat at a golden throne.

"The darkness in which my servants live is, after all, fleeting," the Stalfos said as two more Stalfos entered to stand on either side of his throne.

"You shall see with your own eyes…"

The Stalfos king stood up from his throne and said,

"…just what kind of thing true darkness really is."

The three Stalfos shook their heads in laughter, swinging their burning red eyes from side to side, taunting me, my presence, my existence.

'That middle one has green eyes…strange…I thought Stalfos only had red-'

'Whoa! No time to think about that,' I thought to myself, as the two smaller Stalfos had now engaged me in battle. I unsheathed my sword and shield.

I pulled out my fire arrows, which burned the curtains, bringing the light back to the dark room. This made it easier for me to damage the two Stalfos, as they were quite susceptible to light.

In reaction to me killing both of his soldiers, the king promptly stood up, challenging me himself with an enormous green blade and a square golden shield with a turquoise rim.

After many instances of dodging that massive sword and maneuvering his strategy to find my own avenues for attack, I subjected him to the bright light, searing his skeletal frame.

A floating skull of one of the soldiers soon appeared before me, surrounded in a purple mist. I sheathed my sword.

The second soldiers' floating skull knocked the other aside and said,

"You're blocking me! Get out of the way! I can still get him!"

'Can you now?'

"B-blocking you?!," the first skull said, "the reason he beat us is because you were so feeble! Don't blame this on me!"

"What?! Just try saying that again to my bony face!"

"Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble! Feeble!"

"Shut up, already! Grrrr! Don't look at me, I was once called the best swordsman in all of Ikana…"

"The greatest swordsman in all of Ikana? You? Feeeeeeeeble."

"…Draw your weapon!"

'Umm…guys…'

"Huh?"

"I'm telling you to draw your sword!"

The first skull paused.

"How?"

The two skulls laughed at each other with a distinct hilarity.

"Will you stop?!," exclaimed the floating head of the King, who had come up behind them.

"What fools! Haven't you begun to understand? The kingdom being ruined and us left in this state…Isn't it petty little battles like this that have caused it?"

My attentive, blank stare turned into a sad gaze.

The two floating heads of the soldiers burned away in blue flames.

"Believing in your friends and embracing your belief by forgiving failure…These feelings have vanished from our hearts."

'I know I am alive, but am I so unlike these Stalfos? Warriors, under royal decree, who sacrificed themselves for the well-being of their kingdom. Proving their loyalty by fighting across eons of time, even past the constraints of death, just to protect Ikana. Yes, they had their faults, their inability to see to the importance of forgiveness destroyed their kingdom. Yet, had I not struggled with the same thing? I still regret not telling Zelda not to send me back seven years. I must admit that deep down, I haven't truly forgiven her. Have I not learned that regret is meant to stay with me forever?'

'The empathy I now feel, with Captain Keeta, with the Composer Brothers, with these Stalfos, even with the Skull Kid. We all are broken souls. Broken by how the world has treated us, broken by our attachments, broken by our temptations, broken by even our own heroism and, yes, even our own courage.'

'These things have broken our souls, our very sense of morality. Our perception of right and wrong has been skewed and we have become oblivious to the change.'

'What will become of me…if I'm not dead yet…if there is, in fact, still life within me…'

'What will become of me when my morals become so misaligned and my vision is so inevitably clouded by denial, anger, bargaining, and depression…Maybe I just need to accept the inevitability of such an outcome…Maybe it wasn't my destiny to lose everything…Maybe I just need to accept that it is my destiny to lose myself…'

"It all happened after somebody thrust open the doors of that Stone Tower."

The Stalfos' words brought me back to the regal throne room and the daunting responsibility I had to save the world.

"You who bring light into darkness, I am the King of Ikana Kingdom, Igos du Ikana. The spellbinding that had been cast upon us was broken by that light which you carry. To return true light to this land, you must seal the doors of Stone Tower where the winds of darkness blow through. But Stone Tower is an impenetrable stronghold. Hundreds of soldiers from my kingdom would not even be able to topple it. It is far too reckless for one to take on such a challenge."

'Then…'

"…And so…I grant to you a soldier who has no heart. One who will not falter in the darkness. You shall remember this song!"

It was a haunting melody entitled 'Elegy of Emptiness' and filled me with a dizzying feeling of unsteadiness and uncertainty.

I soon began to realize that I really was dizzy and lightheaded. I walked forward out of instinct and was surprised to find behind me, well, myself. I couldn't stop staring at its' blank expression.

'Is that really me?'

"This soldier who has no heart is your twin image. A shell of yourself that you will shed when your song commands it."

The floating skull of the King of Ikana erupted into blue flames, prompting me to look behind at where the skull was just floating.

"On my kingdom," I heard, "…shine the light of justice…"

I looked back at my copy.

'This is me, yet it isn't…'

'For now, I must remember that I do have substance. I have a soul, a heart, a life…'

Stone Tower Temple, the epitome of Ikana kingdom's downfall, was the remnant of a once proud fortress. It was riddled with an ancient destiny, yet clearly had been part of a culture, part of the folklore of a civilization that was now dead, forgotten to the world. The temple had life and hope seeped away from it long ago, so all that was left was creatures of darkness and destruction.

The temple itself, aside from a few odd architectural decisions from the original constructors, was fairly straightforward to navigate when I was there the first day.

As I was standing outside the temple entrance with one of my newly acquired light arrows cocked at the ready and aimed at a large red emblem, my thoughts repeated the Garo Masters' words.

'If you shoot that which releases the sacred golden light into the blood-stained, red emblem outside the temple…it shall rearrange things, in which the earth is born in the heavens and the moon is born on the earth.'

'But…what does that mean? What will I do to this world? Will it be worse than what the Skull Kid has done?'

"What are you doing?," Tatl chimed, "we don't have time for hesitation! Stop being lazy and get on with it!"

I shot the light arrow into the red emblem.

'Now what? What will…'

Suddenly the block I was standing on flipped upside down, forcing me to fall to what I assumed was the ground below.

Somehow, I instead fell on the other side of not just the block I was standing on, but the other side of the temple, the other side of the world.

'Wasn't expecting that…I turned everything…upside down…'

After that, the upside down chests and the upside down doors that I had eyed suspiciously just hours ago, now made sense. I was glad that I had restarted the three-day cycle before I came to Ikana, as the whole ordeal took up almost all of it.

I eventually made my way through complex chambers and against hostile enemies to a room with a large hole in the ground, which was once the ceiling.

I leapt into the hole and landed in a large desert with stone pillars peeking out of dusty winds.

I looked around as the ground started to shake and soon saw two huge worm-like creatures emerge out of the sands.

The pair of giant masked insects were known as Twinmold.

"Link!" Tatl exclaimed, "That mask you just got! This area should be big enough! Try it out for size!"

As I put on the giant's mask, I watched the surrounding desert get smaller, or, perhaps was I getting larger.

It would have been a pathetic attempt to defeat them on my part if it weren't for the giant's mask. It only took a few slices of my sword for each insects body to explode, leaving their heads in the sand.

Their final remains, a small mask covered in a blue light, led me to the final giant.

This realm was tinted a hushed yellow and bright golden clouds revealed the fourth orange gargantuan figure.

"Well, we've helped all of you," said Tatl, "That's all we can do"

"Call us," the giant pronounced.

"Without being told, we understand. So now you'll help us out in exchange! We'll call you from atop the Clock Tower, so do something about him, all right?"

The giant cried out an indistinguishable word.

"What? Their voices sound sad…You don't want to?"

A white light encompassed our vision as we heard "Forgive your friend."

"Forgive our friend?" Tatl asked, "What do you mean by forgive? Huh? What friend?"

'Forgive our friend…'

'There are many who I had yet to truly forgive…Navi…Zelda…the Skull Kid…'

'Was…was he their friend…do they truly forgive him? After all he has done?'

We landed back in Ikana Canyon and watched as a deep purple chasm appeared in the sky.

'Are the spirits now free of their curse? Am I?'

'No…I will be forgotten…it is inevitable that I will be a forgotten hero…that I will lose myself…that I will become my regrets…'

'I've accepted that to be my future, yet…'

I looked up at the monstrous moon.

'…all that matters now is saving this world, no matter what. I must not falter. I must put all of my focus and all of my goddess-given courage into stopping that moon from falling.'