And then the air settled. It died. All movement ceased and silence fell and it turned cold and dark and I shivered. The shock refused to settle. Over and over and over again, it jolted through me like a current trapped in my veins, rattling around as disconcertingly as the memory of Impa's voice: "It is in your blood."

What was in my blood? What did that even mean? She had to be referring to the twilight from Midna – the transfusion that both saved and cursed my life. Did being half-Twili, half-Hylian… was that what Sheikah were? Half-breeds? Hybrids? Magical accidents at the intersection of light and shadow and panic? I felt myself sway just enough to force my heart into my throat, and promptly sat down. Hard. There was just too much to process. All I'd wanted was some helpful information about how the kid and I could return to our home-times. That was all. Not some nonsense about guiding anyone through anything, least of all the kid through a freaky crypt. I never signed up for this, as complicated as it was becoming. Had been becoming. It felt like someone had caught me up at the heart of a snowball tumbling down from the summit of Snowpeak, tumbling and tumbling until I eventually burst against some metaphorical rocky outcropping. Bloody hell.

Another minute of shocked silence passed before it really started to sink in: having seen Impa's blood and watched her move in the exact same way I could, I began to grasp the truth behind the implications. It explained so much and so little and revealed more and little still. Sheik was just some magic-using Hylian, as her fading eye-color had revealed. That sounded harsher than I'd intended, but I couldn't help it. For all her talk of shadows, that brief glimpse of her true self revealed something undeniably bright – fitting, since she'd said she was headed for the Temple of Time. Impa and I… were the real deal. But what did that even mean? What the hell did she want me to do? Better yet, what the hell did she expect me to do? What did anyone expect me to do? I was no hero – I shared the same legendary name but by no means was I worthy of Courage. I just wasn't. I didn't want it, either. Everything I was and had, that was more than enough for me. I had my hands full just trying to stay alive.

I thought of the kid, scared and alone in the dark, seven years away in the past and avenging his cruelly murdered childhood friend.

Pivoting quickly I punched one of the braziers but when it started to topple, I rushed to catch it clumsily with the tips of my fingers. Sighed loudly. Leant back onto my heels and reset the stand and wanted to scream, but satisfied myself with another sigh. "Din. It's just one thing after another."

On the bright side, at least you know what you are. Yeah, what a relief. Now all I had to do was assimilate everything I'd become into everything I actually was, and become something new all over again. Piece of cake. No problem. Maybe if I stopped thinking about it I could just move unthinkingly forward, regardless of the meaning or consequences. Maybe if I knew something substantial about the Sheikah, I'd feel better. Maybe if I took a nap, I'd wake up in the real world.

Like that would actually work.

"If you really want the answers," I announced to the empty room, "you've got to look for them, and Impa said they're here. They're all here." I didn't understand what she meant about 'centuries-old answers' or what she wanted me to find, but I could only assume that somewhere in the depths of this goddesses-forsaken place, some Sheikah were still puttering around. The door caught my eye as I turned slowly on the spot; specifically, the soft orange shine tracing previously invisible patterns along the face. I'd have to go in there for sure once the kid arrived, so I might as well have accepted the mission. I was essentially embarking on a wild-cucco chase for information, or so I hoped. My face smarted where Impa had touched me; ignoring it, I pressed my palm against the rough stone, almost drawing away in confusion at the new warmth emanating from the surface.

I pushed.

A muffled shout responded, and I tripped over myself as I scrabbled away, taking entirely too long to realize the source of the sound was outside and not behind the glowing door. Shaking my head, I sucked in a breath through my nose – and dissolved to meet the kid on the other side of the cave-in. He looked disheveled as always, but this time cobwebs were draped across his hat and matted in his hair, and his face looked like it was covered with a fine film of green dust. He also had what looked like a monocle pressed into the crook of his left eye. For a second, he stared at me quizzically, blinking his eyes one at a time; then, just as I raised my hand to feel for something grotesque attached to my face, he shook his head. His shoulders were slumped in exhaustion as he tucked the looking glass back into a belt pocket.

"I did it," he grimaced tiredly.

Quietly, I replied, "You look like shit."

His bark of a laugh startled me. However, given his appearance and the circumstances leading to it, I decided it was better not to interrogate him about the well. That was a story for another day, preferably recounted in the sunshine. He must have seen me narrow my eyes because the kid just shrugged, a worn grin hanging from his mouth. "You should see the other guy."

"Cute." Glancing skyward, I jerked my head towards the cave. "C'mon, let's get in out of the rain. You smell like wet dog."

I had to ferry him inside. The second his boots hit solid ground again, though, instead of staggering around with the shock of the transport, he took out that little monocle and started examining every nook and cranny of the tiny atrium. For a minute or two I just stood by and watched him, unimpressed and a little baffled – until he began petting the door, his fingers tracing the carvings with a blind man's touch. At that point, I straightened a little in interest because as soon as he removed the eyepiece and blinked, he apparently couldn't find the blatantly-glowing paths again.

"Hey kid, what is that thing?"

"Lens of Truth," Navi answered instead. She zipped out from under his hat to glare at me, hands on her hips. "It's a Sheikah heirloom from the well."

Link nodded in somewhat disinterested agreement as he spun back to me, still removing and replacing the stupid monocle every two seconds. "Yeah. It's kinda cool. Sometimes I can see through walls and doors. D… have you always had that tattoo? How did you make it invisible?"

I blinked stupidly. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The tattoo." The kid pointed at his own eye, pulling the bottom lid down. "On your face. It looks like the one Impa has." Suspicion suddenly began oozing from him as he sidled a few steps closer, leaning towards me with his face pinched in something like offense. "…Are you a Sheikah? Is that why you're looking for them?"

Gaping, I tore the Mirror Shield from the kid's back and immediately held it up to my face. There, as if I'd been born with it, dripped a faint scarlet-white teardrop from my left eye. A few little white triangles lurked just above my brow, too. Fantastic. I garbled, "It doesn't look bloody invisible to me."

The kid's hip was cocked, the monocle held firmly against his eye by his free hand, as he replied, "Well I can only see it if I hold up the Lens of Truth to my eye. So I guess it's not really invisible."

"'So I guess it's not really invisible,'" I bit back, words glazed with a measure of disbelief. There was no bloody way that stupid thing had been on my face for any length of time without anyone noticing before. At the very least, Saria would've said something if she'd seen it. Hell, Sheik especially wouldn't have wasted time in pointing it out. I had the mark of a Sheikah right on my bloody face and it only just now decided to show up. What the hell.

The mark of a Sheikah.

Holy hell.

"Kid-"

"Navi?" He immediately turned towards his fairy, accusing eyes fixed on her tiny face. "Did you know?"

She fluttered around nervously a bit before finally risking a closer look. "Erm…" After cocking her head this way and that, she finally shrugged in defeat. "I'm sorry, Link, but I can't see anything."

"Well it doesn't change the fact that it's there," I snapped at them, thoroughly irritated by the exchange. "I'm standing right here. I'm not something to gawk at. Listen, Impa showed up while I was waiting for you, and apparently I'm a Sheikah. Maybe. I don't know. But she's probably the Sage of Shadow."

The kid grinned, obviously relishing the moment as he antagonized me. "Maybe that's why Sheik doesn't like you."

"Nope." I brushed past him, shoving the door inwards with the same momentum. "Nope. I've got too much to process. Can't even, right now."

He looked a bit put out at that, but he shrugged it off. Grinning again, Link unbuckled the longshot from his belt and aimed at the far wall. "Fine. But I bet that's why you could see those fake walls and stuff, and in the well, too. It's kinda funny if you think about it."

"I'd rather not."

I stood at the edge of the huge pit, staring distastefully at the crumbling stone that cascaded into darkness. This place gave me the creeps worse than the Arbiter's Grounds. Dim braziers lit the corridor, but I could feel the shadows – I could almost see them coalescing into humanoid forms, out of the corner of my eye. But as soon as I turned again, they would dissipate, and I gritted my teeth in frustration. When we entered the next cavernous room, I just stared at the enormous bird statue in the center of the room, and the odd collection of pillars arranged around it; only one of the pillars was capped by a huge skull. At the far end of the room, another chasm separated us from the apparent exit. The Sheikah were a pretty messed up bunch if this was their idea of a welcoming place.

The kid had his monocle thing to his face again, so I followed along as he awkwardly stepped through what looked like open space to me into a maze. It must have been pretty disconcerting for him to move through fake-

"Here is gathered Hyrule's bloody history of greed and hatred."

Whipping around, I only lowered my loaded bow when I realized the walls were talking to us. Great. "Did you hear that too?"

"Yeah," he nodded warily. Link adjusted his grip on the hilt, but slowly moved ahead anyway. "I think you're right… let's move through this place as fast as we can. This is worse than the well." He paused – and let his mouth open slightly, his brows knit together as he started, "Hey D, I-" But when Navi flitted out from his hat brim, he seemed to reconsider and shook his head. "Never mind."

"You sure?"

He shrugged, and I tried to ignore the laden silence. I hadn't been lying about having too much to process on my end… but I also knew that the kid hadn't said anything about his little escapade, and I definitely knew that he wanted to share something. I could see it in the way his mouth kept twitching anytime he glanced back at me, or the way he fidgeted with the hilt. The nervous energy between us certainly didn't help with my building claustrophobia or flashbacks. The walls looked like they were made from skulls, just like the awful catacombs in the Temple of Time, where Link and I had fought the giant spider. The only difference was the ceiling height; here, the top of the kid's head nearly brushed the ceiling in places, and the air was so stale and foul, I nearly pulled my collar up over my nose and mouth. We were in a crypt and I was struggling with the confined space, willing myself not to think of Keaton. The air quality just nudged me that much closer to hyperventilating. And it pissed me off – being imprisoned in Hyrule Castle, and Keaton's death, those were behind me. I'd gotten over them, or should have by now. Goddesses only knew that I had to deal with much more important things at hand. Farore.

Up ahead, the kid opened up a door and immediately snarled at the dead-end room, and its screeching keese. I sniped at them from where I stood a few steps behind him while he played something on his ocarina to stun the redead. It was all very systematic, until he opened another door in the maze to find one of those Dead Hand creatures. Growling, he jammed the Lens of Truth into his eye and went after it with an intensity I didn't think I'd witnessed before, which only dredged up memories of Malon. It certainly wasn't a Dead Hand that had festered in the well and killed her, but it definitely symbolized everything wrong about this little adventure. I shot at its exposed hands while Link carved up the main body, his eyes blazing with fury, but he made extremely short work of it. However, when he turned around and I caught a glimpse of his face, I grasped his shoulders and shook him a little, somewhere between irritated and alarmed.

"Goddesses," I snapped, and the kid actually started a bit, not expecting the outburst. His face had turned grey. "But what is it that you want to tell me?"

Link faltered for a split second. "I… I went to the farm. It was empty." I let out a long hiss of a breath, suddenly unable to formulate any kind of response. Averting his eyes, he continued quietly, "I saw where you buried her in the cemetery. I left her flowers from the pasture."

The little fairy sighed, "Oh Link," but I still couldn't think of anything to say, and I hated myself for it. This poor kid had been through hell and back – and wasn't even done with his journey – and he'd lost so much of himself. He wasn't quite breaking in front of me; he didn't seem like he was crumbling. There was that pain in his eyes, yes, that grief – but there was also determination and vengeance and rage. He was being tempered by this incredible loss, but wasn't quite there yet… still molten, but on his way to hardening, for better or worse.

I wrapped him in a hug.

Slowly, hesitantly, I felt him return the embrace like a lifeline. He clutched fistfuls of the back of my tunic, hands shaking; I didn't dare move, so we stood that way for several minutes, just breathing in the stale air of the dark room. It was large and dark enough in here that I couldn't quite see the skulls set into the wall, and for that I was grateful.

The kid shifted suddenly and clapped me on the shoulder, hard, as he stepped away slowly. He wouldn't look at me as he mumbled, "Thanks, D."

"It's always worse before it gets better," I replied softly. "You're not alone. It'll be worth it in the end."

He unsheathed the Master Sword in the most graceful sweep of the blade I'd ever seen. "Yes," he breathed, hard gaze fixed on the bloodied tip, "it will."