A/N: Linktober. Prompt: Knight. This is tangentially related to the fic that I wrote for Seal the Darkness Zine, which will eventually be publicly posted. It can be read alone.
All they found is his mother's sword.
It isn't an easy day. He's young, but not so young that he doesn't understand. He grasps the situation perfectly well. Father and Mother are knights of Hyrule, and with such a job comes great danger.
Were knights, he supposes. It'll take some getting used to.
He doesn't cry like Uncle does. Doesn't know why. Perhaps it's because Link's imagined this scenario over and over again throughout the years. Perhaps it's because he's dreamt it time and time again, only to throw himself awake in a panic, chest heaving and heart beating rapid fire.
Link never imagined this to be the scenario to bring about their end.
One moment his parents were there and the next they were gone. Vanished, right before their company's eyes.
Fell into a dark place, one of them said. Never seen anything like it.
Nothing left behind except for the tarnished and dented sword that Link's mother used for well over a decade. Always talked about family traditions and the legacies before her. Link's held it before. Tested the weight of it. Played around with the blade under Father's watchful eyes, an eventual knight already in training.
Now it's heavy and lifeless in his hands. The only weight that it carries is the end of his parents. Link puts it down, wanting nothing else to do with it.
Uncle takes it instead with a sigh. Fingers the cold, dead metal as he thinks of his sister.
Link feels relieved when it leaves his sight.
#
Years later, Link finds himself face-to-face with the blade again when Uncle gifts it to him in the sewers below the Palace.
It follows Link through the World of Light, all the way to the Tower of Hera.
It's there on his back, the first time he accidentally slips into the Dark World.
By then, Link's come to trust what's now his uncle's sword. Loves the way that it sits in his hand like a familiar old friend. Thinks of how it's saved his life more times than he can count. Trading it out for the Master Sword was a bittersweet thing, but his family's legacy deserves the world.
It's a different kind of weight, the sword of Evil's Bane. Weighs less and is easier to carry, but feels heavier in his hand, as though the weight of responsibility bogs it down. But, like his own family sword in a way.
Heroes upon heroes have held this very blade before him- for the same purpose and to fight the same evil. Just like generations of knights using the same old pitiful and dented thing.
His family's sword has finally been laid to rest, settled gently against the Pedestal of Time, deep in the Lost Woods.
And Link's finally become the knight that destiny's always expected.