Disclaimer: Don't own Zelda. Original characters and story mine. Etc.
Legends
The door was opened, evil entered, and the boy was sealed away. It was supposed to be for safety. For his safety, for Hyrule's, for everyone, he was sealed away. Sealed in a place where evil could not touch him, where he could mature until the time was right for him to emerge. He would become a hero, and he would save them all.
But something went wrong. The time never came. The hero never awoke. Evil consumed the land of Hyrule. Its darkness spread, infecting the world with its poison. Few places held against the dark storm. And still the hero slept, aged to his prime then suspended. Time passed, as it always does. The bringer of evil, Ganondorf, died, for not even he was immortal. His children and their children each took up the empire as the previous ruler died, but each was a little weaker than the last, a little less able to hold the evil. At last, one slipped. The people rebelled, the empire crumbled, and the evil that had spread through the land receded.
Throughout the history of the empire, tales had been told. All knew that Ganondorf, the first evil, held the Triforce of Power, but none knew where the other two pieces rested. After a time, the other two pieces turned to legend, to myth, and eventually out of memory completely. Only those closest to the gods knew of the legends of the other pieces. Stories of the Hero who slept held to life, but were reduced to children's tales, told to feed the imaginations of the young.
The Triforce did not forget. The two pieces still in the world found new hosts, new wielders for their power. The one within the slumbering Hero remained. The peace continued, for a time. But only for a time. It was when the grandchildren of those who had driven back the evil were elders that one piece found a host willing to use its powers, use it to enter a time of darkness once more, a time blacker even than Ganondorf's first reign. The black tide began to swell.
And the Hero stirred.
A/N: Well, there is it. I'm going to be honest, I have very little idea where this is going. The prologue just sort of came to me. Even the title is just a working title. I know some characters, and some of what happens, but we'll see what develops together, right? Oh, and despite some passing similarity between this and Windwaker, I promise I wrote this prologue before the game came out. There might be a few characters from WW in this story (mostly because despite how little you see of him I love Fado and the Rito are just nifty ^_^), but other than that there shouldn't be much in the way of crosses.