Wah...sorry for the long wait, guys. I've been so busy this summer, so I hope this chapter suffices for my lack of work. --; Many thanks to all of you who have reviewed!

And now I would like to take a moment to thank some people No, that doesn't mean this is the last chapter, but if I don't do it now I know I'll forget. -- Many thanks to Blu and Hustino for being my betas for this fic, and also to Shell for helping me write it.

Also, thanks to everyone who has done fanart. it makes me so happy to see that people like my fic enough to draw stuffs from it.

Cerulean eyes fluttered open to what sounded like a constant scratching not too far off. Blinking hazily, Anju sat up and rubbed her eyes, only to find that an arm was draped over her waist. She blinked again, then turned around to find Kafei behind her, still asleep. She began to panic - she had forgot to go home. Now her mother was going to kill her, and...

Oh, wait.

She killed her mother, and now she couldn't leave the well.

Still oddly relieved by her previous act of homicide, Anju felt better. Soon the scratching noise caught her attention again, however, and she moved to quietly slip out of bed to dress herself. Looking back to Kafei, she smiled. Even if he was a terrifying shadow spirit bent on killing things, he looked particularly vulnerable in his sleep. She smirked, and then turned to leave.

She followed the scratching noise all around the well until she finally found her way into the room she had fell into a few months before. The floor was still covered is disgusting looking water, and a few random redeads wandered about seemingly aimlessly. Finally, her eyes set upon the source of the scratching. In the corner, seated on a fallen beam of wood, was another redead who seemed to be hunching over something. he moved closer to inspect, only to find that it wore a broken mask - Alan.

After taking a few moments to soak up some courage, Anju seated herself next to the redead, who practically jumped out of his seat as he noted her presence.

"Oh...hello, Anju." He said, and then looked back to what he was doing. Anju nodded a greeting, and then looked to his lap. Resting on what was left of his legs was a very old looking book. The parchment of the pages were tattered and torn and stained, and the cover was worn and the binding was falling apart. She glanced at the text; it was in Sheikah. Blinking, she then noted that the words just stopped in the middle of a page. She began to open her mouth to say something, but as if answering her question, Alan lifted his hand, and in it he held a en that seemed to be crafted out of a bone; specifically a finger. He began to write where the words left off, a rather unpleasant scratching sound occurring as he did so.

"...you woke me up." Anju teased as she watched him write.

"Oh...sorry, I didn't think it was that loud."

"Just joking." Anju smiled and began to read what he was writing, but she then remembered that she had no clue how to read Sheikah, "What are you writing?"

"A sequel, you might call it," was his only response.

"A sequel to...what?"

"A book I once wrote, if you must know. But that was a long time ago...back when I had a quill." He chuckled slightly and glanced at his finger-pen, and then looked to Anju.

The girl, however, was too busy staring at a small symbol at the top of the page he was writing on; an inverted Sheikah eye.

"I've seen that somewhere." She said, pointing to the eye. Alan stared at her, and then back to the book.

"The only place you would have seen that is my other book."

"You wrote Shadow Spirits!"

There was a very long and drawn out silence. The other redeads around the room were silenced and they all seemed to cease movement. Finally, Alan spoke.

"They didn't burn it?" He laughed, though it was very evident he was bothered by something.

"What are you talking about?" Anju queried, staring at him with a very confused look on her face. Alan let out a heavy sighed and closed the book on his lap, putting it aside. He then turned to slightly face the girl.

"Anju, there are many things about this well that you don't know...but maybe it's time you learned what really happened."

"I'm so confused..." She stated the obvious, absent-mindedly moving a hand up to rub at the irritated skin around one of her incoming horns.

"Just relax. This might take a while." He moved to face her entirely, slightly adjusting his broken mask, "You see, I wasn't always a redead..."

"Along time ago, just a decade or so after Kafei's above-ground days ended, I was appointed the Scribe of my generation of Sheikah. Yes, I was a Sheikah. The Great Impa, our leader-"

"Impa is still alive...how is that possible?"

"There have been many Impa's, Anju. The name is only given to the first born female in every generation of that bloodline - and she is always destined to lead our people. This Impa is not the same as the one in this tale."

"Oh...go on, then."

"As I was saying, The Great Impa wanted to prove to the villagers that there was no "evil" beneath the well as their lore told them.. She waited many years after Kafei's imprisonment to attempt this, however, in hopes that the peoples' rage had died down a bit since they murdered his mother. But the other people, not wanting to accept their own corruption, would not believe Impa. The Sheikah of the village knew better than this, and we believed Impa, for we knew that she was too great to lie and too strong to be manipulated into believing a falsity. Back then, Kafei was not known as an evil monster to the Sheikah...only t the Hylians in the village. This clash of opinions caused a constant friction between the villagers, both Sheikah and Hylian alike. To ease this friction and stop the quarelling, the Great Impa decided to prove to the villagers that there was no monster lurking beneath the village; just a misunderstood soul. Because I was the Scribe of our people, I was assigned to travel beneath the well, seek out Kafei, and record his life's story so that the villagers could recognize their mistake from a different perspective."

"They sent you down here? All alone?"

"Well, Anju, you have to consider that the Sheikah didn't consider the possibility of there being an evil down here, though I have to admit, I was rather frightened of the dark..." he laughed nervously, and then continued, "So I did as assigned and I travelled down here. I searched for many hours before I finally found him, sitting in an isolated room alone, grinning eerily to himself. Grinning...he was always grinning. It frightened me...and I never got used to it." He shook his head before continuing, "I introduced myself and told him why I was there, and he seemed to have no objection."

"So for many months I travelled down here every day, writing down everything he told me about his life...and his unlife. He told me how he used to sing and dance with the golden fox every night when he was a boy. He would play the bongoes and the fox would sing songs to him about far away places that he would never see. It would tell him many tales, and then give him ridiculously hard quizzes after he finished. He still loved it, though. He had a friend, even if it wasn't human. He told me that he remembered walking through the village and getting hateful glares, and hearing people whisper that he was the devil as he walked past. He didn't understand why everyone hated him. because of this, he never talked much; he just kept to himself and to the two people who understood him - his mother and the ghost fox, Keaton. He didn't comprehend what he was, or even what he is now. He still doesn't. No one does."

"Why did they kill his mother?" Anju ask, finding herself interested and leaning forward.

"Well, angry villagers will always be cliche angry villagers, I suppose. For protecting him and housing him in her home, they suspected her of being some sort of dark sorceress. Kafei told me that, while being schooled, the other children would laugh at him and tell him that his mother was an evil witch who was planning to take over Hyrule. It infuriated him and made him cry, but he never hurt anyone because of it...not once. And yet they still hated him and his mother...until finally, they killed his mother and Impa sealed him in the well for protection. He was terrified at first, as well as mentally torn from the loss of his mother. He lived down here for years and years, his body adapting to the curse infesting the well-"

"Why did Impa curse the well if she was trying to protect him? That doesn't make sense."

"It makes perfect sense, if you think about it. The curse wasn't designed to hurt or kill Kafei, but to scare the villagers into staying out of the well and away from him. If she hadn't done anything, they would have raided the well the next day and then he would have been killed, too."

Anju thought about it for a moment, and then nodded as a signal for Alan to continue.

"The Keaton visited Kafei every now and then, keeping him company, teaching him how to use the curse to his advantage. Soon, the curse became a part of Kafei. It gave him many powers but in return made him the monster that the villagers had suspected him of being years before. Villagers had heard laughing and seen shadows dancing around the well at night, and so he became known as The Shadow Spirit...which is basically what he had become; a prince of the Netherworld who could dance with the shadows, play with the shadows, and control the shadows."

Alan stopped as if finished, and then turned to pick up the book again.

"But...Alan, how did you end up like...this?" Anju asked, placing a hand on his rotted shoulder. There was a very long silence, until finally Alan spoke again.

"...I was hoping you wouldn't ask that." He put down the book again, and looked down as if he was building up courage to say something, "On one particular visit...my last...'visit', I asked him about his father."

"Oh yes, I was wondering why I never heard about his father."

"He didn't have one. When he told me this, I made the mistake of assuming he meant that he didn't know who is father was. And then...I made the even worse mistake of asking him if his mother was a whore."

Anju cringed. Yes, Alan, that was definitely a bad move.

"...he strangled me then and there, and I never left again. I woke up what must have been weeks later, reeking of rotting flesh and falling apart. Kafei said that a few days after my death, another Sheikah came down to check on me. When he found me, he just narrowly escaped with the book I had literally devoted my life to... but...that's all past. Kafei and have made up. Being trapped in a well with someone for centuries will do that to you, I suppose." He tried to make light of the situation, but there was still an air of sadness about his voice.

"So...what are you writing about now?" Anju asked, attempting to change the subject.

"The same thing, you could say. Call it a journal, even. "