Link could feel Ganon's magic penetrating him, how it slowly ate his clothes and then his skin. He knew he didn't have long till he died, but then again, it didn't take long to do this last attempt.
Reaching deep inside he could feel something, something that he had learned over his journey to be Time. He knew no one would believe, he had talked of it to Navi before yet she was clueless, which he found very humorous seeing as she took the trip with him.
He could control Time - for himself at least. Yes, the ocarina of time helped his efforts and seemed to give him a wider range but that did not change the fact that he controlled time, all by himself.
To be honest, how else do you think he earned these battle skills? How he matured so fast? In the beginning it happened a lot, before he had the master sword that is. He had been clueless on the ways on the sword and needed to train. His training was going through the dungeons until he survived. Once he won he moved on, never went that far back again (well, except for that once, but the person would have died without that herb he saw so far back). And he could only go back, never forward. Every time he came across a new weapon he would have to go back, well, almost always. There were a few times that he didn't kill himself using the weapon when he first got them.
He knew so much about the enemies he fought and the land because he fought them and traveled over it so often. Another thing he noticed was that every time he went back, the world was slightly different. It was never anything big, but a guard might be more alert or clumsier or something else as small as that. In the beginning he hadn't realized it, but it wasn't long till he did, as he did it so often.
His fighting skills grew out of that, his muscle memory. Yet for all that he didn't use his skill of time stupidly or wastefully. Perhaps that is why the Goddesses allowed him to keep such a destructive and dangerous gift.
But really, how else could he gather three stones in two weeks and awaken six sages in four months? How else could he defeat Ganon and make it out of the tower within the time limit he knew to be there, though he had only reached that point once by luck. He knew after fighting Ganon the tower would start to crumble, the only time he made it there he got lost on the way back after Zelda fainted from blood lost. Next time he reached that far he knew to insist on helping her first, perhaps give her a potion to drink, then travel down.
He did not depend on this skill, he was not stupid. He wasn't weak either. He was an untested child told to be an adult. He had lived with the forever children who wished for nothing but to play and then was told to kill hundreds. He was told to go against a man who was King, who had years of experience at the head of an army. No, he did not think himself weak.
Ah, there. He could almost feel his fingers physically touching it. He smiled grimly and he started to breath his last.
"Why are you smiling boy? I'm winning!"
But you never understood one thing, Ganon - my title has a reason. I am the Hero of Time.
The End.
Sorry if this was confusing. I was just playing with the idea Link was called the Hero of Time because he could actually control time. I might write some follow-up one-shots which explore the idea a little farther.