Resonance

It was strange, being the vessel for a goddess—feeling her blink my eyes, draw my breath. She was never trepidatious about reaching for power, never fearful. She was single-minded and vengeful. Eager to root out, eager to crush, by whatever means necessary. I never felt so out of control as I did when she woke in me, or as dauntless.

So one can only imagine how furious she was that, when she tried to unleash the full brunt of her power on him, I held her back. Told her no.

I felt a half-dozen things happening around us at once: the Plateau quaking under the weight of our dissonant, rising power; Impa, rushing up the stairway to the surface to intervene, and Link's slumberspell barreling into her just a few steps shy of the light; the fractures spreading like spidery veins in Revali's wing when he hit the ground and the flutter of his consciousness slipping away; the scattered pieces of the lantern coming to rest among moss and bracken, and the smoke lifting from the snuffed out flame; and the malice deep in Link's heart, churning with release, engorging itself on the last, precious moments of the war waged in him for the last 10,000 years, about to smother him completely.

I couldn't leave him to that fate. I wouldn't.

That conviction anchored me where I would've been swept away in light before, left me and the goddess whose power I borrowed in a charged, elastic sort of balance. Two entities inhabiting the same space, locked in eternal struggle and sharing power. Not unlike the corrupted figure who stood before us with his hand around our throat. And not for the first time, I was slowly realizing, the goddess was yielding to me.

The Calamity called on power to answer the sudden, wrathful surge of Hylia's, but it was too late. I was aloft by my own power, and not his grip around my neck; the light pouring out of me was cutting through rock and lopping off treetops, sending the malice writhing back; and all his defenses were erected to counter a sealing power, which I wasn't conjuring at all.

I reached for him, forefingers extended, cutting through barriers and magic and light, and by the time he recognized my intention, eyes widening, there was nothing he could do.

He barely managed a shout before I broke his mind open and forced my way in.

A jarring snap of nothingness snuffed out the world. I'd been here before, when we were on the plains, but it still left me breathless: light so hot it burned, dark so cold it ached. Hatred too violent to be human, devouring all that was good. The blinding shadow, the deafening fury, the smothering guilt. The taste of malice reaching down my throat, the agony of being torn asunder.

I went to my knees, hands clawing over my ears, as the weight of that much malevolence surged over me like an ocean. But then I felt hot breath, heard a voice as devastating and familiar as my dead mother's—Link's voice, and a dozen other voices that had played host to the Calamity before him.

"Poor goddess," he tsked.

I peeled my eyes open. There was nothing to see; just the darkness, thick and violent, thrashing and tormented as by a windstorm. But I could feel him all around me, hateful and irreverent and intimate, and the glare forcing its way over my face was timeworn and only half human.

"There's no reason we can't both have what we want," he reasoned, pulsing around me, constricting, all membranous and hot and wet. "It was your magic that bound us in the first place. It would be a simple thing to undo it."

Treacherously, I imagined it: the luminous residue of an ancient binding that Link had spent every waking moment protecting for the last 10,000 years, as easy to pull apart as tugging on a loose thread, and the sort of hero he might be, the man he might be, restored to himself. An easier road, one that would shove the burden of this conflict on to some other princess, some other hero.

But it was a fleeting temptation. It wasn't what he wanted. And it would have made his thousand lifetimes of sacrifice meaningless.

"I will have what I want," I countered softly. "And you'll be dead."

His displeasure crept over my skin like a chill. The darkness writhed, burning and aching and blinding, forcing its way between my lips and plunging down my throat until my jaw felt unhinged and I gagged on it, the pain of being mended and torn apart shooting up my spine anew. I gasped for air, doubled over, clawed at the void where dirt should have been, hair spilling over into the black and his viscous laughter echoing out of it at the image: a goddess brought low.

I gritted my teeth, panting, gasping, crawling, and reached through thorns and knives and teeth for something old, something aglow, entombed in that unending night like an ember. Reached for where I had buried it so many lifetimes ago without wasting energy on retaliating. My fingers brushed warmth, the smooth facets that angled like a polished gemstone, and I closed my hand on it, lifting it up as though out from under sand.

The darkness trickled away, leaving an ancient, familiar jewel glittering in my palm.

Everything swelled louder—his laughter, the windstorm, the searing light and the fury. Maybe he thought I'd reconsidered, that I'd panicked and reached to separate them after all. Maybe he knew I wouldn't, and was punishing me for it. I clutched the binding to my chest, eyes pinched shut, trying to focus, trying to drown him out. But he was incessant, swarming and cutting and pressing and roaring.

The windstorm turned sharper, slicing my back open, and I flung an arm across my eyes as it raged, shredding me to ribbons and pulling a broken cry from my mouth. The ember clutched to my chest trembled, waning. In this accursed place the Calamity's influence was endless, and the goddess was straining just to keep my head above water. But if I retreated now—if I left his mind the way it was, overrun and violent, left him to drown in this and faced the Calamity alone on the outside, with no flame to revive him and no recourse—

I let the tears I'd been holding back rush free, let the goddess lend me her voice, and shouted.

"You cannot have him!"

The dark turned suddenly quieter—held at a distance somehow. I panted into the borrowed bit of silence, pressed into the unexpected softness encircling me like a shield. I clung to the warmth as I caught my breath, so familiar and immovable that I knew it could be no one else; so constant that there was no room for surprise. The ember in my fist gave off enough of a glow that I could see his face when I pulled away from where I had buried in the crook of his neck: blue eyes, and too many fresh cuts and bruises.

I whispered, "Link."

He smiled weakly, eyes flickering briefly down to the ember burning between us. "You're making him very nervous with that."

I nodded, but I couldn't match his smile. "Good."

"Just focus," he murmured, carefully adjusting his grip on my bleeding shoulders, and I saw in his eyes what he didn't add: whatever it is you're going to do, be quick.

I nodded again, trying to push down the swell of panic that wanted to rise up in my throat, and held the binding tight, feeling after the twisting, ancient roots of it. His arms around me were literally holding the storm at bay, buying me a few precious seconds of peace in that painful chaos, and I knew better than to waste it. His eyes flinched shut, defenses faltering, and I licked dry lips—giving more of myself to the goddess, letting her take more control, until we were mapping the spell so quickly my vision started to blur.

I dove into a labyrinth of intertwining fibers, a web of magic so complex and potent that even a beast as powerful as the Calamity could not easily break free. Certainly not with a sentinel here to fight him off these 10,000 years. I saw all the places it was frayed, all the worn and weathered threads, and the holes where he had finally, finally ripped through and reached out a tendrilous arm sheathed in malice. I started with those, weaving new filament over gaping tears like a thatcher mending a net.

Then fingers bit into skin, pulling me back into myself, and he whispered, "Zelda."

I inhaled as I resurfaced, found his eyes. They were too wide. There was time enough to take a breath, to suspend in the tension of a stolen moment about to end. And then he was dragged away into the endless dark, his cry snatched from his mouth and eaten by the nothing.

"Link!"

There was no answer. Nothing but distant roar of the storm, surging elsewhere. Torturing someone else. My hands fisted in the dust, the spell still nestled safely in my palm. Well, the Calamity's hate would be his undoing.

I opened the ember wide, and filled it with the goddess's light.

The darkness rushed up, eaten by holy power chasing it skyward. Or perhaps I was falling, tumbling down into the void again. Tumbling back into shapelessness. But then I hurtled noisily back into myself, into softness and grassy hillside and splintered trees and burning lungs, and the bridge between us shattered. Link sucked a haggard breath, consciousness and control flooding back in disorienting tandem, and his hand dropped from my throat.

I gulped air where I fell, coughing deep and raw, and then struggled to my feet and took him by the shoulders, looking for signs of him in the hunched figure clutching his skull. His eyes were wide, darting with no place to settle, the burning orange giving way to cascades of blue at odd intervals—a man gone mad, or a demon adrift.

"Link," I ordered hoarsely, taking his face in my hand. "Look at me."

He did, his eyes drawing slowly into focus and flickering with recognition, with something like sanity. Flickering with the shock of finding himself alive and intact. He whispered, "Zelda."

But the Plateau rocked with another discordant swell of power, dislodging dust and stones, and as quickly as they had found mine his eyes were drifting again, darkening. My fingers bit his shoulder.

"Come on, Link. Stay with me."

His gaze slid back. One pupil was starting to bleed into his iris, blotting out color like spilled ink. "It won't last. I can't stop it."

My voice shook. "I know."

The spell was so old, and he was so tired. I hadn't bought him much. And it had cost me more than I cared to admit. I took inventory of our surroundings, still disoriented: the sky said much more time had passed while we were connected than seemed possible, the minutes we spent in our bridged transcendence translating haphazardly into corporeality. But beyond the blazing heat of the sun tipping off its apex, little had changed. He was still fighting a losing battle. We were still running out of time.

He slid to the ground as another rise of power in him sent the ground lurching, and I followed, hands and eyes flitting over him, looking for damage.

"It's going to be all right," I promised, but it rang hollow.

There was nothing for it. We were alone at the foot of that mountain, and I didn't know what to do.

His mouth split into a frown. He reached out slowly, tremblingly, as if to touch me—but his fingers closed around the baldric, kneading the leather with his thumb the way a man on the brink of drinking poison might work the stopper on the vial.

"Zelda," he whispered, but I was already shaking my head, treacherous tears budding in my eyes. "It's too late."

I didn't have an argument for him, any reasons left to fight with. I said anyway, "No."

His jaw clenched, expression shuttering and fingers biting the leather harder, before he finally murmured, "Don't make me beg."

I swallowed, and it was bitter and painful. It was so unfair, and I was so useless. What good was all this power if I couldn't save him then, and couldn't save him now? But he didn't waver, his face all flint and shadow. He knew what needed to be done.

He'd known from the beginning.

My face crumpled. I bowed my head, smothering a sound as a mindless rush of power rose up in me like floodwaters, building behind a dam and then bursting, spilling out of someplace deep, someplace frightened, someplace old. Reaching in all directions, spiraling out of me like some kind of incorporeal shout. Maybe it was. Maybe it was all of us that lived in me, shouting for him at once. Running from the inevitable. Desperate for hope.

For a single, glistening instant, I could feel the whole Plateau thrumming beneath my skin, the way I had felt everything in the Deku Tree's grove. Every shuddering pine needle, every crawling bit of moss, every living thing not quick enough to escape the rising Calamity that still cowered in the underbrush. And amidst all that liquid gold, the power brushed up against shadows—closing in on us quick as lightning, silent as night, tireless as water, steady as earth. Speckling the path rounding the battlement up to the summit of the Plateau, flickering like spangles of starlight. Burning with the unmistakable spirit of champions.

My eyes sprung open.

They'd made it. They had the flame.

"Get up, Link," I urged him, even as his eyes slipped closed again and the mountain shook, his head tipping back and throat bobbing. Even as the Calamity in him tried to pull him down and hold him under. "You have to get up!"

He didn't answer—couldn't answer, all his energies focused on treading water. I moved with a growl, shoving my shoulder under his arm. He wasn't quite deadweight, but felt near to it, his eyes unfocused and his body listless as I pushed him to his feet. We managed one step, then another, following the mountainside toward the mouth of the shrine. But even with something solid to steady us by, he was heavy, and I was spent. We only managed ten paces before the next quake of the Plateau sent us stumbling, Link going down to one knee and I even further, catching myself on my hands. My legs shook as I tried again, spine burning as I pushed forward under too much weight. When next the earth tremored, and we dropped hard enough that I skinned my palms.

I gasped a few trembling breaths, blinking stray tears free. This wasn't working.

"Please, Link," I shuddered, meeting eyes that were half-dead and half-human. "I can't do this alone. You have to help me."

He studied me for a moment. His iris had completely ruptured on one side, bleeding the inky texture of his pupil over half his eye. It was like staring into the eye of a wild animal—devoid of feeling, of recognition, of hope. Full of instinct. Full of hunger. It made my heart stammer, how in that fleeting instant he seemed just as likely to devour me as he did to comply. But he clung to his humanity somehow, devotion or fury glimmering through the darkness, familiar in the set of his jaw.

He planted his foot, staggering forward, panting towards the mouth of the cave. I stayed beneath his arm, dragging myself along and keeping him steady when he drifted sideways. We limped on faster as the gleam of the Sheikah constellations peered out of the dark, as the top of the stairwell came into view, and crossed into the mouth of the cavern to start our broken descent.

A quarter of the way down we found Impa, limp where she had fallen across the steps, and I scraped together a bit of power to wake her. The goddess showed me the method; and I'd been the victim of his slumberspell and its counteragent enough times that it wasn't too difficult a puzzle, even without her guiding hand.

She startled, disoriented, eyes fluttering open and lips parting to pull too harsh a breath. I knew the feeling; but we hadn't the time to be as gentle with her as she deserved.

"The Shrine," I panted, and then louder, when she couldn't seem to focus, "the Shrine, Impa! Is it finished?"

"Nearly," she swallowed, blinking away murk as she pushed herself up on her arms. Blinking away the awful, crackling sensation of malice radiating off the fraying creature leaning on my shoulders, probably. "It just needs to be calibrated with—it just needs the flame."

"I need your help," I begged, and that seemed to shake her free from whatever magic was left.

She slid to her knees, and then braced one foot. "Tell me what to do."

"The Champions are just behind us," I panted, licking dry lips. Trying to formulate something cohesive out of chaos. "Tell Mipha to find Revali, and have Purah and Robbie bring us the flame."

She nodded, still breathless, head no doubt still pounding, and rushed for the exit.

The mountain rocked all around us, dislodging dust and pebbles from the ceiling and sending us all sideways, and I called after her, "Hurry!"

Link's eyes were pinched shut as we recovered, waiting for the rumbling to quiet, his mouth already staining again with malice.

He panted into the bout of silence that followed, "I can't see straight."

"We're nearly there," I soothed, happy he was lucid enough to speak to me at all. I wrapped my arm tight around him again, promised, "You don't need to see. I'll guide you. Just follow me."

"What do you think," he managed haltingly, leaning into me as we dropped to the next step, "I've been doing this whole time?"

I loosed a breathless, startled laugh as we stumbled down the stairway, bathed in the shrine glow. More stray tears tumbled down my face, but it felt less like crying and more some kind of reflex: buried panic, dripping off me while I wasn't paying attention.

"I'm sorry," I panted, suddenly moved to transparency. Suddenly moved by the pressing of time, by the sensation of fate catching up with us in the dead end we'd made for ourselves in the heart of that shrine. "I know I've said it so many times. But I really am—"

"It's a little late—" he held his breath, staving off pain or madness, as we slipped down another step, and then loosed it between his teeth, "—for second thoughts, don't you think?"

"I'm not having second thoughts. But I'm sorry—"

"I know."

I nodded, grateful. Horrified. "Good."

Something breathy shunted past his teeth—maybe another hiss of pain, maybe bitter laughter. "You just can't help yourself."

His foot or mine missed the lip of the next stair and we went down, crumpling down the last few steps and landing in breathless disarray at the bottom. The Shrine glowed through the murk on the other side of the threshold, watery, like moonlight rippling through an overcast sky. It blurred, doubled, shrunk, before it bounced back with any clarity. I gritted my teeth, trying to gather him up again.

"Almost there," I whispered, clinging to words and words and words that didn't mean anything. "Come on. We're almost there."

I shoved my shoulder under his arm again, grabbed at his tunic and heaved. But I couldn't get him back to his feet; our best attempts saw us both toppling over before we were halfway to upright. His eyes had clamped shut again. I whispered his name, afraid I wouldn't recognize him when they opened. He didn't answer, every muscle in his body either sprung taut or taxed to uselessness.

We were so close. I could see it.

I joined him on the floor, burning and breathless, drawing his arm across my neck and dragging us towards the staircase on my hands and knees. We clawed our way up one step, then another. The tiniest of victories, marred by the noises crawling out of my throat as our combined weight crushed against bruises, as I forced aching lungs open and shut again, as magic and muscle strained to keep me conscious and moving through something beyond exhaustion.

We had nearly reached the dais when he suddenly braced himself on the top step and retched, malice pooling between his hands. It hit him again before he could breathe, spilling down the stairs, flowing back the way we had come as though stealing away the little progress we had made. I held onto him as he rode out the tremors, as he caught his breath, rubbing slow, mindless circles on his back as it spattered on our faces, crackling against skin.

His arm gave out under him, plunging him into poison and his own sick, and I gathered him up into my lap and brushed sodden hair out of his face, not minding how it burned.

"I'm—I can't," he panted, one eye blotted out and burning, the other spattered with malice. "I can't go any farther."

"I know," I whispered, trying to smile. "It's all right. You've done enough."

"I can hear him." His throat bobbed, his good eye searching my face, even as the pupil started to bleed. "I can't—"

"It's ok," I promised again, reaching to stroke his face, and his hand clamped too tightly on my forearm.

He growled, "Do it."

I couldn't help but steal a longing glance over my shoulder. The shrine was barely twenty meters away.

But twenty meters may as well have been twenty miles.

"Link, please," I whispered, but his grip only tightened.

"I can't afford to wait any longer," he panted. "And neither can you."

He wasn't wrong about that. I'd felt spent before, but that was when I was afraid of availing myself of the goddess's power. This weakness was something else. I had drained her, trying to repair a binding that was both too complicated for me and falling apart. I honestly didn't know if we had it in us seal him again.

I nodded, trembling. Numb. Dizzy. Suddenly frightened. I fumbled with the clasp on the baldric, fingers prickling, the leather stiff and slick. I couldn't get the hook to come loose. My heart pounded in my chest and in my head, my teeth clenched too tight, holding back a scream.

I couldn't get it off, I couldn't get it off—

"Princess!"

A mess of figures barreled down the stairway, aglow in the Sheikah constellations and in the blue light wafting off their lantern. Impa, and most of the others. Urbosa and Daruk reached the dais first, grimacing at the sight of us; Robbie, Purah, and Impa raced by with the flame, not stopping to gawk, even for a moment.

Urbosa knelt beside us first, careful to avoid the malice, and Daruk crouched as near as he could get himself. There was no levity in her voice, no gleam in her eye, when she looked Link over and murmured, "You're a mess, kid."

"Urbosa," I choked out, the sight of her pushing me that much closer to a precipice that would see me fall completely to pieces. "I need your help. I-I need to—we're out of time, and I—"

"Siphon," Link interrupted hoarsely, and I startled at him.

"What?"

His hand gripped my arm again, too tight, too cold, sucking warmth out of me instead of imparting it. Draining power. Just a little, just enough. Enough that he could turn his good eye on Urbosa and address her.

"Give her your power."

I blinked, feeling blindsided. But no one seemed horrified by the idea but me.

"You can do this," she said, deliberately calm, deliberately assured. Offering me her hand, already radiating unnatural warmth. "Take it."

"And mine," Daruk whispered, his voice quieter than I'd ever heard it, even in that tiny space.

I'm not sure why the idea scared me as much as it did, why their willingness sent me teetering at the brink of tears again. But I didn't let myself think. I just reached out with a hand spattered in malice and took her arm. Daruk's hand came up to rest softly across my shoulders, so massive it covered most of my back.

It was easy. The warmth was all over, running through me in rivers.

The goddess took a deep breath. I didn't resist her. I let her drink their power, let her unleash whatever inevitable wrath was waiting to break free, to swallow Link whole. But instead of devouring him, she was gentle. She was serene. My forehead dropped to his as her glow enveloped us both, as she burned away the malice with a touch soft as sunlight. It evaporated like smoke, eaten up in breathless whisps and tendrils. Link's hand found my neck, clinging to me as I cleansed the dais. As I banished the darkness in him back to its cage. Back to his heart.

His blackened eye began to clear, the sclera and iris breaking through, eating away at the infection like an antidote.

He held my eyes, his gaze all fury, anchoring himself by them as the magic burned him back into submission, into a shape he could control. I could feel Ganon pounding at the gates, beyond wrathful. Feeding on the glimpses of freedom and on Link's fading strength, even as I pushed him back. More powerful and more vengeful than ever. I knew the second I let him go, the beast would rip him apart. I closed my eyes, brow knitted, pressing into his touch. Full of the goddess, of her regret, of her duty. Passing on her words.

I whispered, "Be strong."

The light faded. The world bled back into shape around us. Ganon slipped away, an unwelcome weight shed from off my shoulders. The Sheikah were working in a frenzy in the chamber behind us, measuring and adjusting and barking orders. Daruk and Urbosa were still at our side, breathless and worried. In my arms, Link was taut and trembling, about to be eaten alive.

I clutched him tighter. "Can you walk?"

He nodded; but something in his face, in his eyes, betrayed misgivings, so potent and full of blame that it stopped me in my tracks. I had to hurry to keep up as he pulled himself unsteadily to his feet—unfreezing, remembering to breathe—and slipped his arm around my neck. Urbosa went ahead as we moved into the last chamber and Daruk shuffled behind, his great hands hovering nearby as though he expected one or both of us to just fall over. Even with the malice excised, I'm sure we both looked enough of a mess to make it seem prudent.

The Sheikah still worked with an intensity that defied disruption: Purah gently feeding licks of flame to the brazier, and Robbie with his hands in the machine, making adjustments, and Impa with the Slate, monitoring power levels and growling orders. For a sickening moment he was the machine, Robbie's hands in his gut and Purah forcing fire down his throat and Impa murmuring all the ways it wasn't quite right.

Urbosa reached them first, plowing through their unchallengeable demand for silence the way only a Gerudo warrior could.

"How much longer until it's ready?"

"I don't know," Impa murmured, not looking up from her readings. "A few minutes? An hour? We've never done anything like this before."

I saw in her face what she wouldn't say aloud: that there was a chance this wouldn't work at all. I saw in Urbosa's face the unspoken concern that was thickening the room like syrup: that Link wouldn't last that long. He was wracked with coughs, suddenly, as though he were choking on it.

I helped lower him to his knees as he caught his breath, following his eyes to the stain he had coughed up onto the back of his hand, part blood and part malice. I wanted to cover his fist, to purge it the way I might snuff out a candle wick; but when he looked at me, I knew it wouldn't purge the haunted look from off his face.

"It's all right, Link," I whispered. "The binding will hold. I can purge the malice until then—"

"No," he shuddered, and it was too quiet. "I don't want to do this anymore."

I stared at him. It was too soft, too earnest, too full to bursting with terror. And suddenly all I could hear was his voice, echoing out of memory and drowning the silence.

I don't want to be a monster.

Purah shouted for Daruk and I startled, watching as he moved to lift the upper node. Urbosa still hovered beside Impa, but her eyes were trained on me, mirroring what must have been scrawled all over my face: something like helplessness.

Link's shoulders heaved again, growls punching in his throat as he strained to suppress the monster that wanted to burst out of his chest. He half succeeded, a stream spilling over his lip in lieu of something much worse.

Our eyes met, and I realized I would never be free of this moment—the Sword heavy and glittering on my back, and Link on his knees, tears leaking from his eyes and malice from his mouth, begging for me to end him while he was still himself.

"Zelda, please," he managed, another surge spilling over his lip, and for once I couldn't argue.

I frowned as I grasped the hilt, as I pulled the glowing blade from its sheath with both hands with a sound that rang through the cavern. It was so heavy I strained to hold it aloft.

I whispered, trembling, "I don't know if I'm strong enough."

He reached for the hilt with a stained hand, promised, "I'll help you."

His fingers closed over mine, his weight drawing the sword down until the tip met the ground with a clang, and he steadied himself on it as he got to his feet. My heart was pounding as he lifted the sword between us, as we held it aloft, hand over hand. Its luster was nauseatingly bright, coaxed to brilliance in the presence of so much malice. His eyes met mine through the glow, misshapen and clashing.

"Put your weight into it," he instructed quietly. "Hard as you can."

I nodded, but only because I was too breathless to tell him I couldn't. Too numb to beg him not to make me watch this again. I gripped the hilt tighter.

Then he angled the sword deep, drew a steeling breath, and pulled himself on it.

He screamed through his teeth; I think I must have screamed too as I pushed into the strike, as the sickening sensation of muscle and sinew giving way vibrated up my arms. He stood there a chilling moment, the blade and hilt sticking out of his chest as his tunic bloomed red and purple beneath the glow and the room bathed in deafening quiet. Then he tried to take a breath, and the tension unwound.

I collapsed with him as he finally went down, gathering him into my arms. He gasped awful, short breaths, hands aloft and trembling as though to grab the hilt again, as though to pull it back out. But that was exactly what he couldn't do. His eyes widened as he remembered that, arms going slack, and I held him tighter.

"It's ok, Link," I quavered, touching his face, drawing eyes seeping too many colors. "It's ok."

He grabbed my wrist, laboring through a few more quick breaths before his throat bobbed, blood and malice pouring from the corner of his mouth, and he managed, "Ganon—"

It was like having Mount Hylia dropped on us; that sense of being trapped, of being crushed; the scope of the weight bearing down on us as the Calamity thrashed just as unfathomable. His power bludgeoned us both as he sensed Link's weakness, as he felt the bite of the ancient blade, gleaming with hunger. But the goddess in me was unnervingly calm, rising up out of darkness and ashes to do exactly what she was meant to do. I pressed my hand close to the wound, cradling it, ignoring the way it stained, and let sealing power stream from my fingers like rivers, shrouding him like the bars of a cage.

Link was caught in the middle, a sword through his heart, a beast clawing its way out from within, a burning light flooding him from without. His fingers bit into my hand, keeping me there while his head fell back and he screamed and my heart lurched; but then he shuddered, groaning a few painful breaths, and through the agony, he smiled.

He trembled, "It's working."

It was. I could feel it. The Sword was ravenous, drawing malice up into the blade like tree roots siphoning groundwater. And confined to his body, the Calamity had nowhere to run.

I nodded, not quite able to return his smile as the light wafted between us, binding him with ethereal chains; as I felt him slowly coming undone beneath my fingers; as I felt the Calamity and his life draining from him in equal measure.

I tried to focus on the good—on the tangible relief that softened his eyes every time the Calamity pitted itself against me in a frenzy and then fell back, on the way the molten threads in them were fading by the second. But their strength was waning in nauseating tandem, and every push I made against the beast felt like a loss.

And it wasn't enough. I was going to lose him first, and I didn't know what would happen to the binding when I did. I gripped the hilt again, mortified, the tears I had managed to hold back finally coming loose, and plunged it deeper.

"It's almost over," I soothed when Ganon thrashed in a fury, when his back arched and more fluids spilled from his mouth, even as I drove the blade down again. "It's almost over. I'm sorry."

But he shook his head weakly, and told me again what he'd tried to tell me before. "This—is mercy."

He coughed another spatter on my clothes that was strikingly monochromatic. Just blood.

There was a shuffle nearby—words I didn't hear, shadows I hadn't noticed until they were just upon us. A soft light. Mipha, kneeling with us. Her hands were glowing. But she was patient, waiting at the sidelines.

The blade was turning black, and cracking, spidery tendrils working their way through the narrowest channels in the metal. Buckling under the stress as the Calamity clawed against its power with every ounce of strength he had left. But it still gleamed near the hilt, casting our faces in stark light and shadow.

Link's breath was coming shallower, his body sagging in my arms, as he finally started succumbing. As the sword driven through his heart finally overtook the magic keeping him alive. I held him closer as he labored through it, his eyes drifting slowly, sluggishly, to mine.

Blue eyes.

"I never knew," he breathed, his brow smoothing at a realization or a curiosity—as though he were seeing me for the first time, or the last, "how beautiful you were."

Something drifted out of focus—my eyes, or his. The light still wafted between us. But he was still. I'd seen him like this before, once. In a dream, or something like one.

Lifeless.

"Princess," Mipha whispered, but I shook my head—letting Link go, laying him on the floor. Letting him rest. "If we wait any longer, I won't be able to revive—"

"I know that," I murmured, feeling the Calamity writhe and churn beneath my hand on his chest. Feeling it hold on, feeling it endure, as though just to drag Link down with it.

Whatever power was Link's passed to it then, sending it clawing and squirming against my light, against the Sword, against every magic that had ever been formed against it come together to devour it at once. I flooded us both with light, no longer concerned with sparing him the pain, or with outlasting the creature he played host to. Giving myself to the goddess and her wrath.

"Princess!" Mipha urged me again, and the voice that answered her was only half my own.

"No. Not yet."

I heard it. A scream, all rage, trying to swim upstream into my mind. It was shapeless, senseless, stripped down to its barest nothingness. A bit of magic, and a feeling. Hatred. The last, smoldering remnants of a curse that had tormented Hyrule since its beginning. A bit of writhing darkness, begging to be crushed beneath the heel of someone's boot.

I gathered up a bit of light and stamped it out.

The cavern was quiet, suddenly, as I drained back into myself. No screams, no light, no chaos. Just the sounds of my breath as I tried to catch it, the sounds of it hitching in my breast as I labored through tears I'd forgotten about.

No. It wasn't just the cavern that was quiet. It was Hyrule, listening to the strange silence that followed purging a curse that had been part of its very fabric for as long as it could remember.

I was surrounded by Sheikah and Champions, all of them staring at the grisly scene with that same, endless silence. Link's body was on the ground, mangled and twisted by malice and light. I reached slowly, numbly, for the hilt of the sword. When I tried to pull it, the blade shattered, scattering dark pieces all over the shrine floor.

It made sense, in a way. It had served its purpose, and was used up.

Just like him.

Impa took a shallow breath, dropping two words like stones. "It's ready."

I blinked at her, at the glowing shrine in her shadow. That made sense, too.

I filled Link's body with light, lifting it the way I had lifted seedpods and pebbles and fern fronds. I got to my feet and walked him to the shrine. Taking one last journey together.

The Sheikah cut his clothes off him as I lowered him into the hollow, filled now with glowing liquid. It submerged him completely; the way his hair and limbs floated gently in the water made him look almost alive.

The Slate sang a trill as it registered his presence, as it pulled the upper node shut over him, over lifeless eyes watching it come, still open. Still startlingly, pristinely blue.

The shrine sealed shut with a hiss.

I thought maybe my legs would give out, maybe I would burst into inconsolable tears, maybe I would scream the sound my heart made out loud, the way I hadn't when my mother died. But there was something else. Another vibration. Another light, like the one that glowed inside me whenever the goddess awoke.

Three of them.

A resonance.

I understood it then—not words, or shapes, or even feelings. Something else. A power, with light too golden to belong to this realm. A power to mold reality, to bend universes, to create energy or matter where there had been nothing. To have whatever my heart desired.

I could undo this nightmare. I could wake Link now, whole and himself. I could pull back time, pull him out of time, so that he never had to endure the last 10,000 years at all. I could make up for all my mistakes. Heal all our regrets. Unravel every tortured thread Hylia had ever wished could be unwoven.

It was beyond temptation. It was heaven, wrapping me in light and promises.

But it was precisely what Link had warned me never to use.

Purah had knelt beside the machine, taking more readings and checking for anomalies. The Slate in her hands said it was working. The display showed a smattering of data, including prognosis, and how long the process would take to complete. Somehow—no doubt thanks to some other princess, from some other era—I knew where to look.

Seven years.

I took a breath. Let the goddess slip through my fingers, and take the resonance with her.

I pressed my hand to the shrine, watching the glow churn between my fingers.

"I'm sorry, Link," I whispered. "You're going to have to wait a little longer yet."