Link ran a finger across the skin of his palm.

He could barely describe the sensation. Even against his own flesh, his touch was inky. No manner of cleaning could reduce the feeling; to his very soul, he felt unclean—something from the depths of a nightmare that had suddenly been given life.

His face bore familiar features, but they, too, were alien. Vivid red eyes glowed from his sockets, staring at him from intently from each mirror he glanced in that he did not bear maintain the reflection for more than a second.

He asked of his daughter the question that had gone unanswered: "What was the cost."

Her expression was distant.

They sat together in the forest, but not as he had wanted to hold his daughter again. Her face was stern, far changed from the child he had raised. There was no humor in it. Although she offered smiles, they never reached her eyes.

"It doesn't matter, father. You're alive."

Father.

She spoke the word stiffly, as though uncomfortable with the title.

"What did you do, Lora?" he said

He found something cold in her gaze, something resentful—but it vanished, so quickly that he could not be sure that it had been there in the first place. "There was no cost."

Even had she not been his daughter, he would have recognized the lie.

He switched subjects. "These Kokiri," he said, his voice soft, "why are they old? I was twelve when I left the forest and no one looked older than me."

Loranna stared straight ahead—straight through him. "…They are not the Kokiri. The Kokiri did not survive far past your death."

"But they're—" Link braced himself against the ground.

"The children of this village refer to it as The Burning." Loranna's expression bore a sadness that aged her beyond even her great years. "'They came and cut the trees asunder/The cannons roared as loud as thunder/To King Boren went the plunder.'"

"Prince Boren—?"

"Burned the Kokiri Forest to the ground in the name of Hyrule."

Link closed his eyes and let his head fall to his hands. "Gods…"

"If not for Queen Zelda's influence, it would have happened much sooner."

"But I could have stopped it."

Loranna placed both hands flat on the earth beside her and closed her eyes. "There was nothing you could have done. You were no longer the warrior you once were."

Link inferred enough from her words to feel offended, only for it to be overridden by the looming realization that his daughter was as dead as he. In her place was someone he could no longer identify—someone who's emotions seemed long since dead.

He stood and walked outside, pausing only for a moment to rub his forehead, wincing as skin made contact with inky skin. "Gods," he said again. He distracted himself from such thoughts by taking in what he had not before: a people that were not his own.

Though they lived much the same way, dressed in the same manner of green apparel, and carried themselves about the forest and its many levels in the style of the Kokiri, they were not the people he had once known. Their faces did not contain the ever-youthful roundness of the forest children. Their years showed distinctly across their features.

He walked from the village with some speed, staring intently at the horizon with no thought for where he might be going. He needed distance, regardless of where that distance might put him.

Link felt alone.

It had been so long that—it was alien to him again. Years had been spent surrounded by friends—loved ones—only for him to become again the boy without a fairy. The lay of the world was no longer trained to his mental map.

He ran his fingers through blackened locks of hair.

"Hero!" someone said.

Link turned to face the source of the voice, finding the woman who had relayed to him his legacy. "Zelda," he said, in recognition rather than response.

She moved without the air of grace that he had known the Princess Zelda of his world to possess.

This Zelda moved with grim purpose.

"You're leaving," Zelda said—stated—with an unwaveringly neutral tone as she crossed her arms.

Link noted the young girl lingering several feet behind her—the green haired one he'd heard addressed as Saria. Lacking the strength to speak, he shrugged and shook his head.

"Then you can join us on an extended tour of Hylium."

Link narrowed his red eyes.

"Your Hyrule. Terms have changed along with the times."

He considered her—less her words than her person. If she was truly Zelda, he would have expected the mark to appear. Even in his return to a world that had not known the tyranny of Ganondorf, Zelda's had manifested at the mere presence of the mark of Courage.

But Link said nothing of it. "Why?"

"Why would we go back?" Zelda lifted her eyebrow and allowed the coyest of smirks to slip across her lips. "The Master Sword, of course. As heroic as you may be, you're useless to us without your blade of evil's bane.

"What about the Temple of Time?"

"Gone—destroyed years ago during the Hylian Civil War."

Link's shoulders tightened. "What war?"

"I assume Loranna told you about The Burning? It did not end with the Kokiri."

"Tell me."

"Come with us and we'll see if the topic doesn't come up."

Link bowed his head slightly and narrowed his eyes. His gaze again flickered to his right shoulder, looking for something that seemed to no longer exist. He brought a hand up and began to twist at his wrist. "What about Lora?"

Zelda lifted her chin and seemed about to say something, but paused and reconsidered her words. She drummed her hands on the front of her waist, smiling to herself. "Loranna will be busy dealing with her family. She won't mind if we relocate unannounced."

Link winced, feeling again as though tears should be running down his face. Lora was gone—little Lora—

And Navi.

He didn't even have Navi.

Link shut his eyes and brought a hand to his forehead.

Only fleeting memories.