A/N: For everyone reading this update, be sure to read #20 in case you haven't. It seems I've forgotten to update from #19 so there will be 3-4 updates coming out in one go.


Waking Link had proved to be a mystery they couldn't figure out.

He'd touched the bird statue and he'd fallen into a mysterious sleep-like state, and from there, nothing had changed.

They camped out most of the night next to the Goddess Statue, making a small fire for a light source while Impa stayed awake for the night shift.

Zelda spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what exactly had sent him into this coma, from the journal to the beating crystal, yet figured out nothing.

Whether the journal kept information useful to them, she couldn't tell because it was written in a language she assumed long dead to them. Its pages were remarkably well preserved, the cover being made with a strange kind of leather with a sturdy binding. Amazingly, the ink had barely faded and the lettering was clear, she just had to isolate what symbol corresponded to what sound and the alphabet type of this language.

Among all of the entries, she found numerous drawings.

One particular one that she found interest in was the mysterious bird. From what she could see, they were large enough to ride, the drawing of a girl atop the back of such a creature.

She imagined the girl this person had drawn might have been dear to them for she found many more depicting the same woman. One had her reading beneath a tree, another had her singing with a harp, and one of her favourites was one depicting the girl sitting in a family portrait of some sort with someone she assumed was her father, the bald head and the hand on her shoulder seemed more familial, while another man sat beside her, shield leaned against his leg with a sword sheathed on his back.

She studied the shield depicted closely, its rough design matching closely to the Hylian Shield Link carried.

While she couldn't read the journal, she was overjoyed at the idea that it held so much new information for her. Perhaps she'd finally know how old the thing really was! Her eyes drifted to the sword, the winged hilt catching her attention immediately.

The Master Sword.

Her eyes shifted between the drawing and her sleeping knight repeatedly, eyeing both with a newfound attention.

Am I holding a hero's journal? She nearly dropped the book at the thought.

If their legends were anything to go by, the book she was holding was easily 10, 000 years old, perhaps older. And she was holding it.

All of the drawings came back to mind.

She must have been a loved one, I wonder if she was his wife... She smiled at the thought. The images were drawn with care, she could see that much. So many preservation methods had been utilised to keep the journal as perfect as possible, and now she was holding it.

"Figured out anything?" Impa came to sit next to her, looking over her shoulder.

Zelda smiled, closing the journal and touching the surface carvings. "I think this belonged to a past hero."

"No kidding," she replied, awestruck. "The ancient hero or a different one?"

"Not sure," she whispered, opening the pages and showing Impa some of the writings. "Do you recognize anything?"

Impa scanned the pages for a moment before shrugging. "It makes no sense to me." She eventually said. "But a few words stick out, they're repeated like these ones." She pointed to a series of symbols, identical sets of four and five symbols respectively. "This one, I think I've recalled seeing at the Spring of Courage on one of our trips." She pointed to a specific word.

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes, this word is etched into the statues. I believe it's likely their name for the Goddess Hylia," Impa closed the journal in Zelda's hands. "See? They bear her crest, or at the very least, a version of it."

"But what if it's for the Golden Goddesses?"

"I doubt it. The Golden Goddesses have always been represented with the same three symbols." Impa pulled a paper and pencil from her bag and began drawing the Three Crests of the Goddesses. "And they've always been associated with the Triforce as well."

"Makes sense, I suppose."

"Let's try to decode it together?" Impa pulled out a notebook and flicked to the blank pages. "We can try something simple to begin with."

"So Hylia is our suspected word then." Zelda showed Impa the words and she diligently wrote them down, separating the letters with their current equivalent.

"See if you can find a depiction of Din, Nayru or Farore?" Impa requested. "If it's truly the hero's journal, they might be mentioned."

Zelda nodded, flicking through the pages carefully looking for any symbolism or repeated words. She found no crests nor triforce to point her in any direction. "Maybe his name? Is there any truth to the Heroes sharing the same name?"

"We can try. We have suspected letters -L and -I from Hylia's name."

Just as Zelda began looking over the words once more with a more attentive eye, the sound of falling rocks outside of their room had them snapping their heads back.

Both held their breaths as they strained their ears.

Another rock fell against the ground.

"Stay here," Impa whispered, grabbing her kodachi and approaching the archway stealthily. She looked back at Zelda and motioned at Link once more.

She nodded.

Please wake up… She shook his arm, hoping to get any reaction from him, yet nothing came. She shifted through her pack and pulled out a small flashlight he had created. She peeled back one of his eyelids and turned the light on, flashing it into his eyes.

Nothing. His pupils remained undilated and unfocused.

She looked back at Impa and shook her head. She could see the deep sigh come from Impa before the Sheikah turned back to look for any threats. Her hand reached behind her back and raised an index, followed by a flat palm.

One. There was one person, and they didn't seem friendly.


Link wasn't sure what to make of the figure before him.

He resembled every depiction of a hero garbed in green, shrouded in mystery, and known for their courage and bravery. This one in particular seemed more mature than the stories he'd read. Link remembered the tales of a boy leaving home to find his sister across a vast ocean and he remembered the ones recounting tales of two realms paralleling themselves, his old favourite having been of the hero who turned into a beast.

But this one, he had no clue. A white cloth? Was that the identifier that distinguished him from the others?

He simply sat there, smiling back at him carefree with mirth in his eyes.

"I don't believe I know you," Link tried at first, but his face fell when the boy across from him gave a hearty laugh instead of an answer. "You called me a 'successor'?"

"Has it really been so long?" Sensing he couldn't give an adequate response, the boy sighed, and smiled softly. "Well, introductions are in order then. The name is Link."

"My name is also Link, but you seem to know that already."

"Indeed I do. All of your names were Link."

All of my names? Now he was really confused.

"I refer to your spiritual predecessors," He paused, waiting for any sign of acknowledgement, but received none. "Your past lives…" Link really wasn't sure what to think of those words. "Your reincarnations? You're a reincarnation, Link."

Oh. It shouldn't have taken him that long to catch that but granted, he was still confused as to whom he was speaking with.

"And you are?"

"Oh for Goddess' sake," The other boy sighed, pulling the cloth from his shoulder and holding it out for him to see. Link felt bad, the boy really seemed like he wanted Link to remember who he was. "I've been forgotten again." He heard a quiet whine come from the other 'Link'. "I'm the hero who descended from the skies to defeat Hylia's foe." He threw the cloth back behind his shoulders and fastened it.

The Hero of the skies…? Nope, Link didn't recall that story. Indeed you have been forgotten.

"I founded Hyrule."

"Still nothing, I'm sorry." Link didn't realise how old those legends could have been. He didn't even realise one of those heroes could have been there from the very beginning.

"It's no matter," he sounded dejected but seemed to brush it off.

"No, no, anything to jog my memory?"

"I made the sword you carry."

No way. "You?" He looked between the hero and where his sword should have been. "You forged the Master Sword?" Oh that is cool. Link pushed down the excitement that bubbled inside.

"It was long and arduous and I don't wish that adventure on anyone." A snort resounded from the hero. "Talking about the Master Sword, I have a bone to pick with you specifically."

Even though it was Link's own mind, he felt the air get thicker when a frown appeared on the other hero's face. He could almost feel the other's taste for blood and revenge coming out.

What did I do to the sword?

"The Goddess Sword is not the Goddess Pickaxe, so stop using it to mine ore!" Link had a distinct feeling that his head would be getting bashed in by a chair if chairs existed in this plane of existence.

Link knew he probably shouldn't attempt it, but he couldn't help himself. "Is there a Goddess Pickaxe?"

"No." If he could have blacked up from the venom in his voice, he would have. "I forged that blade from my own blood, sweat, tears and soul. Don't you dare disrespect her again."

"Soul?"

"Yes, Soul. So many trials..." Lin wasn't quite sure what that was supposed to mean, but he took it as bad memories and let it go. He didn't think he wanted to know the specifics.

"I'm sorry…? Wait, her?"

"Better be." The hero sighed and brushed the bangs from his face. "Yes, her. That sword carries a spirit and she's a very nice companion." A smile graced his lips once more, bringing back some of the comfort that had left. "She can offer you advice if need be, or alert you of dangers near. Surely you've noticed by now?"

He remembered his last visit to Death Mountain when the sword had glowed on Vah Rudania where the sword had begun to glow unexpectedly and he had never figured out why.

So that's what that was.


Impa continued to watch the stranger in the mysterious cloak silent, still shrouded in the dark.

The stranger glowed a strange red and purple, holding something in his hands that resembled a spiked sphere.

Who are you… She kept watching the man as he just silently stood in the middle of the room, just staring in their general direction.

There was no way the man didn't know they were there. They had a small fire lit in the corner and the remainder of the temple was still basked in complete darkness. He had to see the light's reflection, so why didn't he move?

"Your Highness!" Impa's ears perked up as the man's scratchy voice called out. "I know you are here, there is no use hiding."

Definitely not friendly.

The man lifted the orb into the air above him using a magic she didn't recognise.

"This will be the end of your line."

Getting ahead of yourself… Impa placed a hand on her kodachi, ready to pull it out at any given notice.

The orb began to glow, twelve pink and red flames emerging and flying into various directions yet none came to them. She wondered where they were going until suddenly, one collided with the closest guardian, the loud beeps and creaky spinning echoed through the halls.

One by one, each collided with a deactivated guardian, turning them on manually in some way.

Oh. Impa gulped as the guardians whizzed around for a moment before one stopped, its eye facing her with a menacing red glow.

Aren't they supposed to be blue? She didn't participate too often in the guardian tests, but she recalled the recognisable blue glow of Sheikah Tech.

This was anything but that.

It was the sudden beeping and red laser pointed at her chest that had her staring in fear, frozen in place. She felt as if time had frozen until the laser soon disappeared.

Where did- She jumped behind the wall as a blast came brushing past her, in an intense white beam. Her ears drummed in her ears, the blood in her head going cold almost immediately.

"Best of luck, Your Highness." The voice mocked them, the echo threatening them.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. She tried to calm her breathing, focusing on her lightheadedness and sudden nausea.

"Impa! You're hurt!" Zelda cried out, running to her.

I am? The searing sting shot through her system at that moment, causing her to grit her teeth and stop herself from crying out. She assumed the laser must have caught her arm due to the large painful red blotch marking her forearm and part of her bicep.

"Is he awake yet?" Impa mumbled, feeling her body coat itself in a cold sweat. "I need a potion…"

"He isn't responding to anything," Zelda said, dejected. "I-I don't know what's wrong." Seeing Impa's hand shake as it went for her pack, Zelda went for it instead, grabbing a small vial of dark red liquid and popping the cork. Impa wasted no time drinking the potion.


"Was bodily possession really necessary?"

"This might not be my body, but it is my soul and I know damn well you were not going to touch that box out of respect for your Princess."

He made a decent point. He likely wouldn't have touched the box, even less the contents, of his own accord. He knew how intense Zelda could get about using proper tools to handle ancient artefacts, especially if they were documents many thousands of years old.

"Listen, I needed to talk to you and you just happened to stumble across my journal, so why not?" he said nonchalantly. "It's not like you were in a rush to leave the Sealed Temple either way."

Link didn't see the logic in those words. How was touching a journal a way to talk to his past life?

"Sealed Temple?"

"That's the name of the temple. It's the Sealed Temple."

"Oh..."

"What do you call it?"

"The Forgotten Temple..."

The other hero sighed deeply, fingers rubbing his temple. "Great. Moving on..."

"So what was so important that you felt the need to possess my body like that? You likely gave both Zelda and Impa a heart attack with that stunt."

"Good to know that's consistent..." he muttered before shrugging, likely referring to how many things from his time were now forgotten or changed. "You're being followed."

Followed? How in the world did a spirit who didn't know anything about him know they were being followed? "Elaborate?"

"There's a man, he's been following you and he's doing it with strange magic."

More magic, wonderful.

"Why is it so bad you felt the need to possess me though? Surely I could have-"

"Considering the various shifts in time that have brought me to you by pure coincidence and the nature of the magic used, I'm not quite sure you would know how to effectively fight it, so yes, I will possess your body this one time to inform you of this danger."

"So, what is it exactly?

The spirit of the hero seemed deep in thought. "It feels similar to something I've seen before and it's building up fast. It's strong enough to have started taking a physical form."

"Do you have a term for it? For what it might have been in your time?"

The hero nodded slowly. "Something I encountered in a temple deep in Faron." Link knew Faron, he just hoped it was the same Faron as his. "It was like this weird black goop."

"Weird black goop?"

"Yes. It tends to glow magenta sometimes."

Link thought for a moment. Magenta glowing black goo? He'd encountered something like that when talking with Robbie one night. "That sounds like malice." Robbie had said it was discovered attached to some guardian parts when they had first begun excavating Vah Ruta and had even shown him a small extract of it he kept contained.

"A liquid representation of pure evil and corruption. It also, coincidentally, has the ability to take a long deceased monster and grant it temporary life."

"I don't know about the 'giving life to dead things' part, but it definitely hurt to touch." Link may or may not have cautioned a poke when he'd been left alone with the extract.

"Sounds about the same then,"


Thankfully, Impa's arm took no time to heal its burn thanks to the health potions they all carried.

Zelda had taken the liberty of writing down anything noteworthy about their situation. Impa had thankfully counted the number of guardians and their locations with Zelda thinking it safe to assume they were all armed to attack on sight. Twelve guardians scattered around the temple, with most scattered right outside their room, ready to aim at them.

Impa had taken the liberty of running an experiment despite Zelda's strong disapproval of Impa purposefully putting herself in harm's way.

Impa had placed herself into the line of fire of not one, but three separate guardians, counting the seconds from the beam appearing and the blast range.

Roughly five seconds with potentially devastating results.

More than once, the beam hit the end of the room, causing part of the wall to crumble beneath the power.

One lucky beam had deflected against a nearby sheet of metal, its final target being a very tall pile of rock and rubble.

Zelda hadn't expected something like a Sheikah Shrine to be underneath those rocks, that was for sure. The excitement quickly disappeared when she realised it was like every other shrine she'd visited, the doors remaining closed for her no matter what she did.

Their small campfire eventually dwindled down to burning embers, and with the shrine emitting more light than was needed, they were fine with not refeeding the flames for the time being.

"So what do we do about Sleepyhead over there? We can't leave until he wakes up." Impa pointed over to Link who was as passed out as ever. Every once and a while, Zelda would discreetly go check for pupil reflexes, only to find none, sigh, and return to fiddling with the orange lit shrine.

"What can we do?" Zelda asked, hoping the answer might just come out of thin air. "We're surrounded by active guardians, we don't know if that man is still here and we're going to be shot full of holes if we try to lug him out of here."

Impa had paced many paths into the sand and dirt of the temple, trying to think of a plan. Four hours had gone by already and in another two, the sun would begin to rise. She wondered if they should wait for help, but they were stranded in the Forgotten Temple. It didn't seem to be a likely scenario to her unless Revali returned with daylight.

Revali would have been excellent.

His archery and ability to fly would have been perfect as offence against the guardians. He could have rode the updrafts and bombed the damn things for them in a snap of a finger. She knew of the unfortunate Rito weakness common to other birds of prey.

Absolutely terribly eyesight in the dark, almost complete blindness after nightfall. It was a wonder he had followed them for so long, she had expected him to leave sooner, but upon reaching the temple, she had been convinced he was going to be staying with them considering it was well after dark when they had reached.

Him leaving so quickly had peeved her off just a tad. If he was going to come this far, why not stay until morning?

"What happened right before it was lights out?" she asked, kneeling next to the princess against the shrine.

"Well, he was in some trance… Then he found the box beneath the slab," Zelda pointed to the hoe in the dirt nearby. They hadn't bothered to refill it with dirt just yet. "I don't think any of the box's contents were cursed or anything, we touched the journal, the crystal and the statuette and we were fine."

Had he touched anything in the box before they did? "Who touched the things first?"

Zelda paused. "I think it was him. He touched the bird statue."

"What if we just... made him retouch the bird? Do you think that might wake him up?"

"Impa you're a genius! Why didn't we think of that in the first place?"


"Sky? Can I ask something about all of this?" Link asked, gesturing to the surroundings around him.

He'd taken to calling the other hero that name after finding it awkward to call him Link when that was his name as well. The other hero had happily accepted the new name, thus dubbing himself the title in any story Link would recount later.

"Of course," Sky smiled. "I'm here to answer what I can."

"Can Zelda also do this?" He referred to talking with his past lives. He recalled the stories of the hero and the princess being reborn time and time again and he wondered if their time was something similar.

Sky thought for a bit. "It's a bit more complicated than that," He started. "In most cases, you wouldn't have been able to communicate with me otherwise, you have to carry a bond to do this, so Zelda herself cannot but-"

Link frowned. A bond? He wasn't bonded the last time he'd checked.

"So how am I talking with you then?"

"Well you carry a bond…" He trailed off, pointing at his neck. "I-I'm sorry, is it a touchy subject?"

"No, no, I'm just not bonded. I think I would have known."

Sky now seemed hesitant to continue his explanation. "Well it's a bit hard to notice if it's only one way…"

One way? He was sure he had been careful not to bond with the Princess, but the thought hadn't occurred to him until now that perhaps Zelda may have accidentally claimed him in the heat of the moment… She had been particularly passionate that week, it definitely wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

He felt himself begin to turn red at the implications.

"To answer your question before, you would have to complete that bond with her if she wishes to communicate with her ancestors. It's something unique to Hylia's bloodline, Her Grace being a Goddess utilising Time and Sealing magic," he explained simply. "It doesn't have to be with you for it to work, but you would likely lose this ability, though I'm not too sure on this."

Horror showed on Link's face. Had he been responsible for stopping Zelda from being able to access her magic? The sealing powers everyone gave her such a hard time about? He felt dread come over him, he cursed himself having potentially given her so much pain without realising it.

"Her magic isn't connected to bonding, so you have nothing to worry about," the other hero smiled. "It will reveal itself in due time, she does not need to worry herself on that front and neither do you."

"But what if-"

"No buts." He stopped him with a hand. "It will show itself. Your job is simply to be there for her." Link swore the translucent form of the other hero began fading bit by bit. "If it makes you feel any better, it seems you're doing a fantastic job already."

It did make him feel better, he wasn't afraid to admit that.

"I can feel what you feel, remember? I know your every thought when I'm here." He smiled at Link. "Don't be afraid to share those things with her. Trust me when I say, it'll help you both immensely."

Link thanked him silently. He made so many valid points and it was really fantastic advice, but it was easier said than done.

"It seems my time here is almost gone," Sky mentioned quietly. "I have one last bit of information for you before you wake up," He felt their surroundings tense and freeze up like it had earlier. "If I ever see you hit another rock on purpose with the Master Sword, I will repossess this body at your most inconvenient time and you will not get a warning." With that final threat, the flame kindled out and disintegrated.