Chapter 2

The desert was almost exactly how it appeared in Link's visions. The sky opened up above him as he came though the Gerudo Canyon and passed the stable, a brighter blue to contrast the intense orange below. Evening approached, and Link decided to turn around and rest for the night. A passing traveler had told him of a bazaar halfway to Gerudo Town, but he didn't trust his timing would get him there before the night turned frigid.

In the morning, he cooked some safflina-seared bird drumsticks, and was quietly on his way. He'd gotten up just before dawn, and he now found himself trudging through the thick sand. Sunlight turned the sky pink at first, and then found its way above the throng of rock, fully lighting Link's way from the east. Fortunately, the sun was partially behind him, so it wasn't blinding. It had started to get uncomfortably hot, though, and he was glad he had packed a full water skin and was wearing lighter-weight clothes. He'd doubted the innkeeper's wise words of dressing lighter in the day and heavier during the night, but Link was glad he trusted those words now.

Just like in his vision, the sands swirled around him as the wind picked up. He made good time; he was halfway to the bazaar now, and the sun was just above the horizon. A voltfruit tree hovered nearby, and he picked one of the red, spiky fruits. Deciding to take a quick break, he sat in the tree's meager shade and enjoyed the tangy voltfruit. Just behind the prickly tree, he saw a strange yellow glow coming from the ground. Curious, he crawled over to it. It didn't emanate any heat, and the light seemed to weaken as he got closer. Was the desert playing tricks on his eyes? This was another thing the innkeeper had warned him about—to not have faith in what was likely a simple mirage.

As soon as he touched the light, a white light flashed in his mind, and he seemed to be transported to a different time. The hue of the blue sky changed, and the sands stopped whipping around.


A young woman was kneeling a few feet away, huddled over a fallen young man in a pool of blood in the sand. Link reached out, but saw that he didn't exist here. Was this some sort of memory coming back to him to haunt him? He tried to speak, but no sound came. There was nothing he could do to help these people.

"Come back to me, Link," the girl said, her voice catching as she battled tears. "Come back home." She stroked the man's head softly, pleading. She was wearing merchant clothes, while the man was wearing light guard armor. Both of their faces were caked in dried blood and sweat.

Then Link remembered. Those were the exact words, in the exact voice, that had spoken to him in the cave. It had already been a few weeks, but a voice like that was unforgettable. A striking thought then came to him. This scene he was seeing wasn't just a memory of his—it was of him. He was that man on the ground, injured almost beyond repair, his life draining onto bloodied sand. That was his head on the ground, eyes closed as if sleeping. But the young woman wasn't giving up hope. She dressed his body's bleeding head with a bandage, but even Link doubted it would work for very long. She hummed a strangely lively tune, as if in denial that the man beneath her was dying.

Suddenly she turned to the onlooking Link. He could swear she met his eyes, but realized she was looking behind him, towards the bazaar. Someone was coming. She got up swiftly, wiped her tears with the heel of her hand, and gathered her things.

"I'm so sorry, Link," she rasped. "I'm sorry I can't stay here for you. I have to go. Please"—her tears flowed freely now—"please come back home, if you can. Come back to me. I can't... I can't do this without you, but I have to go. I know you'll understand; you were always so good at that."

Then, wiping her eyes again, she turned to the direction Link had come—to the stable in the canyon. Link found himself drawn to follow her. He now knew that this was someone from his past, someone who'd loved him. And perhaps he'd loved her back. He just didn't remember. As she walked away, his incorporeal form stalked her, unbidden. Link looked over his shoulder at the body of his past as he drifted toward the young woman.


The vision ended, but a new one started, disorienting Link yet again with a flash of white light, the blue sky in his real life quickly shifting into a dark nothingness.

Link now watched the girl leave the Gerudo Canyon stable. It looked like it had been a few weeks, judging by the new size of the undergrowth of rushrooms and safflinas nearby. Again, Link was drawn to follow her, but not of his own choosing. And yet again, Link tried to speak, but was as silent as the stone.

They weaved their way westward through slot canyons, climbing cliffs and ducking under overhanging rock. This girl seemed to have a strong sense of direction and purpose, even as she muttered to herself about her insecurities. While she lamented about how poorly she'd acted, compromising her last mission, she traversed the area with ease. There was no doubt she knew what she was doing. She knew what she wanted. Link decided he liked that about her.

"The back entrance should be around here somewhere," she whispered. While unnecessary for herself, Link appreciated the commentary. "I wouldn't be a very useful Yiga if I didn't know how to get around these parts."

Yiga. What did that mean?

"I just hope Link made it back all right. Idiot me couldn't help him." Her voice cracked slightly at the last statement. Link wished he could turn back to give her privacy in these vulnerable moments, but was stuck watching her grieve.

After a few more minutes, they came to a human-sized crack in the rocky cliff wall surrounding them. "Well, here's my homecoming," the girl said. Link had no idea what to expect now. She looked like she was approximately his age, and she was apprehensive about coming back to her home. What had these Yiga done to her? Or, perhaps, what had she done to them? She sighed and squeezed her way in, and before he knew it, they were in a small hallway, mazelike with many more similar cracks in the walls. Red flags draped from the short ceiling of this hideout, and they waved with a slight breeze as the girl snuck past them. She pressed her face up to a smaller crack on the other side of the hallway, peering through it. Link hovered over her, or rather, through her, to observe what she was looking at.

"The crews at the Divine Beasts are nearly ready. Preparations for Vah Rudania are complete. Vah Rutah is taking the longest, but I'm sure we'll get things settled by year's end," a man in a red uniform said. He was giving his report to a bigger, bulkier man, decorated in a thick red jacket with pins on it. The room they were in was small but official. The taller man had a sort of circlet on his head, likely signifying a chieftain status.

"Year's end?" the chief bellowed. "Is that really the best we can do?" The disappointment in his voice was thick and palpable.

"U-Unfortunately, Master Gehrik," the underling said. "But the Zora also don't have a pilot for it yet, so they're not ready to use it, either. We predict we'll have sufficient time."

Master Gehrik hmphed. "And the Shrine of Resurrection?"

At this, the soldier shrunk, subtle to most eyes, but Link noticed. "The Sheikah have imbued it with something. Some sort of newer technology that we haven't yet seen. It's going to be tougher to crack."

The master shook his head, his coattails swaying. "I need more than that, Jero. I didn't promote you to captain just to give me unsatisfactory answers."

"I will get more men on it," Jero said. Then he hesitated a bit. "If I might ask, do you have any word on Shara? She hasn't come back, but we haven't heard any reports on her, either. It's as if she vanished after the Zora Caravan mission failed."

At this, the girl with Link perked up and gasped slightly. "Failed?" she whispered, oblivious to Link's apologetic gaze. "We failed the mission after all? After all that work, all that heartache? Link dying at the end of my fingertips?"

"It wasn't a failure," Master Gehrik corrected. "We got the talisman. Yuri and Heren returned unharmed. Link was worse for wear, but he recovered quickly. As for Shara... well, you know the code."

The girl clenched her fist, a pile of sand filtering through her fingers. A tear threatened to spill over her eyelid. She closed her eyes in resignation. Then she mouthed the code at the same time the soldier in the other room recited it: "Those who fall alone must walk alone."

This must have been the Shara the men inside were talking about. She had been on a mission with a Yiga crew, which Link was also on, and the mission succeeded, but with casualties.

"We have to believe she didn't make it out alive. We don't have time to worry about her whereabouts, and at this point, she would be a liability. If she survived, she is not to be welcomed back here," the chief said. "Link, on the other hand, we will need close eyes on. His position is the most vulnerable, and mistakes will be more costly with his new mission than with any other we've assigned. His infiltration into the castle guard must succeed. Get a man watching him as well. I'll need frequent reports."

"Yes, Master," Jero said with a small bow. "I'll get the men out tonight." Then the young captain left the room through a wider opening, opposite Shara's spyhole.

As soon the captain was gone, Master Gehrik's shoulders dropped, and he walked over to a table covered in papers. They looked like plans and schematics. Were those the Divine Beasts he mentioned earlier?

Beside Link, Shara let her fingertips slowly trail down the rock face in front of her, as gentle as a honeybee on a petal. "They left me for dead," she whispered, as the tears finally fell down her face. "But Link is alive. By the Goddess, he's alive."

Again, Link wished he could reach out. He hardly knew her, yet he felt a connection to her through their shared past. He had been in her life at one point, and she had no idea he was there beside her. She balled up her fist, then turned around and walked back through the crack from which they had come.


The second vision ended. Link found himself beside the voltfruit tree, fruit forgotten in his hand, its juices making his fingers sticky. Two sand sparrows fluttered above him. The sun had hardly moved, but was practically blinding after he'd just come from a dark, secluded hideaway. It was time to get up and get to the bazaar.

But then, what if he needed to go to that hidden fort in the canyons? The idea of the desert being his home pressed upon him, and he now wondered if he even needed to go further south. What if he went west? He could follow the trail that Shara had, in between the Gerudo Canyon stable and the hideout. Perhaps there were still people there—his family. If nothing else, he might learn more about who he was.

So, he turned around.

Once he faced his new destination, he felt a new purpose, despite the faint flutter in his chest. If his luck panned out, there would be no one there. He didn't know anything about these Yiga people, but he could sense that he didn't want to be on the other end of their blades. From what he gathered from his vision, they were unforgiving of their own, at best. They'd left this Shara girl to die, and he watched it eat her up inside. They were her family, and they broke her. He couldn't imagine what they did to her heart, let alone what he did to her heart. She had to go into hiding because she'd failed her mission, and she couldn't help him, so she had to leave him. But as he had just learned, he had healed after all, and had been sent on a mission to Hyrule Castle without her.

She'd abandoned him, but he'd done the same. Really, he was no better than she.

With a spring in his step, Link's walk back to the stable took only an hour. Instead of going inside, he found some nearby wildberries to snack on and turned westward. He climbed through the slot canyons and underneath the gigantic domes of red rock. He wiggled his way around the occasional rockslide and ducked under sky-blocking overhangs. It was just as it had appeared in Shara's memory.

Nearing dusk now, he finally arrived at the crack in the rock wall. The red stone completely encircled this area, with barely any opening to the sky. The air was noticeably cooler from the shade, though the lack of wind stagnated the air.

Link peered into the crack —

"Excuse me," a voice rang out from behind him, echoing in this dome of rock. Link stiffened and snapped his head back to look. Caught in the act.

A male Yiga footsoldier, dressed in a red uniform up to the neck, stood in front of him, blocking his only way out of here. There was only forward, into the hideout, or back, past this soldier.

The soldier's face had a layer of fine stubble, and he looked to be just a few years older than Link. His dark eyes bored into Link. "Who are you, and how do you know this place?" he asked. His voice was low, betraying his youth. His garb was similar to that of the captain's from his vision, but was probably of a lower rank. Or, perhaps the styles had changed over the years. After all, it had been one hundred years since he'd last seen these Yiga people.

The soldier waited for Link to answer. "I used to live here," Link answered, shifting his weight so he faced the man more fully.

"Well, I don't know you, and I know everybody here," the man said, nonplussed.

"I... It's been a long time," Link replied, hoping the man wouldn't pry much more.

He shook his head. "That's not good enough. I've lived here my whole life. I would have known you." Then, when Link didn't say anything else, he continued. "If you used to live here, tell me the first code of the Yiga."

At this, Link's mind drew a blank. He tried to think of what this code could be, tried to remember, but his mind was like a white canvas — unmarked and useless here. He stared at the man, wanting him to trust him. This was his home; he knew that. Perhaps there was another way he could prove himself? Then Link remembered the captain Jero from his vision, and reimagined his sheathed blade as he walked out of the chieftain's quarters. He only hoped this man here would have the same blade. "That crescent, in your back pocket. How many battles has it seen?"

The soldier paused his penetrating gaze only for a moment of recognition, but then continued his interrogation. "It's seen more than you, I'm guessing. I don't think you belong here, friend."

"I knew the way to the back entrance," Link said, hoping the admission would help him.

It didn't. "I'm still wondering how you knew that. If you don't tell me, I'm going to have to take you to Master Kohga."

Link's ears perked up. In his heart, he believed these people would be one of the keys to his locked past. If he had to speak to their chieftain, then so be it. "Do it, then."

The man gestured behind Link, beckoning him to sneak into the crack in the wall. He could have taken him to an easier entrance to the hideout, but Link reckoned the man didn't want to turn his back away from Link. It made sense from a tactical standpoint.

Squeezing through the crack, Link found himself in the dim hallway yet again. But now that he was here, he didn't know where to go. In the vision, Shara had led him to a miniscule crack that viewed the chief's room, but he couldn't remember the exact path to walk there. The soldier came in from behind him, shooing Link to and fro down the mazelike halls. A few turns and a ladder climb later, the soldier paused in front of a series of wooden posts draped with a tall red curtain acting as a door. He knocked on one of the posts. "Master Kohga, I've brought you someone."

"Yeeees," a man inside the room drawled. The soldier parted the curtain and gently shoved Link into the room. The decorations and furnishings had completely changed. Before, it had red curtains flowing across the entire room, and not just the door. Instead, the walls were lined with shelves and shelves of... treasures? It was more opulent, yet somehow less refined all at once. As Link got a closer look, he could see that most of it was junk, like metal scraps scrounged from the desert sands. There didn't seem to be many useful things here.

In front of him sat who must have been Master Kohga, at the end of the room on a large plush chair. He wore a circlet on his head, and the same coat Master Gehrik had worn, but that was where the similarities ended. While Gehrik was broad-shouldered and stern, this man was the opposite shape—thinner shoulders, and, well, stout in the belly area. He looked like he hadn't done a sit-up in years.

"And who might you be?" Kohga asked, filing his nails, looking as if he barely even cared that he had a visitor. He had propped up his legs onto a short table in front of him, topped with a pile of forgotten fruit rinds.

Link didn't answer, not because he didn't want to reveal himself, but because he was so perplexed at what he was looking at. This was the chief?

Luckily, the footsoldier answered for him. "I found him sneaking around at the back entrance."

At this, Kohga stopped fiddling with his fingers and peered up at Link. "Was he, now?" he asked thoughtfully. He stood up, using the arms of the chair to straighten himself. Then he seemed to waddle over to Link, as if unsteady from drinking. As he got closer, Link could smell him, but tried not to recoil from the scent. Kohga was nearly a head taller than Link, even though he stood in a slouched stance. He rested his hands on the fat of his hips, eyeing Link up and down, scrutinizing his face in particular. After a moment of lifting Link's arms away from his torso and walking behind him, Kohga circled back in front of Link. His expression hardened as he addressed the soldier a few feet away. "Daren, do you know what you've brought me?"

"Ah, no, Master. I'm afraid I don't know who he is," the soldier replied.

Kohga's face beamed with recognition. "You've just brought me the Hero of Hyrule. The Sword's Chosen. He Who Would Seal the Darkness."

Link and Daren both stood up straighter at the revelation. But more than anything, Link was hopeful that this man Kohga could tell him about his past. He was relieved to learn he was recognized here. He was home.

Daren didn't seem so sure. "What would you like us to do with him? Train him? Teach him?"

Master Kohga rolled his eyes just a little as he said: "No, silly. We kill him."