New Home - BotW Link x Reader (Undergoing Revisions)

Chapter 02 - Lines of Fate

Visiting the Temple of Time had been a somber affair. Going into the Shrines and completing their trials had been interesting events to say the least, no less so than standing atop the tower that rose up beneath him with little more than a tap of the Sheikah Slate to its once-dormant pedestal.

"Remember," the voice had called, and with it, something had urged him to turn and look to the castle, to Hyrule Castle, somewhere that he was sure he'd been before. "Try... Try to remember. You have been asleep for the past 100 years. The beast..."

With a shudder, all of Hyrule seemed to tremble as a great darkness rose up around the castle, encompassing even its tallest towers and tallest spires. And spiraling upwards was a form dark as it was evil, a blot against the daytime sky behind it. Curled horns, glowing eyes, a terrible maw that now opened... It roared, but a golden glow brighter even than the sun combatted it - and in a moment, it was quelled... for now.

Now that it was gone, he wondered if he had seen it at all, or if that hadn't been some strange hallucination. He made to look around to check, but remembered all at once that he was alone. There was no one with him. There was no way to tell if he could trust his eyes, nor his mind.

"When the beast regains its true power," the voice had continued, "this world will face its end. Now then... You must hurry, Link. Before it's too late..."

That seemed to be his objective. Of course, though it bothered him to no end, he still couldn't quite pin the voice to a person but he trusted it, he did. The voice was familiar, incredibly so... And something in him couldn't turn away from someone who needed help, as she so clearly did.

But to kill that beast, and to have been asleep for a century, and for even a statue of the goddess to tell him to bring peace to Hyrule...

Why? How? Who was he, being asked to do this? Surely the other knights in Hyrule were fighting their hardest, yes? All his brave comrades, his superior officers and those who had so kindly trained him - they were fighting for Hyrule even now, right? But no, because it'd been a century.

A century... How much had he missed, and why was he only just now waking up? Why was he the one being told to do this?

Just who exactly was he?

Even days later, days after getting off the Great Plateau and finding himself in the mainland of Hyrule, that question still burned in his brain. And so too did the words of the old man he'd met, and his true identity. Honestly, learning his identity was nothing less than jarring, and the tale he told was troublesome as it was somber.

The old man - no, King Rhoam's - words echoed in his mind, even now.

"Well done there, young one! Now then... The time has come to show you who I truly am. I was King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule. I was... the last leader of Hyrule."

But... wasn't the princess...

"A kingdom which no longer exists," the late monarch continued. With a great flash, the man was no longer as Link had met him, but a king, proud and adorned in riches meant only for a king. "The Great Calamity was merciless... It devastated everything in its path, lo, a century ago. It was then that my life was taken away from me. And since that time , here I have remained, in spirit form."

What the king left out was something that didn't need to be said: he'd been waiting. For him.

"I did not think it wise to overwhelm you while your memory was still fragile," the king went on to say, turning away from him and looking out one of the broken windows of the Temple of Time's spire.