Hero's courage endures.

My Name Is Link?

Day 1:

I awaken to an abyssal void, a darkness so profound it permeates the very essence of my being. The air, thick with an oppressive dampness, clings to my skin like a cold, clammy shroud, offering no warmth-only a persistent, bone-deep chill that seeps into every fiber of my existence. My limbs, laden with an unyielding weight, feel as though they have been anchored to the earth by some unseen, malevolent force, as if the entirety of my being has been entombed for eons. The sensation is disconcertingly foreign, yet disturbingly familiar, as though this stifling heaviness is all I have ever known or will ever know.

The silence is oppressive, punctuated only by the relentless, rhythmic drip of water echoing from an unseen crevice, each droplet a discordant note in the otherwise suffocating quiet. It should be a soothing sound, yet it grates against the stillness, amplifying the suffocating isolation that envelops me. I am alone-utterly, irrevocably alone. There is nothing here but the endless expanse of emptiness that stretches beyond the reach of my senses, and within me, a gnawing void that defies comprehension.

I grasp for memory, for a single fragment of my identity, but my mind is an expanse as barren as the darkness that surrounds me-a blank slate devoid of history, of purpose, of self. Who am I? Where am I? These questions whirl ceaselessly in the emptiness of my mind, but the answers elude me, lost in the suffocating blackness that threatens to consume my very soul. It is as though I am ensnared in an eternal nightmare, trapped in a liminal space from which there is no escape.

As despair tightens its grip around me, my hand brushes against something cold and solid on the ground beside me. Reflexively, I reach out, my fingers curling around the object-a small, weathered tome, its cover worn, the leather soft with age, yet imbued with an unnatural, almost oppressive weight. I turn the book over in my hands, the edges frayed, the pages within yellowed with the passage of countless years. A diary, it seems, though it stirs no recollection within me.

I open the diary, and the words within, though written in a language that is unfamiliar to me, resonate with an inexplicable clarity. The entries are sparse, disjointed thoughts-fragments of moments etched in ink, capturing the vestiges of a life that feels both foreign and disturbingly intimate. They speak of battles waged and lost, of a world teetering on the brink of annihilation, and of a lone hero rising to face an ancient malevolence.

But these are not my memories; they cannot be. The figure chronicled within these pages is a stranger-a hero? The notion feels grotesquely incongruent, an ill-fitting mantle draped over a soul unworthy of such a title. And yet, the name inscribed within the diary-Link-echoes within the deepest recesses of my mind, a name that resonates with a resonance that unsettles me to my core, as if it were a forgotten part of my very being, buried beneath layers of fog and confusion.

Link. Is that who I am?

The more I read, the more the inked words blur into an incomprehensible mass, symbols dissolving into meaningless scrawls. My eyes burn with the strain, and I close the diary, clutching it to my chest as though it might tether me to some semblance of reality. But there is no comfort to be found here, only a growing sense of dread that saturates every corner of my being, a creeping horror that threatens to unmoor me completely.

I am adrift in an unfathomable void, lost in a sea of shadows with nothing to guide me but the faint echo of a name that feels more like a curse than a lifeline. The diary offers no answers, only a glimpse into a past that feels as alien as it does inescapable. I do not know what this place is, or why I am here. All that remains is an overwhelming sense of loss, a profound emptiness that gnaws at my soul, threatening to erode whatever vestiges of self remain.

This is where my journey begins-though it feels more like an ending. I am Link, or so this diary would have me believe. But I am also a blank slate, a hollow shell of a man with no past and no future. There is no path before me, only an impenetrable darkness that stretches out infinitely, a yawning chasm devoid of hope or light.

Day 1, and already the weight of the world presses down upon me, a burden I neither understand nor feel equipped to bear.