The journey began not with a step, but with a turning away. A final, collective turning away from the smoking ruins and fresh graves of Ordon. Paya and Ilia did not look back. To look back was to invite a despair so profound it would have frozen them where they stood. There was only the path forward, a narrow, overgrown track leading into the deep, northern heart of the Faron Woods.
The cart, its wheels groaning under the weight of their sorrow, bumped and jostled over the uneven ground. Inside, on a bed of hastily gathered cloaks, Link lay still. He was the reason for this journey, its silent, unmoving center. He was no longer a boy; he was a relic, a sacred charge, a flickering flame that they had to shield from a world that desperately wanted to extinguish it.
They entered the woods, and the canopy of ancient trees closed above them, swallowing the morning light. The forest that greeted them was not the one from Link's memories. It was not the magical, whispering companion of his childhood, nor the corrupted, haunted labyrinth of his first trial. The woods were now wary, wounded. The cataclysmic end of the battle—the Goron's sacrificial fire, the demon's rage—had sent a shockwave of terror through the land. The air was tense. The animal spirits were hidden and hostile. The ancient trees themselves seemed to recoil as they passed, their branches like withdrawn, fearful arms. The very land they had come to for healing was now suspicious of them.
Their fellowship was one of raw, unspoken grief. Paya walked ahead, a ghost in the dim, green light. She was the vanguard, her red Sheikah eyes constantly scanning, her hand never far from the hilt of a short, wicked-looking blade at her belt. She carried the Master Sword strapped to her back. The legendary blade was a terrible burden, its dormant, lifeless steel a constant, physical reminder of their fading hope. Her stoic calm was a mask, a discipline she clung to, for she knew if she allowed herself to feel the true weight of their situation—a dying hero, a sleeping sword, a lost sanctuary, a world on the brink of war—her own spirit would shatter.
Ilia was the heart of their desperate expedition. She led the tired, old horse that pulled the cart, her hands, once soft from helping her father with his dough, now calloused and raw from the reins. Her burden was immediate, intimate. Every jolt of the cart that caused Link to stir, every shallow, ragged breath he took, was a knife in her heart. She was his nursemaid, his last connection to the home he had lost. She kept him warm, she used a damp cloth to moisten his cracked lips, and she whispered the names of the villagers to him, hoping the familiar sounds might be an anchor for his drifting soul. While searching his satchel for clean cloth, her fingers brushed against the simple, clay ocarina she had made for him. She pulled it out, a perfect relic from a world that no longer existed, and clutched it so tightly its edges bit into her palm.
They made their first camp as dusk began to bleed through the canopy. It was a tense, fearful affair. Paya, with an efficiency that was both incredible and heartbreaking, secured their small clearing with a web of nearly invisible Sheikah tripwires and chiming charms. Ilia built a small, smokeless fire and brewed a thin, herbal broth, though she knew Link could not drink it.
She knelt by his side. The demonic wound in his shoulder was not healing. If anything, it seemed to be spreading. A fine, web-like pattern of grey veins was beginning to creep across his skin, and his flesh was cold to the touch. He was fading. She could feel him slipping away.
Far away, in the hidden, impossible peace of the Iris Sanctuary, Princess Zelda felt it too.
She was in the central meditation chamber, the same room where Link's heritage had been revealed. The starlight from the high oculus was the only illumination. The simple clay ocarina he had left behind rested on a small, silk cushion on a low altar before her. Elwin stood guard at the door, his face a mask of worried patience.
"I can feel him, Elwin," she had told him, her voice a low, trembling whisper. She was not looking at him, but inward, into the vast, unseen landscape of the spirit. "Our souls… they were bound together by this destiny long before we met. I can feel the thread that connects us. But it is fraying. It is growing thin, and so very cold."
She had been sitting there for a day and a night, ever since the terrible, violent vision of Ordon's destruction had shattered her peace. She was not merely waiting. She was fighting.
She closed her eyes, her hands clasped before her in a pose of intense, focused prayer. She reached out with her mind, with the nascent, divine power that flowed in her royal blood. She followed the cold, fraying thread of Link's spirit across the vast, spiritual distance of Hyrule. She found him, a tiny, flickering light in a sea of encroaching, chilling darkness.
She began her vigil. This was not a child's prayer for a miracle. It was a queen's command for her hero to live. She focused all of her will, all of her hope, all of the latent, holy light within her, into a single, pure purpose: to send warmth down that cold, dying thread. To send her own spiritual energy, her own light, to serve as a shield for his. The effort was immense, a drain so profound it left her breathless. As she concentrated, a faint, golden aura, soft as the dawn, began to shimmer around her. Behind her, a vast, ethereal, and motherly figure of pure, golden light—the divine apparition of the Goddess Hylia—faintly manifested, its hands outstretched in a gesture of gentle, loving protection. Zelda was tapping into the very source of her power for the first time.
Back in the dark, cold woods of Faron, Ilia was about to give in to her own despair. Link's breathing had grown so shallow it was almost imperceptible. She reached out to touch his cheek, and it felt as cold as stone.
And then, she saw it.
A faint, impossibly gentle, golden light shimmered into existence around Link's body. It was there for only a heartbeat, a soft, warm pulse in the cold, desperate night. The golden Triforce mark on the back of his hand, which had been all but gone, flickered for a single, brilliant moment, a tiny, rekindled spark. The creeping, grey veins on his skin seemed to recede, just a fraction. The profound, deathly chill around him lessened, replaced by a faint, fragile warmth.
Paya, ever watchful, saw it too. She knelt on the other side of the cart, her red eyes wide with a sudden, dawning awe. She did not know exactly what it was, but she understood its source.
"The Princess," she breathed, the words a prayer of her own. "She is with us."
They were not alone in their fight. A beacon had been lit in a faraway sanctuary, a thread of golden hope stretching across a broken kingdom to a dying boy in a dark wood. Their quest was still a desperate one. But it was no longer impossible.