To awaken from a nightmare into a world that is worse is a unique and terrible kind of agony. Link's return to consciousness was not a gentle rising to the surface, but a violent, gasping breach. He had chosen to wake, chosen to face the world, but in the first few days of his recovery in the sacred grotto, he began to wonder if his spirit had made a terrible mistake.
His body was healed. The light of the Faron Spring had mended his flesh and purged the demon's poison, leaving behind only a clean, silver scar on his shoulder as a quiet testament to the battle. But his mind, his soul, was a ruin. The memories, which had been a chaotic, accusatory storm in his subconscious, were now cold, hard facts.
His father was dead. His mother was dead. His master was dead. His home was gone.
He would sit for hours by the edge of the luminous pool, staring at the dormant Master Sword where Paya had laid it. The blade, meant to be his divine companion, was now his silent accuser. Its dead, lightless steel was a perfect mirror for the hollow emptiness that had taken root in his own heart. He was awake, but he was not truly alive. He was a ghost haunting the aftermath of his own life.
The nights were the worst. Sleep offered no escape, only a return to the fire and the screams. He would be plunged back into the blood-red light of Ordon, forced to watch the horrors again and again. He'd see the mocking, elegant cruelty on Asmodeus's face, hear his father's last, desperate roar, see his mother's peaceful, lifeless form. He would wake with a silent, choked gasp, his body drenched in a cold sweat, his hand clutching the hilt of the simple sword Rohm had made him—a weapon Paya had quietly recovered from the battlefield and kept for him. It was a tangible piece of his father, and its familiar weight was both a comfort and an agony.
Paya watched him with the keen, analytical eye of a Sheikah. She saw the deep, festering wound in his spirit. She tried to engage him, to bring him back to the world of the living. She would show him maps, discuss their potential routes, try to impress upon him the urgency of their quest and the growing threat of Ganondorf. "The Princess is moving, Link," she would say, her voice firm. "The shadow has declared open war. We must find a way to reawaken the sword."
But her words were like stones dropped into a deep, dark well. They vanished without a ripple. His focus was gone, replaced by a profound and listless apathy. The hero who had defied a demon was gone, leaving only a traumatized twelve-year-old boy in his place.
It was Ilia who understood. She saw that he did not need a commander; he needed a friend. She watched him during the day, saw the way his eyes would go vacant as he stared into the distance. She saw him wake from his nightmares at night, saw the silent, lonely trembling of his shoulders as he fought to contain a grief that was too vast for his small body.
On the third night, after a particularly violent nightmare had jolted him awake, she came to him. Paya was asleep, her own exhaustion finally claiming her. The grotto was silent, save for the gentle chiming of the light-sprites. Link was sitting by the spring's edge, skipping a flat, smooth stone across its luminous surface, the small, repetitive act a desperate attempt to find a moment of normalcy in a world that would never be normal again.
She sat beside him, not saying anything for a long time.
"I remember when we used to do this at the Ordon spring," she finally said, her voice a soft, gentle whisper that did not demand a reply. "You were always better. You could make a stone skip all the way to the other side, right to the roots of the old willow."
She spoke of home, her words painting pictures of a world that was now just a memory. "My father is probably trying to figure out how to bake bread without his good oven. And Fado… I bet he's already complaining that no one knows how to look after his goats properly."
She fell silent for a moment, gathering her courage. "It's okay to be sad, Link," she said, her voice thick with her own unshed tears. "And it's okay to be angry. What happened… it wasn't fair. You don't have to be the Hero of Hyrule right now. You don't have to be anything. You can just be you. And I'm here."
He didn't look at her, but he stopped skipping the stones.
"Your mother…" Ilia began, her voice catching. "She never gave up hope. Not for a second. Every day you were gone on your journey, she would sit by the fire and say, 'He'll be home soon. He's strong.' And she… she was working on this. For when you came back."
From the folds of her cloak, she pulled out a small, soft bundle of familiar green wool. She unfolded it. It was a long, pointed cap, perfectly stitched, the work of a mother's loving, patient hands.
"She wanted you to have it when you came home," Ilia whispered.
She held it out to him. Link stared at the hat, the last gift from his mother, a final, tangible piece of a love that had been his entire world. He reached out a trembling hand and took it. The fabric was soft and warm. It smelled faintly of his mother's weaving room, of woodsmoke and home.
And his composure, the silent, stone wall he had built around his heart, finally, completely, shattered.
He did not make a sound, but his small body was wracked with a storm of silent, repressed sobs, the grief and the guilt and the sheer, unbearable loss of it all finally breaking free. He hunched over, clutching the green cap to his chest as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
Ilia did not try to comfort him with empty words. She simply moved closer and put a warm, steadying arm around his shaking shoulders. She sat with him in the sacred, silent grotto, a friend holding the broken pieces of her hero, her quiet presence a promise that even in the deepest, darkest night, he was not entirely alone.