The falling sun had brought an end to the golden sky. As the moon awoke from its slumber, a crisp breeze quenched the arid desert air. Stars lighted the clear night sky, and a blue moon rose above uncovered ruins of the Arbiter’s Grounds. Embers of an open fire illuminated a campsite outside the partially exposed coliseum where armor-clad guards stood watch. They patrolled in and around the perimeter with the light of the campfire revealing their silhouetted figures. Blue banners adorned with the Royal Family crest stood erect outside the campgrounds near a sentry unit keeping a watchful eye for the dangers lurking in the frigid night of the Gerudo Desert. A Hylian Guard stood outside a large, ornamental tent. Donned in full plated armor, and armed with a halberd standing well above his helm, he held his motionless stance as a firm statue. The guard didn’t even flinch as a bellowing wind startled the silence. His stoic eyes remained vigilant in torch-lit darkness, and his pointed ears alert to any abnormal sounds.
Nothing but the wind grabbed and pulled at the loose ends of his tunic. His sight remained fixed on the center of the site with his fellow guardsmen at his peripherals. For a split second, his ears twitched at a hiss in the wind. A light thud soon followed, prompting the guard to investigate. He turned towards the origins of the sound before leaving his post. The guard readied his halberd as he inched towards the source of the disturbance. Torches flickered viciously at the mercy of the wind while the guard struggled to place his footing along the dimly lit ground. His vision could hardly adjust to the pulsating contrast of light and darkness. Blindly, the guard aimlessly reached out his arm and placed his hand on a tall boulder. Near the rock, there was watchtower overlooking the sand dunes in the distance. The wooden support beams creaked hauntingly from the strong gales. From the corner of his eye, the guard spotted a trail of blood in a crevice behind the boulder. Short, nervous breaths broke the silence around him as he carefully turned the corner. He tightly gripped his weapon’s shaft, but then lowered it the moment his eyes were fixated on the motionless body of his comrade. An arrow was lodged between his lifeless eyes, frozen and wide with horror of his final moments. The light of the fire caught the image of a shadowy figure behind the guard. Before the guard could react, the shadow leapt with impeccable speed and had him in a headlock. He struggled to fight back, but the figure’s great strength rendered the guard helpless. His vision blurred and his body became heavy until he was rendered unconscious.
The cloaked man gently laid the guard on the ground behind the boulder. He shifted to the other side with his back at the rock while eyeing the other sentries’ movements. Once he scanned his surroundings and plotted his route, he rushed into the darkness and behind one of the tents. His footsteps were grains on the sand, silently dancing to the rhythm of the wind. With nothing in between him and the coliseum, the cloaked figure remained in the darkness. His eyes were set on the unguarded bend leading to the side of the structure, but before he could make his approach, he quickly reeled back behind cover. Faint lights glowed atop the dark and decrepit stadium. Upon closer inspection, he saw multiple marksmen overlooking the open dunes of the desert. Rather than take a chance trudging through the sand with no cover, he took another look at the center of the guarded camp. There were six guards making their rounds near the central campfire. He didn’t want to risk lingering in thought with the prospect of the unconscious guard coming to. With no time to waste, the figure reached into his pouch and retrieved a small, spherical object. Gripping it tightly in his fist, he arched over the tent, throwing the device near the fire. As soon as the sphere struck the sand, the dome began to split open like a blooming flower. Inside revealed a minute gear apparatus that weaved around a pulsating blue core. The gears began to rotate, reaching to an incredible speed with the core becoming more volatile as it pulled in more energy.
The core’s brilliant light drew the guards’ attention, but before they made another move, the core collapsed. A blast of ice erupted from the sphere and began rotating like a cyclone. The ice storm expanded its radius until half the camp and its guards were instantaneously incased in ice. With his cloak wrapped around him, the figure took a breath and leapt into the blizzard toward the coliseum entrance. The storm domed over the campsite with the winds circulating inside, rendering visibility from the outside useless. As the bitter cold encased his cloak in frost, the stranger ran as his body shivered and ached. He reached from his pouch grasping a similar looking orb with a red colored top. Though he was nearly running blind through the storm, he knew by instinct he was nearing the entrance. With one precise throw, he lobbed the orb towards the edge of the storm. It soon detonated in a fiery inferno, effectively creating clouds of steam that covered the base of the coliseum. The guardsmen within the coliseum were in a panic as they rushed from their post towards the chaos. The steam continued to spread until it crept through the stadium, but the sentries rushed out of the entrance and towards the campsite. As soon as every soldier evacuated the structure, the stranger quietly climbed from a hidden crevice inside a gap in the wall.
Compared to the outside, the coliseum’s interior was completely corroded from centuries buried in sand. Most of the arena’s stands were gutted and covered in fallen rubble from the collapsed levels above. There were stacks of wood and partially built scaffold alongside the walls, but nothing that stuck out of the ordinary of an excavation site. While the guards were occupied with the elemental anomalies, the figure made his way to a large tent in the center of the stadium. Despite the empty arena, the figure remained alert and minded his surroundings. He reached the tent and delicately pulled back the closed curtain. Tables filled two corners alongside towers of stacked tomes. On the tables were setups of flasks connected with thin, winding glass tubes, beakers filled with different colored liquids, and a set of mortars and pestles. His heart skipped a beat at the sight before him.
A shattered, black obelisk stood as the tent’s centerpiece. An uncovered artifact that not only was the most exposed to the elements, but the most well preserved. Gazing with a look of curiosity, he ran his hand across the monolith. Its brilliant, marble surface was smooth to the touch and captured the man’s image in its dark reflection. He pulled back his hooded cloak, revealing a face of an experienced youth. Behind the long, parted dark blonde bangs were calm, almond-shaped eyes of blue. A long scar ran diagonally across the bridge of his pointed nose, a mark of a seasoned warrior. Puzzled, he scratched the base of his chin while reaching for a leather-bound journal. Flipping through pages of obscure sketches and Hylian text, he stopped and traced his index finger along the image of a stone monolith. He continued to trace down the page to a circle surrounding an interweaving polygon with a ring of an unknown language and layered inner rings enclosing the central image of the Golden Power. The inscription next to the symbol was written in Hylian, but much of the text was worn away. He could only make out one phrase.
“Ye imprinted by Divine Rite
Shine thy H l y Light
Upon mine Darkened Spear
For then shall the Wraiths of T il ght
Unveil our Fear.”
The man stood silently fixated on the verse. He read it over and over again while vigorously rubbing his head in frustration. Scanning the space for more clues, he spotted a few books at the base of the obelisk. Going from book to book, flipping page after page with keen focus, the man tossed them aside with no luck. Growing frustrated from the wall his mind could not fracture, he exclaimed falling forward leaning against the stone. At that moment, a warm sensation came upon his left hand. The feeling became a pulsating vibration and he lifted his head to gaze at the triangular birthmark on the back of his hand. His eyes lit up in awe and caught the reflection of the glowing triad. He rarely gave an ounce of attention to his birthmark before, thinking it was simply an irregular blotch. Now, he paid closer attention to the monolith with his left hand feeling around the stone. The vibration grew stronger the further he went to the left side until he spotted an engraved symbol of the fabled Triforce. He laid out his palm over the engraving. Rays of light illuminated from his hand and encased the entire structure in a brilliant glow. The melodious hum produced by the light played in rhythm to the pulsating aura until it lifted like a silk sheet. Following the dissipating glow, a blue light formed a rectangular shape on the side of the obelisk.
With a rough, grinding sound, a slab was pushed from the stone and rotated 180 degrees. The man approached the opening and peered inside. A transparent blue tablet lay in the hollowed interior. It was adorned with ancient text along the corners and a symbol of an eye engraved on the header. Two overlapping planets surrounded by a myriad of constellations were the centerpieces of the tablet. A confident smile graced his face as he traced along the star map. His eyes gleefully followed the patterns of constellations. Some were the Goddess Nayru holding aloft a scale to uphold the natural order, Din with hammer and anvil in hand to form the red earth, and Farore with a harp in one hand, and a blooming seed in the other, creating the miracle of life. The stranger was overwhelmed with a sense of accomplishment, though he kept his composure calm as he took one last glance before gently wrapping the tablet in cloth. He pocketed the artifact and proceeded to exit the tent, but as he turned toward the exit, a rumble began to quake the coliseum. He looked on with tense eyes, sweat poured from his face. The obelisk was enshrouded in a dark aura. The quakes became more violent as the shadows grew, and loose objects were tossed and strewn all over. Struggling to keep his balance steady, the figure slowly backed away from the monolith, but a loud crash forced him charging out of the tent. Tremors throbbed and lashed out uncontrollably, tearing down the wood scaffolding and cracking the fragile coliseum walls.
Soon, the entire area was covered in darkness. The stranger could no longer spot the exit or even see the glowing mark on his hand, even though he felt a burning sensation from it. The force of the quakes brought him to his knees as he grasped his hand and shouted in pain. It became so pitch black, he could no longer tell if his eyes were open or not. He could only hear the bellowing sounds of darkness as it consumed him. For an instant, all went silent. Still on his knees, he slowly reeled back up from cover. An ominous silver glow crawled out from the shadows, and slowly mutated in the spitting image of the stranger. However, its hair was bright silver, tribal markings were tattooed on its stoic face with soulless, white eyes. No matter how deeply the fear grew, the stranger couldn’t move. He could only watch as the shadow approached him. It planted its feet right in front of him as it knelt down to his level. The specter simply stared into his eyes, bearing a sinister smirk on its pale face. With a voice colder than the void of space, the wraith uttered one phrase.
“Hello, Link… my old friend.”
Overcome with fatigue, Link lost consciousness and blacked out. All went silent, except for the faint, malicious laughter echoing through the frozen emptiness.
