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Hyrule was not as Zelda remembered.
Traveling through the fields with her savior, Link, helped her reach that sudden realization. Where she once recalled there being entire towns, there were only crumbling stones and dirt paths nearly reclaimed by nature. Along the river, where she remembered merchants used to stop for the night to feed their mules and drink some water, there were only pebbles and fish. In the middle of Hyrule Field, where she had often visited Lon Lon Ranch, there were only dilapidated fences. Hyrule was gone. Ruined. Wasted.
And yet, the citizens of the kingdom she came across on her journey around the country with Link didn’t seem to care. It didn’t matter to them. In fact, she was almost appalled at the way they trampled the sacred grounds of Hyrule with their traveler’s boots and bare feet. Last she remembered the green fields of Hyrule, they were covered in bodies and blood and bones. There was no doubt in her mind that the people had seeped into the soil long ago. The citizens of Hyrule today walked over these burial grounds like it was nothing.
But they knew.
Zelda and her knight Link knew what happened here. They remembered every moment, every second of the apocalypse, of the very calamity that tore Hyrule apart. Even though the fields of Hyrule were no longer black and charred, they remembered. Maybe that’s why it took them a little longer than expected to reach their first stop, because Zelda refused to walk anywhere that wasn’t on a path carved away deep in her memory, even if that meant trudging through the tallest weeds in the kingdom. Link didn’t seem to have a problem with it anyway. He held her hand and trudged right along with her.
“I can’t walk over them,” she told Link.
“Who?” he asked.
“The bodies.”
Even when they walked her ancient paths, they passed countless ruins. Trading posts, fortresses, villages—burned to the ground, decayed. After they passed through Dueling Peaks and started their stroll along the path facing the—what was it called? Oh—Blatchery Plain, Zelda was forced to face the hundreds of Guardians, mossy and rotting, in the very place where she awoke her powers too late. As they approached Fort Hateno, a place she easily recalled, she tugged on Link’s sleeve. He hummed and glanced back at her before following her gaze out onto the plain.
“What do they mean to you?” she asked him.
“They?”
“The ruins.”
He tilted his head in thought. “Memories.”
That was all he said before he kept walking, tugging her alongside him as they continued their trek to Hateno Village. Later, as they entered the village, they heard two travelers speaking as they passed.
“…Yeah, it was right next to the post ruins…”
Perhaps her question wasn’t directed at Link but rather at the normal everyday people of modern Hyrule. Ruins were landmarks to them. Directional markers. Ruins were just worn down buildings, nothing more. Ruins—the Calamity—was a fact of life for them. Born with it, raised with it. The Calamity was their normal.
Was that such the case for Link, too?
To Zelda, the ruins were statues. They were monuments and tombs, celebrations of something once grand now lost. Still, she saw the way Link didn’t pay them any mind. Every now and then, if they happened to stop by a ruin he hadn’t seen before, he’d explore it a little. But never did he stop to look or think about it, no, not like she did. Not like how she couldn’t even bring herself to step foot on their stones.
After they’d settled in Hateno Village for a few days, Zelda found herself exploring within the village and on the outskirts. She found a statue with horns, which Link told her not to bother with, and then she found the statue of Hylia, tucked away in someone’s yard and sheltered by a little covering. The statue of Hylia was not ruined, or decaying, or dilapidated, or lost. Why did the Goddess deserve such a blessing of preservation, but her people didn’t?
Until Zelda and Link traveled to their next destination, she prayed at the Hateno statue every day.
And then the one in Kakariko Village, and then the one in Rito Village, and then the one in Hyrule Castle, and each time she did, she wept. She cried and shook and sniffled, prayed in the rain and in the heat. It didn’t matter to her. Prayer was ingrained in her. But why did it hurt ? Why did her body ache and her head throb every time she clasped her hands together and began to mutter her prayers? Why did the villagers stare at her every time they passed, why did they whisper to each other about how odd it was that she feels so strongly about Hylia.
Why, when she bowed before the Goddess Hylia, did she remember everything ? Every life, every era, every Zelda that ever was? Why could she see the statues they bowed to, prayed to, begged to? Why was she haunted by the unmoving face of Hylia, even after the Calamity was done and over with?
Why did she have to bear all of it alone?
Their next stop was the Great Plateau so Zelda could assess the damage that had eroded over the past century. She knew what to expect—more worn buildings and Bokoblin camps built over what had once been sacred ground, but she still wasn’t quite ready for the moment she came face-to-face with the Temple of Time.
A large portion of the roof was missing and the old gray stones were stained green with moss. Grass and other foliage was growing between the cracks of the ancient tiles and nature began to reclaim the walls, both inside and out. From just outside the Temple, Zelda could see the great statue of Hylia in the distance, cracked and tilted but still glowing, beckoning, calling to her. So, she went in.
This statue was more intense than the others she’d prayed at over the past few weeks. Maybe it was the size, or the location, or the fact she was slightly eroded, but it almost scared Zelda to kneel before it and clasp her hands together. She knew she didn’t have to pray. She knew it wouldn’t do anything anymore, and she didn’t understand why she continued to do so. These statues, these idols to which she begged, could no longer hear her. They only stood and stared.
Nevertheless, she knelt before Hylia, bowed her head, and prayed.
She saw every single memory and heard every single word from her past lives, just like she had at the others, but now she was seeing things she hadn’t before—events she didn’t remember from any books, past Zelda's she hadn’t seen in legend. It was her Hyrule, but… different. Like these visions hadn’t happened yet. Like it was the future Hylia was bestowing upon her, expecting her to burden.
If she was crying, she couldn’t hear herself, but she certainly felt the tears streak down her face.
“You don’t have to pray anymore,” Link’s voice broke through her thoughts. Her prayers paused and she slowly lifted her head to face the statue of Hylia towering above her. Her small, innocent smile was cracked; bits and pieces of her were missing, part of her base collapsing to the floor. She was stained green, too, just like the historical stones of the temple itself. Still, those eyes, those stony, strict eyes bore into Zelda’s soul, betraying the grin just below them.
And it was like a weight had been lifted off her shoulder.
“What?” she asked, gazing at Hylia. It was almost like she was speaking directly to her.
A hand came to rest on her shoulder as Link repeated, “You don’t have to pray anymore. It’s over.”
Then, Zelda turned her eyes to look up to Link. “Link, she…” Zelda began, pointing at the statue, “she was showing me the future. ” Shakily, she stood, gripping onto Link’s arm.
“Zelda,” Link sighed, following her eyes as they both stared at the statue. At the little cracked smile. The crumbling base. Those cruel eyes. “It’s not your duty anymore.”
He was right. He was so right. To beg to Hylia, to grovel before her and weep for her powers had been Zelda’s duty for over one hundred years, and now, it was no longer her responsibility. She no longer needed Hylia, because it was all over. To merely accept Hylia’s biddings and wishes had been her duty since she was a little girl, and she knew that fate was set in the same stone Hylia was carved from.
There would be many more statues—monuments, memorials, graves under which she would lie herself one day—that Hylia would carve with her own holy hands, crafted to her own liking. Fate was inevitable, and Zelda knew one day they would end up just like the ruins around them.
But when she looked to her knight Link, she saw a future she could forge on her own. A future that, with their mortal hands, they could carve themselves.