First-Person – Protagonist's POV – Tone: Mysterious, introspective, ancient weight, quiet dread with flickers of connection
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The Tear of Balance wouldn't stop humming.
It pulsed with a low, thrumming sound like a heartbeat slowed to a crawl — dragging me toward the nearest Lightroot, whispering under my skin.
I don't know how I knew it, but I felt it in my bones:
> Someone was calling me from below.
So I went down.
Alone.
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The Depths were always strange — empty, huge, not dead but not alive either. The darkness wasn't just blackness. It felt like time had been scraped away down here, leaving only shadow and memory.
But that night… something was different.
Each step I took made the Tear pulse faster. A second rhythm grew inside it — one that matched my own heartbeat, one I didn't remember having in this body.
I wasn't afraid.
I should've been.
But I wasn't.
---
After hours of wandering and avoiding gloom creatures that shouldn't have seen me but somehow did, I reached it:
A broken construct throne. Crushed and rusted. Covered in glowing moss.
And at its base… a cracked Zonai mask. Tall. Elegant.
Familiar.
I knelt beside it.
"...Mineru?"
> "You came back too early."
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The voice wasn't loud. It wasn't even sound. It was thought — old, frayed at the edges. Like a scroll soaked in rain but still just legible.
"I didn't come back at all," I whispered. "I think I was… thrown here."
> "No. You were restored. By the Tear that never belonged in this age."
The Tear flared — hot, cold, everything at once — and a shimmer passed through the shadows.
And then I saw her.
Not her construct form. Not even her spirit in that full-bodied, luminous way like the other Sages.
Just a presence. A shimmer of light where dust refused to settle.
---
"You were the first," she said. "Before the cycles. Before the timelines. Before the kingdom had a name."
My throat tightened. "Then why does no one remember me?"
> "Because they weren't supposed to."
> "You were the prototype of Hylia's will. The hero made before balance was understood. Before fate was refined. You were pure will, pure power, pure freedom."
> "And you rejected control."
---
It hit like a stone to the chest.
I couldn't speak.
Mineru — or whatever was left of her — hovered in silence, then drifted closer.
> "So you were erased."
> "From murals. From legends. From even the Sages' dreams."
> "But your Tear remained. Buried. Waiting for the world to fall out of balance again."
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I stumbled back a step. My hand reached instinctively to the Tear embedded in my chest.
I had thought it was a gift.
A symbol of harmony.
But maybe…
Maybe it was a key to a locked door no one wanted opened.
---
Mineru's voice softened. It was almost… sad.
> "Zelda remembers you. Not as memory. But as longing."
> "So does the land. So do the stars."
> "And now they're waking."
---
"Why now?" I asked. "Why not let sleeping gods lie?"
Mineru pulsed once, her shape flickering.
> "Because the gods never sleep."
> "They only wait until mortals forget to resist."
---
I dropped to my knees, breathing hard.
Was I really this thing? This error? A shadow carved out of Hylia's first mistakes?
If that's true… then what am I supposed to do?
Mineru flickered again. Her presence was fading fast now, crumbling with the stone she haunted.
> "Choose."
> "You are not bound by destiny. Not anymore."
> "But neither are they."
> "The ones who love you now — they love you desperately, dangerously. Because they remember you in their souls, not their minds."
---
That was the last thing she said before her light vanished completely.
And I was alone again.
But something had changed.
I didn't feel lost anymore.
I felt unfinished.
Like my story was once cut out of the book… but the ink was bleeding back in.
---
As I climbed back to the surface, the Tear went silent.
But it wasn't done.
And neither was I.