Light & Shadow Collide

:Union of the Blades:

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."

(Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche)

Prologue: The Hero Of Time

The story laid before you here, a story of the Hero Of Time and the saviour of Hyrule, is not an account of his great and heroic acts of bravery that have been, by many a hand, immortalised in stone. Not a tale like those that have placed a lonely Hylian wanderer in the highest of esteems, as the greatest of all warriors and the champion of all our most epic fables.

It is not a tale that we hear from those who stood behind Link of the land of Hyrule; those who cheered him on and knew, with absolute conviction, that his was a cause of utmost piety and righteousness; those who never wavered in their faith in his proud stature and their belief in the strength of the shield in his right hand, the power of the legendary sword in his left.

No, this is not such a tale.

It is, instead, the story of a brief moment in the life of the Hero of Time, a moment where none of the conviction and clamour for a high cause could be found in the Hero's heart. It is a story of one who had that cause thrust upon him by powers beyond his imagining or comprehension, and of his despair at this most heavy of burdens.

And it is the story of Link of Hyrule staring down into the abyss at the bottom of his valiant heart, and the abyss not staring out into him... but reaching back up, and reaching for blood.