There's a large, bright room behind the door. The main feature is the largest pagoda for a Sheikah monk she's ever seen. It marks the end of their adventure.

Link relaxes beside her, and they cautiously step forward. The light is gold and green, reminding her of the Korok Forest, and the room is without walls, making it look more like one of the castle's gazebos than any of the shrines. Outside, she can see the uneven walls of rock that form the cavern. She still has no idea where they are.

They approach more hesitantly than they usually do. Maybe the grandness of the room draws them into showing respect, into not taking this monk for granted. Maybe the fact that none of the other Divine Beasts had monks inside them has them unnerved. They step up together to face the ancient figure, and Link takes a deep breath, almost as if saying goodbye to the journey, before he presses a palm to the force field.

It ripples and bursts, showering against her face like cool spiderwebs.

The monk's voice echoes in her head. It's like a breath. It doesn't sound like a language she knows, not a language she can speak, but somehow deep in her bones she understands.

"You have proven to possess the power of a true hero."

She smiles up at Link, proud and excited. He's standing straighter than he was.

"...In the name of the Goddess Hylia..."

A twitch catches her attention. Some movement by the monk's hand. It's a trick of the light and all the fresh movement of the Divine Beast that's had dirt raining down from the ceiling all day. Or—

The hand clenches. Ancient bones and leather crackle into a fist. Zelda grabs Link's arm.

The monk stands. He looms above them, so they have to crane their necks. He's thin as twigs, like some sort of insect, but by the time he's fully standing, any rustiness in his movements has smoothed away. His long hair flows in a breeze that shouldn't be here, his movements fluid as a spirit's as he presses his palms together, then spreads his arms wide.

"...I offer you this final trial."

Link tugs at her, and she grabs for him, but they're warping and not together. Even as her hands lose substance and her senses go numb, she can feel his hand vanish, stolen from her.

She reforms in a small, square room, made of the same material as the Divine Beasts. It has windows like the kind on Vah Medoh on three sides, and through them there's a panoramic vista of Hyrule. She seems very high up. Maybe in a tower. She rushes to the window and looks down.

She can see Link below her, standing on a wide, flat circle. He looks around, as if he's trying to find her, trying to find the danger of the final trial. She bangs a fist against the window and screams, but he can't hear her.

The monk steals their attention as he appears, warping in front of Link. He circles his arms, then strikes a defensive pose, and Zelda's stomach sinks as she realizes they're going to battle. Where Link stands is an arena. The arena is—

Floating in the air above Hyrule, at the same altitude as the Dueling Peaks.

What?! How?!

Surely they're hovering like Vah Medoh, and there are some very large turbines below them, but how did this take off without her noticing? Where was it being kept? What is happening?! Could Link fall?!

Below her, the monk attacks. He teleports like a Yiga. Her rips open geysers like a Yiga. The monk has been waiting to fight Link since before the Sheikah-Yaga schism. His moves are a flash, zig-zagging faster than her eyes can follow, before throwing himself at Link with a heavy swipe of his sword. In the blur, he looks almost like Thunderblight Ganon. Link holds his own, dodging and flipping, and rushing in to attack almost as fast as the monk. They push and push and push each other to be faster. It begins to rain as they spin around one another, and when Zelda can finally see Link's face, he's grinning.

The monk gets a good hit on him, and Link goes rolling, and Zelda has her slate out, trying to find a way to help. He's too far, and she's locked in this stupid room.

She spins, searching the walls, looking for a switch to open the windows, for an exit.

There's an access panel. It's blended flush with the wall, but she can tell from the configuration of the constellations that it's there. She pushes against the stars, her hands flying from one to the next to the next until a panel pops open. She ducks her head inside.

A curtain of blue, tube-like wires hangs down in front of her. Their glow draws her eye downward until the wires vanish into the dark several floors below. It's a straight fall to the bottom of the tower.

She has no idea what any of the wires do. Most likely she could open the window if she knew how to tap into them, but she doesn't know how. What she can do is climb down to the next access panel about thirty feet below. There's a glow around the panel's edges, marking it with a square, and she can just make out a climbable mesh in the gloom. She tucks away the slate, twists around, and slips inside.

The blue light is strange enough to make her question her eyesight. The mesh shines bright enough for her to find handholds, but her hands are a black shadow that she can only see as a lack of light reflected off the mesh.

She pops out the next access panel and hauls herself onto the next level, which looks exactly the same as the one above but wider and closer to the battle. She rushes to the window in time to see Urbosa's fury and see the monk teleport away. He reappears floating in the air in a lotus position, regrouping and re-centering himself, and Link rolls his shoulders, shaking out his arms. The monk's hands move in alien ways, fluid until they jerk, bending and twisting.

Then he splits. Again and again until he's duplicated himself into a whole row of monks, stretched out in a line, a phalanx facing Link. They disperse before she can count them, and then they're moving so fast it's beyond hope.

Suddenly, Link's fighting a horde, a swarm. One rushes at him and one teleports, appearing above him to drop into a stab, and Link dodges both and hits the second when his sword lodges in the ground. The monk vanishes in a puff of smoke, and someone's shooting an electric arrow, and someone's sending a geyser, and Link's dodging again before he can celebrate that he got one.

Or at least eliminated it. They're copies, she realizes. Illusions that can injure Link but cannot be hurt themselves. Maybe only one is the real monk, hiding in the crowd, or perhaps none of them are real.

She pulls out the slate, and she's close enough now that she can use the stasis rune. It lasts maybe two seconds on one of the monks, who has an arrow notched, aimed at Link's back, and by the time the monk is free, Link is gone, and the arrow explodes against the ground. Bomb arrows. A moment later, there's an ice arrow and another electric one and another ice one. Link slashes through the monks, one then another, always on the move. The moment the rune recharges, she freezes a monk, any monk. She's not sure that Link has noticed her assistance.

He's whittled down their number to only four when he slices one of the monks across the chest and it staggers back, bending over the wound. Link has already moved on, ducking away from another monk and another sword, before the fact of the matter catches up with him. He twists around and charges back, hacking and slashing against the real monk before the Shiekah gathers himself once again and all the monks teleport away. They reappear in a circle around Link, back up to their full number, and the battle begins again.

Zelda is bouncing too much on her heels, and forces herself to sit cross-legged on the floor, leaning forward, so her forehead is just an inch from the glass window, then jerking back as she pulls the slate up to lock one of the monks in place. The Sheikah move as one now, all lifting into the air in a ring around Link to shoot arrows at him, all lining up to run at him, so their swords slash whap whap whap whap whap. Any time he gets their numbers down, they split again, and even as he seems to keep his eye on the main Sheikah, even though he's able to land solid hit after solid hit, he still has to dodge all the other monks.

It's chaos, but Link finally beats the monk down enough that he and all the duplicates teleport away. He reappears once more in the sky, signaling that his tactics are once again about to change.

He glows as if he's about to warp—not teleport like a Yiga, but warp like the Sheikah tech. Then, with a surge, he grows. And grows. And grows.

He is a giant, floating over the arena, and for a moment, all Zelda can do is stare. Have the monk's powers been lost to time, or are they a well-kept secret of the Sheikah? If the Sheikah still possessed such powers, surely they would have used them. But could they, just like the ancient technology be rediscovered? Could such powers be learned? Because if so, Link could fight the last Lynels in a matter of minutes. Zelda could be her own army of research assistants.

Link shoots a bomb arrow, hitting the monk squarely in the Sheikah eye painted on the cloth across his face, but it has no effect. The monk hovers, and Link waits, his body tensed and poised and ready.

And that's when the familiar sight of a red laser beam lights across the arena. It draws a line straight from the Sheikah's eye to Link's chest, and Zelda can't breathe. She can't feel her face. Darkness creeps in at the corners of her vision, and the power of the Goddess builds in her lungs.

Link's shoulders roll, and he lifts his shield. Waiting. Waiting.

Zelda grips the slate so hard her fingers ache. Locking the Sheikah in place with stasis would do nothing but delay the inevitable. Unleashing the Goddess' Power would forfeit the trial. Or is that the trial? Maybe it's the same as the Calamity so long ago: all she needs to is embrace her protective instincts and they will be victorious. This is her chance to make up for it. To protect him when she couldn't before. For her powers to rise exactly when she needs them.

She's on her feet. She takes a deep breath, absorbing all the love and brilliance and glory of this new world, filling herself with power.

And then she stops, because Link is still holding. Ready. He twists his sword in his hand as if he's ready to use it right after he does whatever he's planning. Which means he has a plan.

The world is tinted gold from the power radiating off her.

Link trusts himself. She can see it in the set of his shoulders, the certainty of his grip.

He's done so much and vanquished so many things, and yet she fears for him more than anything. Her fear has guided her for so long.

Link trusts he can do it. She needs to trust him too.

She needs to hold. She needs to trust. Oh, Goddess, she hopes she needs to trust.

The laser goes off. Link blocks it with his shield. And the beam flies back to explode against the Sheikah's face.

The monk falls to the ground, and Link runs forward, attacking the Sheikah's knee. For a moment, the dazed monk doesn't seem to notice. But then he stands and stomps his foot to throw Link back.

The slate is in her hands, and Zelda glares and locks the monk in place, and Link slashes at his ankles a few times before he runs, putting a fair bit of distance between them. Zelda heaves a breath that hurts coming out. She can see it swirl like stardust in the air before her face, see it fog against the window then dissipate as it eases from her skin, from her lungs, from her muscles.

She closes her eyes. She made the right choice.

When she opens her eyes, the monk is hovering in the air once again, and a circle of spiked spheres burst into being around him. He lifts a hand and throws them, one after another, hurling them against the ground so they bounce and roll. Link sheathes his sword and takes off running.

Through the fog of her fading Goddess powers, she notes that if the monk's actions weren't so horrifying, this would be the most ridiculous thing she has ever seen. The monk is the same mix of terror and absurdity as the Yiga.

The Yiga, who also use large, metallic spheres.

Zelda switches the slate to the magnesis rune. Before he can throw the next sphere, she grabs it. She swings the slate, and the sphere smashes into the monk's shoulder. He crumples but doesn't fall from the sky. As brittle as he looks, he doesn't crumble into dust at the first hit. Or the second. Or the third. She lifts the ball as high as she can and brings it down over his head. Everything is sparking now, the monk's hat and the spheres scattered across the arena and the ball in Zelda's grasp. The way things spark just before lightning strikes. The way it did aboard Naboris. She pushes the sphere hard into the monk's chest, and when the lightning hits, he falls to the ground.

Where Link is waiting.

In his defeat, the monk stands and stumbles back, his arms spread wide. He glows as if to teleport away, as if he might disintegrate like every other monk they've seen. Instead he shrinks back to his original size, and the clouds part to a burst of sunshine.

Zelda's skin tingles as she's warped away, and before she can do more than gasp, she's on the arena floor and running toward Link.

He meets her halfway, sweeping her up into a hug that lifts her feet off the ground and spins her. "Zel! Did you see that? That was the best battle I've had in—a long—long—time." He sets her down towards the end and kisses at her face but doesn't stop talking. "Did you see—when I got two at once?—And when I hit the right one—on the first try?—And you with your magnesis—that was great—I saw those spiked balls—and I thought, 'Oh, Zelda's gonna smack him with that.'"

Then he kisses her so hard, holding her so tight at the waist, that she nearly bends over backwards. They come up panting, but then again they were already panting. She leaves trails of gold across his cheek where she holds it, her power still simmering as it fades. She beams at him, relieved and proud and now worried she might cry, and he can't seem to stop himself from grinning.

"That was awesome. That was so awesome."

"You did well," she agrees.

"We did well. I think we get a boon! Let's go see what we get!" He grabs her hand and pulls her, nearly running, to where the monk waits for them.

The Sheikah's voice, echoing in her mind, now holds a disgruntled lilt. At first she thinks he's mad about how she beat him with a metal sphere. "You faced that challenge with bravery, and you've proven yourselves true heroes." He stumbles slightly over the plural in the last word, and she realizes that he's been planning this speech for eons and they've ruined his plans by working together. "You were destined to take hold of this ancient masterpiece."

Ancient masterpiece?!

She snatches at a dozen, wild guesses as to what that means before the arena trembles and shudders, some structural shift happening in the flying fortress' interior. The floor rises, telescoping upwards into stair steps. Great, sweeping arches fold over their heads. The circle in the very center lowers, and—with a deep, spinning whirr—rises back up again along with a set of obelisks and…a statue.

Of a horse? A deer? It reminds her of Satori Mountain. Of Link's guess at what the Divine Beast would be and Link's stories of the Lord of the Mountain. Of the rearing horse statue in Sanidin Park, where you can see all of Hyrule laid out before you, where the wind caught at her hair and Link stood at her back.

The intricacy of its design is visible under a black casing. Gears and pistons and wheels.

Their lips part in awe, she and Link can't take their eyes off it as it keeps rising over their heads. When it comes to a stop, it's atop a guidance stone.

She can't move. Can't tear her eyes away. When she feels Link shift beside her, she turns her head slowly, mechanically to gape at him. He stares wide eyed and grinning back at her.

He holds out his hand, gesturing her forward. She only then remembers the slate held loose in her grip.

She blinks to shake herself and holds it out for him to take, to walk forward, to press it to the guidance stone and claim his boon.

He rolls his eyes and shoves it back at her.

She huffs and shoves it back at him.

He squirms and twists away and pulls his arms to his chest as if he's not going to take it, even if she throws it at him. Which she might. How can he be so childish after the battle he just fought?

"Fine," she says, throwing her hands in the air. "Together then. Not that it matters, as we share the slate anyway."

"It's the principle of the thing," he says, and slips a hand to the small of her back as they walk forward.

They each have a hand on the slate, each a hand around each other's waists as they set the slate into the guidance stone. It's snatched from their fingers as the pedestal flips it around, making it all the more ludicrous that they fought over who got to hold it. The pedestal lights.

Sheikah slate authenticated. Distilling rune.

"Rune," Zelda breathes.

There's the wooshing sound of something warping, but she can't see what, and a drop of liquid blue falls onto the slate. She has to hold herself back, so she doesn't put her face right up to the slate immediately to see the new rune and get splashed in the eye with the excess data liquid.

Master Cycle Zero.

The rune lets them summon it.

Summon it. And then what?

She looks up at Link to ask, but before she can, they're warping. In the back of her mind, the monk whispers. "May the Goddess smile upon you."

They reappear on the Great Plateau, just outside the Shrine of Resurrection, on the grassy hill overlooking Hyrule—her homeland that was, and that will be again.

She turns and looks to the sky, hurrying backwards, farther from the entrance. She shields her eyes with her hand and searches for the flying fortress. It's either blocked by the mound of the shrine or it's vanished just as magically as it appeared. Or maybe it was all just a vision in the first place.

Link steps up beside her, and she abandons her search. She has much more pressing matters. She lifts the slate and leans into his side so he can see. When she brings up the rune, a white circle of light appears on the ground before her, and she can shift it around by changing the angle of the slate. A bit like cryonis. She trades a curious look with Link, who reaches across her and impatiently presses his finger to the rune.

The statue from before warps in, landing in the white circle. "The rune summons it," she whispers.

Then they're touching it, running their hands over it. She ducks down to see its workings and Link shoves at it a bit to see if it will take his weight. The glow inside of it is pulsing, and she traces the wires with her eyes. It smells of the guardians back at the royal tech lab, of freedom and rebellion. "The saddle suggests that you could ride it. That it's a means of transportation. The horse design is further evidence of that. But it has wheels. A cart? A self-propelled cart?"

Link throws a leg over the beast until he's sitting astride it. It bounces a bit under his weight, and she stands up before he accidently makes it flare to life in her face. He reaches for a pair of handlebars, like the bicycles in Castle Town from Before. "Master Cycle," she says.

"They turn," he says.

"I beg your pardon?"

He twists one of the handlebars and the engine roars to life with an almighty vroom that nearly startles her into dropping the slate. The roar fades into a steady chugging rumble, a thin trickle of smoke escaping from a pipe in the back. She very much wants to investigate it but knows better than to inhale unknown gasses. At least until they get back to the tech lab with Purah around for first aid.

Link twists the handlebar again, and grins at the sheer volume he elicits. His eyes are bright when he looks at her over his shoulder.

"Get on."

"Excuse me?"

"Get on." He reaches back and pats the saddle behind him.

"We should...run some tests..."

He purses his lips and reaches for her, pulling her until he's holding her close with an arm around her waist and looking up at her with a face full of daring and hope.

"Come on an adventure with me."

She sags in resignation, and he grins as she tucks the slate away.

It's not quite like mounting a horse, as it's much lower to the ground. And when she last shared a saddle with Link, she was in front, and this is different as well. As soon as the cycle rolls into motion, she doesn't trust that she can sit upright without holding onto anything as she does on a horse.

But luckily Link is with her. She wraps her arms around him and peeks over his shoulder as they ride down the hill, faster and faster, until the wind whips back her hair and whips back a laugh, and Link lets out a whoop, and she's grinning so hard her face hurts.

#

They warp to Terry Town later in the week, to meet Vah Medoh, pick up their mail, and hand over a large stack of letters of their own.

"This would be easier if you lived on the mail route," Amali says, shooting them a look out of the corner of her eye.

"We're working on it," Zelda says.

"Hmm."

The girls have a great many things to tell Link, mostly dealing with their new game of throwing flammable things out Vah Medoh's windows as they fly over Eldin and how they ate snails for the first time, and they're so weird! Link gives them a recipe for snail meuniere, and they run off to see if they still have ingredients.

Kass dodges around his daughters as he comes down to join Zelda and Link. Life with his family is suiting him. His feathers are brighter, and there's something relaxed in the set of his shoulders that Zelda hadn't realized was absent until this moment. Or maybe that could be because he's finally finished his teacher's song.

"Would you like to hear it?" he asks, but he already has his accordion at the ready.

Zelda threads her fingers through Link's and leans her head on his shoulder as they listen to the cumulation of years of study and artistry. It's sweeping. Heroic. Unlike his other songs, this one doesn't remind her that her friends are dead.

Her friends lived. And they were wonderful.

She beams at him and applauds when he finishes. "That was magnificent. Your teacher would be so proud."

He bows his head in gratitude, his feathers fluffing in embarrassment. Amali smiles and rubs his shoulder.

"Actually," Kass says, "I found this in my teacher's notes." He slips a piece of paper from the side of his accordion and hands it to them.

It's a photograph, made from an image taken with her own slate. It's a picture the Champions took together so long ago, an image captured for all time: Revali and Mipha knocked forward; Link, Urbosa, and Zelda squished too close together; Daruk in the back grinning as he disrupts their perfectly posed image.

Zelda laughs even as her vision blurs with tears. She points at it so Link can see. "Look how hard you're trying not to touch me," she says.

Link makes a disgusted noise at his past self and squeeze her hand tighter.

"Wait," he says, looking up at Kass and narrowing his eyes. "How long have you had this? You've known who we were this whole time. You're the only person I've flat out told, and you knew the whole time."

Kass shifts and refuses to meet his eyes. "I thought you would appreciate some discretion," he mumbles.

Zelda laughs. "Dear Kass, you have surpassed your teacher in so many ways."

His head snaps around to pin her with a bright-eyed stare. His mouth opens to ask everything she knows about the Sheikah poet, but she holds up a hand to stop him.

"No. I'm far too busy. I need to find a picture frame."

#

Dear Robbie,

I hope this letter finds you and your family well.

I'm writing in hopes that I may commission a set of goggles for Link. We've recently discovered a new means of transportation which reaches exceptionally high speeds, and bugs keep hitting him in the eye. I've attached what I believe would be appropriate payment. If you could keep it a secret, I would appreciate it, as I want to surprise him.

I'm now certain that I know how to start building a second Sheikah slate, and I hope to start in the coming weeks. I don't have plans for all the runes, but I'm certain I could recreate the graphical interface, the map function, and the image capture system. Symin believes he can create a decent approximation of the sensor feature, and Purah is certain she could recreate other runes as long as she has access to the guidance stones that distilled the runes in the first place. Therefore, we may be relocating the Hateno tech lab to the Great Plateau in the near future. I have an idea for the perfect spot for a new tech lab on the plateau. Some of the young people in Kakariko are interested in learning about ancient technology, so I may recruit them once we have the facility set up. Yunobo of the Gorons has agreed to help gather the disabled guardians and relocate them, so the new lab could have access to several hundred disabled guardians if only we can get permission for Vah Rudania to travel over people's land. So far this has been an annoying obstacle.

If you would like to be involved in the new lab, you would be most heartily welcomed.

Yours,

Zelda

#

Dear Barta,

Thank you so much for your lovely gift. The fabric is beautiful, and the color works quite well with my complexion. It also fits quite well, which I honestly find both impressive and disconcerting. I know you intended your gift to embarrass me, but I am not at all sorry to tell you that you've failed. Perhaps you should try again. This time in black.

Give Naboris my love.

Yours,

Zelda

#

Dear Yunobo,

I am so pleased to hear of your tremendous progress both in controlling Rudania and in the newly made bridges at the North Mine. You should be so proud of your hard work, and I am proud to call such a dedicated Champion my friend.

Could we visit next week to see the bridges? I'm so excited to see what you've made.

Yours,

Zelda

#

His Royal Highness, King Dorephan of the Zora,

I hope this letter finds you and your people well. I've heard that with the help of Goron smiths, much progress has been made on repairs to the Eastern Reservoir. I am excited to see it returned to its former glory. I hope this partnership was pleasant and fruitful, and a bright beginning for future cultural exchange and collaboration.

To continue this important work of rebuilding, I am putting together a Committee for Hyrulian Reconstruction. My hope is that the committee will have a representative from every city and settlement. That way we may hear the difficulties still to be faced and more efficiently barter our expertise and resources. It would mean so very much to me if you would select a representative and send them to our first meeting at the Wetland Stable at the next new moon.

I hope that we may work toward a brighter future for Hyrule. Together.

All honor and respect,

Zelda of Hyrule