This is more or less the... origins story for any fics I write in the Zelda verse, Interwoven excluded. It's been betaed and brainstormed over with MyouTakara, the author of some infamous fourswords stuff over on Adult Fanfiction...

This story does include a male sheikah. But considering the usual crowd I draw, that won't be much of a big deal, I think. The OC is his shadow caster - so more or less on par with any talking Dark Links. Myuuuun. I hope you enjoy.

Gods, religion and weirdness appear, as per norm.

Chapter 1: The Traitor Returns Alive

If only he had known the end coming, perhaps time could have been turned back… Alas, that was not how humans would have this tale be woven. And so a thief went on a hopeless journey to find his way home…

The warrior returns alive, but only to the darkness and peace of the temple, and so he knew it must have been that his masters had failed…

The bracelet gleamed so prettily as it fell back into Hylia's hands. There were tears and sorrow in the court below, but there was also joy. He couldn't reach out and grasp it – it wasn't his to obtain.

He perched in the darkness, gazing down at blurred nothing. In the end he supposed he had always known, wrapped up though he had been in carrying food, offering drink. But the guardian would only fast in waiting for her hero, the fair goddess Hylia. The goddess his masters were trying to undermine. The enemy… 'his' enemy. It hadn't at all felt personal until memory had taken her. Taking his beloved Impa away…

Down below the dark and suffering, hylians basked in elation and waiting, oblivious, for the hero's return. The doors creaked as they opened to admit the sun and shimmering light danced over the floor, followed by a long shadow.

Link was black against the day, a svartlfar – he liked him better like that, almost. Light was strange lacking shadow. Form without substance… a two-dimensional being.

The doors creaked, banged shut and settled in the stone again. The young hero looked up and, for a strange and numb moment, he could swear Link could see him in the gloom of despair.

Hylia – Zelda – grinned ear to ear, running to meet her Hero, and the illusion was shattered. There was nothing to see in those rafters but old ghosts.

He stayed in the dark, and stared at where the other ghost had lain. So long that even the bones were gone… or was it because dying without leaving a corpse was their way? He could never be sure, now…

The evil was purged, the swords banished or returned, and the goddess, awakened. Her hero had arrived.

All that was left was for him to fade into darkness…

When his steps fled the temple, only the stones bore them witness.

The traitor returned alive…

Through a desert and over a sea, the traitor-prince trekked to return to his lands. Blood crusted on old wounds and made his skin rough, while the sun baked his body and sand and wind tried to rend him in twain. His eyes were hot and a misery before the journey – his heart ached with want for someone who was no longer there. So he walked.

And eventually, came upon the hills of his old home, and looked down on the people. Tan-skinned and red-eyed with sharp ears and warm smiles, though he would never more have one of those directed at him. And as he came down into the village, whispers carried on the wind, with the glares of the rightfully mistrustful; the traitor returns alive… hissed on spiteful tongue, callous hearts turned on his memory, for their prince was no dearly-departed. Rather more… infamous as cowardly and cruel, traits which he would not contest. There would have been more honor in dying than accepting another god's dominion, and he had disgraced his people by living on.

His body began to tremble as he approached the temple.

The graves were as he imagined them… pretty little altars on the ends of thick slabs, untarnished. Blood and death had never touched these tables. Their parents hadn't had bodies left… he wondered if he would complete the set some day.

He laid down the cloak she'd worn atop their mother's grave, and fell to his knees. The crying of a lost child filled up the chamber of alms.

"Impa." The gem of royalty, the perfect daughter who dressed in humble holy colors and went to serve as a priestess in the gone-guardian's name. Hylia would return. She had promised to return, and the sheikah preserved the world at Her command – for Her love, and for Her Hylians. Impa had asked mother to read all of the stories. She smiled and stroked the faces of the statues, and washed their wings with a delicate hand. She would grow tall, as if all her reaching for the heavens and those far-off islands in the clouds (oh, they could see them on sunny days, to be sure) had stretched her so she could reach even higher.

She had read to them, often, by the lamplight – holy songs and scripture. Her beloved little brothers clutched at her legs, looking up with eyes that burned with the flames of destruction, and the lights of stars.

She went away to study in Lanayru when they were very young. While she was gone, her family died, and their home was scarred with memories inked in blood.

Their graves were overgrown with no one to mourn them.

"Talib." A seeker of truth. The ideal of its guard, the perfect little prince in a cradle. The next Sheik. Strangled lifeless by an agent of Demise, the feral Prince, the coming Destruction of everything She had touched and made good.

"Noor." A light. A moon, and something that could not be lived without… the other half of the prince, the pale-silver reflection. A light extinguished with his source drowned in the abyss of demise.

It was a dark time for the kingdom.

What was worse, perhaps, was the pair of traitors that appeared in the wake of the destruction, a few short years after. A man with a face painted as the foxes did, who called himself Sheik. And his grinning white shadow, the counterpart 'Light'. "Your beloved Azazel Goats."

Maybe it was surprising, but before the arrival of Demise, they had had a happy family.

The king and queen had wanted more children, and Sheik had brought the surprise of another. The temple priests called him a 'shadow caster' – a rare thing to have appear after the birth of a child. All sheikah had shadow casters – reflections of their hearts and dreams – but rarely would these distill into humans, and even more rarely would they appear in the surface realm…

There was a prophecy of course – that the child born with his light would bring about destruction; the slaughter of his family, the hatred of his people, and the blood of a hero painted on his cheeks. A traitor to Hylia, and a traitor to what her guards stood for. A thief and a cutthroat and a slave to his own rebellion.. he would hold his blade against the goddess, and be a Champion for all the evils of the world until a hero rose and struck him down. This wasn't set in stone – the prophecy could be averted… with the death of their helpless, squalling baby, and his helpless, squalling light.

The child laid on the altar for alms that night, innocent and helpless, smiling at the moon. It was a clear night, and the islands drifting miles above looked peaceful, and often the child would reach a chubby hand for them and try to touch. His reflection was curled against his side, asleep, and eyes shut peacefully. They lay there on a blanket to cover the cold stone, laid over the blood of those who came before, and left nothing but stains to remind that they'd ever been, as if to shield the truth of death to the children. Looking on them… thinking that they could have to bleed and die, unnaturally, cruelly, to preserve this fragile peace…. What was the point of peace where healthy children died to keep it? What was the point to this? Any child could be born with a caster – this, the priests had admitted to with tired, frustrated eyes. It wasn't an omen – it was a natural occurrence! Something that could happen to anyone, hardly a sign of things to come. And even if it was… well, surely, surely, that fate could be averted, right?

The goddess preached of warmth and kindness in a fair world. Of trust. Love. Their parents, full of all of these and more, had decided that surely it could mean anyone… and surely Talib would do no harm if he was brought up with a loving hand and a dedicated life…

So a goat was killed in his place, to honor Her, to ask for Her guidance, and love, and aid. And for the caster, the brother, a little Azazel goat turned out into the desert. And the priests had to concede, for the queen was queen and the king was king.

Their older sister wanted to be a priestess. She was too unruly, too fast and too frenzied and wild for palace life, so she was turned out to the temples as she wished. Her brothers were softer and milder… her brother of blood would be the next Sheik, and her brother of bond his guard, his friend, his other half. Surely this was written in the stars… it was all too perfect.

All too, naively, perfect.

He was in the temple again today. The moonlight painted it black and grey, corpselike, while the wail of wind rattling trees carried through it. The discord of day drained away like life from his feet when he sunk to the ground, home again, unfulfilled, hurting… and lying to himself, for what home had a vagrant to return to?

"I am a thief," He told himself in the gentle arms of the darkness, and shut his red-turned-black eyes to the world. Sheik dreamed of crows, and singing, and suffering. He did not dream of Impa. He did not even dream of the chapters of his life spent toiling under the king of wickedness and torment. And he did not wake when Light came into the temple, glowing like a lantern, and came to lay with him, and he did not wake to his own tears…

The goddess's song sung in high tones. The stone walls of a castle where he'd never stood, and the smile of a hero that would one day bring deliverance. This was what the villain dreamed of when he laid still that night.

TBC