After confronting my own shadow within the Water Temple, a sinister illness began to rise within me. The Evil King had succeeded in taking a part of me. I no longer had a shadow, not even in the earliest morning light. A piece of me had been robbed, no matter how insignificant it was. A balance had been broken and I was left in a suspended state, unmotivated to continue my quest.

I was left in this world, barely among the living but far from the grave. My despair had me overwhelmed. Food would not satisfy and my thirst could not be quenched. I wandered aimlessly for days, my heart empty. I wanted nothing more than to die. Not only to die but to cease existing entirely. I was tired of the madness my life had become, desperate for freedom of fate’s fabled cruelty. But the will of the Goddesses was strong enough to suppress my own. I could not summon myself to commit the act of ending it all, despite my attempts.

I was possessed by that demon, plagued with nightmares and visions, and above all else, a cursed misery no words could heal. I was both mentally and physically suffering. It was a lethal poison I was inflicted with, and though my pulse would not still, the land of Hyrule continued to wither under Ganon’s control, absent of its Hero.

It wasn’t long before I stopped fighting for myself. This darkness consumed me until I no longer cared. Time blurred as more and more of me was surrendered. Closing my eyes I found only nightmares. And opening them I found that these phantom horrors still lingered, haunting me.

Oh this madness I had succumbed to. This infection seeked to destroy me and it worked rapidly, breaking my senses and self control.

I remember very little of the first few weeks, if indeed they were merely weeks. Perhaps that was the worst of it. I wandered the southwest lands, sleeping none and drinking little. I begged the pain to cease.

This was until my world went black, tunneling in on me to become nothing but an abyss.

I drifted through vapors of my past, revisiting my short-lived childhood for brief moments at a time. There was laughter in these memories. There was Saria, her smile more beautiful to me now than I could have ever appreciated as a child. But these dreams were so fevered and my mind so horribly distorted that I found her eyes were missing, black voids set in her porcelain face. Soon her laugh became shrill and unworldly.

I had finally gone mad.