Over and Over || Link x Reader

//First Depth//

It was cold.

The familiarity of the daunting nothingness that plagued your every step. You walked, and walked, but there was nothing.

Time and time again, it lead to this. Your expression dull, as if there wasn't anything at all stoping you from taking your next step. And the next. Then the next.

Of course there wasn't.

The emptiness that surrounded you, deep with inky blackness. Even now, you couldn't figure it out, just that the only thing you could do was walk onwards. At this point, it's all you cared to even try. At first, it drove you crazy; there was no beginning, no end... just you and your own thoughts. Not even that, it wasn't something you could explain, but you weren't exactly thinking. No self motion within your body, just the mindless, continuous trekking to nowhere.

How long had it been? Who was counting? The number of times you met your end, you just seemed to lose track after a while.

Forty? No
One hundred? Ah, close enough.

Still, even without thought, there was still a mindless sense of acknowledgment.

A phantom hourglass, a minish cap, a link to the past, an awakening, an oracle of seasons, ages... You'd seen it all. Even before all that, time never stopped. Again and again you came back, even after you'd given your life. Why? Still, you had no answer to that. It seemed an endless mystery, and a waste to fret over. That's what you had concluded. Countless lives, adventures... yet all with similar objectives.

With him, the Hero of Hyrule.

To live, to fight, to love... to die. It all blended together now, like a flurry of colors all mixing to make a bleak combination. Of course, that's not how you felt. Well, not entirely. You couldn't tell if your efforts were paying off, or if this whole recycled lifespan was worth it anymore. You'd tried, even, to set apart from the reason you'd been brought back.

Not leaving a certain town, traveling far from any civilization, living long enough to end it early... each and every time, something or someone pushed you out of the rejection.

Futile.
Worthless.
No choice.

It was mundane to you. You wanted a change. With every new start, you hoped and pleaded for a something new to add some type of element to your travels. You'd begged, prayed to the Goddess, and nothing...

Back to where you started, with nothing other than to reminisce.

With no rhyme or reason that you were aware of, for countless times over and over again, you were forced to live long enough to meet a certain green-clad boy. Assist him on his adventures, make bonds, friends... just for a challenge to arise that couldn't be beat alone, and require your initial sacrifice. He tried for a different way, you begged for another outcome, but in the end, it didn't matter. Each time, your personal puppeteer strings you along to meet and fall in love with with the same boy, and yet, just when it seems like the time changed for the better, it falls apart like wet paper.

As if on cue, a slight feeling of knowingness washed over you, pressuring your body to stop. Snapping to attention, you looked down towards your feet. Just past them into the never ending abyss below you, it lightened up, revealing a small woodland town, filled with laughter and music. Children.

That was the setting of where you were to start your time. It was reminiscent of other forests in past lives, though as your memory of specifics faded while you wandered this nothingness, the name escaped you.

Facing forwards, you saw a tall-standing podium, or a statue of sorts. Taking ginger steps towards it, you later could see the strange writings across it's stone tablets, angel-like wings spread out from each side. One circular piece of stone was held out to you by the statue's hands, a type of imprint embedded in the element's surface. It was in the shape of a hand.

Eyes trailing upwards, you practically store into the shaded eyes of the cloaked being, void of expression other than a small downward curve in it's carved lips. Not necessarily a frown, just a look of forever given stoicism. In the middle of the stone being's forehead, leading down the bridge of it's nose, between where it's eyes would be, there was a symbol. An open eye, spanning wide across the whole forehead, leaking marks of droplets painted down to the nonexistent eyes, and some to match atop the symbol.

Again, the specifics evaded you. But the thing that allowed you to be able to tell this was a creation of the Goddesses, were the red, blue and green triangles located in different placed throughout it's body.

The blue in the center of the etched eye on it's forehead, to signal wisdom. Red on the underside of the statues tilted right hand, to show power. And green, in the center of the formation's chest, to represent courage.

"Please, once again, young one. Place your hand atop the pedestal and receive your place within the newly forged realm."

No one was talking to you. There was no voice that belonged to those words, they simply just came to reason within your being. The speech had been repeated to you a hundred times over, only the first through the seventh ever being a literal voice. Though it wasn't recognizable, as it was someone new every time... it just seemingly stopped. Even now, there is no one behind those cursed words other than your own self consciousness.

Sucking in a breath, your thoughts had stalled you long enough, as you lifted your hand and placed it over the well-fitted palm engraved in stone. Almost as if you'd created the imprint yourself.

There was a faint glow emanating from the tablet, which coined you to remove your hand, allowing the stone to rotate a full circle before sinking inwards, then flipping over. On the other side of it, was yet another etched symbol.

An ocarina.