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eep in the Gerudo Desert, the sorceress twins Koume and Kotake had been formulating an occult spell. For the past several decades, they had researched the black arts which Ganondorf himself had learned from them, pouring their attention over ancient scrolls, long since faded. The preparation of their brew lasted for years upon years, oftentimes waiting for a particular celestial event to occur before proceeding onward. This did not halt nor deter the Gerudo witches, however, so dedicated they were to the task. Destiny had failed to smile upon them once, but they firmly believed that it would not happen a second time.

At long last, upon the eve of the equinox, some three hundred years after the death of King Link, the first Hero of Time, the casting of the final spell was at hand. The sisters gathered into the central chamber of the Spirit Temple, each of them sitting cross-legged upon one of the sand goddess' outreached hands. Beneath them upon the ground stood a cauldron with a violet colored mixture, refusing to boil despite the wood-fueled fire sitting beneath it. The sorceress sisters spread their arms to the side, sapphire and ruby magic appearing from their hands as they chanted an ominous incantation.

Heat without fire and chill without ice
The scorned plague of old shall be their new vice
The hopes of many shall soon become naught
For the razing of homes will come of this draught
Blood shall be spent, repaid to the drop
Beauty again found in making hearts stop
The verdict of the past the Fates will retract
An alliance with evil will be its new pact
So let the next days be filled with sorrow
Let Ganondorf come, The Bringer of Woe

During the chant, the liquid within the cauldron began finally to boil and foam, the gaseous mix steaming over the lip of the blackened basin onto the stone floor below. The purple haze drifted gradually upward and outward, enveloping the floor below with a gloomy mist as if were a plague devouring the land. The dim lighting in the room dropped and faded to blackness, yet the witches and the cauldron's smoke remained visible as if nonexistent beacons of light were shining down upon them from the heavens. From the center of the swirling clouds rose a silhouette of a man, a man who had not seen the face of Hyrule for many years. That man was Ganondorf Dragmire himself.

The lighting was soon restored, and Ganondorf stood in the place where the cauldron, now disappeared, once was. His eyes open dramatically, and his lungs once again were filled with the air of Hyrule. A large grin swept across his face, and a cackle shot out, only to be replaced by a cacophony of maniacal laughter. "The Triforce of Power beckons," he then said. "Come, Twinrova. We have work to do..."

Recalling his old power wasn't as difficult as Ganondorf had thought it might. However, to be sure, he decided to wait before attempting to storm of Hyrule Castle, accumulating his power for a full onslaught to continue the age-old war. With the sorceress sisters in tow, he traveled across the sands to the Gerudo outpost, now abandoned from the Gerudo's integration into the Hylian lifestyle. Upon his arrival, Ganondorf frowned upon this twist of events, finding himself enraged at the Gerudos for betraying their way of life and more importantly him. There was now no one left for him here aside from his surrogate mothers and his expendable armada of monsters. The King of Evil decided then and there that this war would be different; it would be a war without quarter, a war that would be fought to the last man.

The next morning, the day of the equinox, Ganondorf assembled with his monsters outside Hyrule Castle. The Hylians, completely unaware of the breaking of the Sages' seal upon Ganondorf, were unprepared to meet his army as they came marching through the entrance to the gate. The monsters swarmed the streets, alleys, and square of the town, killing guards and knights, but also killing workers, women, small children. Anyone that they found soon realized themselves run through with a spear or sliced open with a sword. The alleys soon ran red with the blood of Ganondorf's enemies. Without a force sufficient enough to stop the never-ending forces Ganondorf could summon and muster, he forged onward to the castle itself. The guards did their best, but the skirmish between the two forces could be called a slaughter only in the best light.

However, this was not the only prong of his attack. Ganondorf, through the watchfulness of his mothers, had learned of Impa's secret plot to protect the sword that had stung him so long ago. With that in mind, he had divided his forces to be sent in all directions to uncover the two new Sages that Impa had appointed. Moblins, iron knuckles, and lizalfos spread through the territory with haste as if death itself were biting at their ankles, so important their mission had been stressed by their leader. One of the forces encountered a temple to the south, and within it they found a small boy by the name of Fado, a Kokiri and the Sage of Wind; to the north of Hyrule, they encountered in a mountain cavern a Zora femme by the name of Laruto, the Sage of Earth. Both were met with undying vengeance when they were found, and both ended up with their blood spilled, only their spirits remaining. With that, the magical protections of the Master Sword were now gone.

Inside the castle, Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule, the King of Hyrule and often called the King of Red Lions from his family crest, held a vigil within the grand hall of the castle. Initially, those present had hoped for the return of the Hero of Time, one of the descendants of Link himself. However, it soon became apparent that the Hero would not show and that their time to live grew less and less by the moment. Blockaded in the castle through the strongest magic the King could afford, the servants, attendants, cooks, nobles, and the royal family themselves prayed in unison to the goddesses, hoping to be spared from the terrible fate with which Ganondorf would strike upon them. Their prayers were desperate and impassioned, full of fear and panic, together the recited texts from the ancient books, hoping to have their plea heard by the goddesses.

Somehow, their plea managed to escape the plane of Hyrule and find its way into a distant dimension, whereupon the goddesses Din, Nayru, and Farore perceived it. The three sisters looked at each other, each of whom's eyes were conflicted between helping to restore balance to the world of Hyrule and obeying the unwritten and unspoken yet agreed upon rule to remain distant and impassioned to those worlds they long ago created. It was perhaps Farore who first closed her eyes and nodded. Hyrule meant Balance, and if this world, one of the most precious of their creations, could not be kept in order from the protective devices they had set into place, they should make this one exception. Nayru, upon seeing her sister's opinion agreed silently, and then Din soon followed suit. They left this world, in mid-creation, for later, rushing back into the realm of Hyrule so long ago created.

The trio entered Hyrule with such an amazed yet disturbed expression upon their faces. How had Hyrule come to this, the balance provided by the goddesses so strained and tortured from the fragmentation of the Triforce? The constant pleas echoing from Hyrule Castle reverberated in the ears of the goddesses, and Din cast a frown below towards Ganondorf. Destroying him was not an option, for then her power would supercede that of Farore's, causing ruin to the world of Hyrule. Instead, she looked to her sisters with imploring eyes. The sisters understood her plight, but it was Nayru who formed an alternative plan, a plan whose message was carried instantly by her smile to the others. Restoring balance would require all three of them to work in unison.

Time froze in the infinite fraction of time between thoughts. The sisters descended to Hyrule's surface and, together, enveloped Hyrule within a protective shield using the trinity of their magics, a shield that was only penetrated by the peaks and upper plateaus of the mountains. They would seal away Hyrule as it was known to the peoples of Hyrule and reshape the land to create a new balance. However, they knew the sealing of Hyrule played into Ganondorf's hand and desires, and so the real work was yet to come.

Din flew to the dome-like shield reigning high in the skies over the kingdom and pierced through it; once above the invisible barrier, she created tides and currents with water, deep water, water that overcame the highest point of the shield and then some, creating a terrarium below and mere specks of land for islands above. That would be the new ground for the civilization, she decided, a civilization for her sisters to create.

Farore used her magic upon the living entities of the land and gracefully floated up through them to the tops of the lands, moving the people of Hyrule to the mountaintops of the old world from a world that was no longer safe for them. She clustered them into small cities upon the isles, naming the islands clever little names to fit her whimsical side. All were transferred above save for Ganondorf's army, an army that would rest below the waters of the world frozen in time. The Hyrulians would be a slave to the waters above, yet with practice they could learn to master it, locking Din's and Farore's powers in balance once again.

Lastly, Nayru knew that such a change in events would bring a panic to the denizens of the realm. Using her magic, she clouded the history within their minds, reshaping their memories delicately, making the new world an integral part of their lives and their memories while making recent history a mere legend of centuries past in their mind. In addition, Nayru's order would raise up the infrastructure of cities and buildings for the people to inhabit to further reinforce the changed history in the minds of the land's inhabitants. Nayru's order would still be subservient to Din's chaotic power and the same vice versa, and while Farore's creatures would be forced to abide by Nayru's will, Farore's creatures would have the power to surpass this and perhaps return to Hyrule one day. The three powers were locked in order once more.

There was still the issue of Ganondorf, however, the source of all the trouble in Hyrule. He could not be left free to roam throughout Hyrule, yet he could not be left to roam the new world as well or history would repeat itself. Because of this, the goddesses decided to move him into the new world and strand him upon the most isolated isle there, the Forbidden Isle. Furthermore, his magic and his presence would be sealed and restricted to that island alone, just as the Sages had done a long time ago by sealing him in the Evil Realm. Ganondorf would not be free to roam the world, and as such would be kept in check, a further balancing between Din, Nayru, and Farore.

The goddesses knew that it was not a perfect plan, for mortals were never perfect and would never be able to maintain such a blessed yet fragile balance. Because of this, they set into motion a plan to check Ganondorf further just in case their own plans for him were foiled. They left the King a promise, the promise that had been decreed by Queen Zelda's prophecy. They took the Triforce of Courage and scattered it across Hyrule at the bottom of the sea, and with the Triforce of Wisdom, they gave one piece to the King and the other to his daughter, removing both pieces further from Ganondorf's grasp. They locked the King's spirit within a boat upon the waters above while his body remained behind in Hyrule below, still frozen in time. Courage and Wisdom would eventually reunite, and the King, now locked within the magical wooden framework of a boat, received the promise that he would eventually find the hope to save Hyrule in his travels.

With that, the goddesses flew back to the skies, re-enabling the flow of time throughout Hyrule. But before leaving, Farore held back to look at the recreated world of Hyrule. She bestowed one final blessing upon the world, but it was directed to a particular isle in the southwest of the ocean, Outset Isle as she had named it. For there, she knew, would come one piece of the prophecy, the part of the prophecy that would resemble her best, and her blessing would go to the part that would be carried in the heart of one boy...