Third-Person – Split POV: Zelda / Purah – Tone: Subtle, elegant, tightly wound tension, undercurrents of obsession
---
Zelda sat at the round table inside Lookout Landing's central tower, teacup untouched, steam curling upward like rising doubt.
She smiled.
It was the kind of smile a queen wears — warm, practiced, and hard as diamond beneath the gold.
Across from her, Purah scribbled notes into a leather-bound journal, humming faintly. Her glasses glinted in the candlelight, reflecting numbers, diagrams, and a thousand calculations.
Neither of them had spoken his name.
But the silence dripped with him.
---
"I heard he's in Zora's Domain now," Zelda said gently, tracing her finger along the rim of her cup. "Resting. Surrounded."
Purah didn't look up. "Riju's report said the same. She's… fond of him, I think."
Zelda's smile didn't waver.
She placed her hand on the table, delicate, regal.
"But it's strange, isn't it? How quickly they all seem to trust him."
Purah's pencil stopped.
She looked up, eyes sharp behind the glass.
"He's saved lives in every region he's passed. Fought monsters with no hesitation. That kind of competence earns trust fast."
Zelda nodded. "Oh, I agree. It's not his actions I question."
A pause.
Then: "It's what draws everyone so strongly to him."
---
Purah leaned back in her chair, tapping her pencil against her lips.
"You mean like how you follow his location through two Sheikah Towers, a Hylian scout report, and a magical tracking crystal?"
Zelda's smile thinned.
"I have a duty to monitor potential threats. Or assets."
Purah smirked. "He's more than an asset to you."
Zelda's voice didn't rise. It never did anymore.
She simply replied:
"And what is he to you, Purah?"
---
For a moment, silence.
Then the older woman — though she looked twenty — stood slowly and walked to the window. Outside, Lookout Landing bustled with motion. Knights. Inventors. Curious onlookers.
But neither of them noticed.
Their world had narrowed to him.
"He's not a puzzle I can solve," Purah said softly. "He's something beyond that. Beyond prophecy. Beyond data."
She turned slightly.
"I've never felt that before. I hate not understanding it."
Zelda rose to join her.
Their reflections appeared side by side in the window's warped glass.
"I understand it," Zelda said.
And that was the first true threat between them.
---
Zelda stepped closer, only a breath away from Purah.
"He spoke to me in the Temple. When the light broke. He didn't just arrive in this world. He was given to it. Chosen by something older than even Hylia's will."
Purah's jaw clenched. "Then why wasn't he in any of the records? No mention in the Zonai tablets. No echo in the goddess murals."
"Because he's the part the cycle erased."
Zelda's eyes glowed faintly. Divine memory flickered behind them — something ancient and terrified.
"He's not the hero. He's the reset button. The one you're not supposed to remember."
---
Purah folded her arms. "You think that means you own him?"
Zelda turned.
"No. But I will never let him be taken again."
---
They stared at each other, centuries of knowledge and power burning silently between them.
Neither raised their voice.
Neither showed their claws.
But from this moment forward, something shifted.
They were no longer allies.
Not when it came to him.
---
Outside, the wind stirred the banners of Hyrule.
And in the shadows of the tower, a faint whisper — unnoticed — echoed from the Tear of Balance, miles away:
> They all want you.
But who will keep you?