The castle town remained silent as a tomb. Months of cruel Hyrulian snow had battered it, iced it over into a frigid, silent skeleton. Every street was picked clean: not a single soul dared leave their homes that winter morning. Black woolen curtains and wooden shutters barred every window, though Ganondorf knew that eyes stared out of cracks and slits in the drapes. Those with honed-glasses would be squinting through them, doubtlessly. The sun rose over the eastern mountains, bright but cold.

The Tyrant King's fingers crushed around a frozen throat. His breath steamed, and chapped lips split a raw, toothy smile. "One-hundred more years of rule! One hundred more years for my throne!" he boomed, sorcerous voice echoing in every dark corner of his great kingdom. "Your hero of this age is dead!"

The bloody corpse he held aloft could barely considered human: mangled and nearly dismembered. As proof of identity, Ganondorf thrust his right hand into the air, clutching the Master Sword. The holy magics within constantly rejected his touch, fought... but gripped in the grasp of Power its strength was simply not enough to repel him.

The castle town had no answer, but to his satisfaction, Ganondorf could see the few candles in windows flicker out. As he set the body in his clutches alight, he thought: this time, I will make sure that in a hundred years, not one of them even remembers the concept of a 'hero,' or of the Triforce. I will burn every book. I will silence every song. I have killed the princess, ended her line, and now the last Hero is gone. I am all that will remain.

And as he laughed atop his highest tower, he never heard the sound of a bowstring in the bailey. He never saw the golden arrow as it plunged into the back of his neck.

But no one in Castle Town could miss their tyrant of three centuries plummet to the stone below. Before he died, Ganondorf cursed his greatest miscalculation.

He had not even entertained that this latest Princess Zelda, red with fury and so young, could have already left behind a daughter.

–
So an age of despair ended in Hyrule, and an age of peace began.