During her encounter with the unsealed Demon King
Ganondorf,
Princess Zelda is
teleported in time to an era of Hyrule's founding via the power of a secret stone. She is found by her ancestors,
King Rauru and
Queen Sonia, who help her search for a means of returning to the present. Throughout this time, Zelda aids Rauru's royal duties, trains her inherent light and time powers with Sonia, and explores the Depths beneath Hyrule with
Mineru. On one such expedition, Mineru unearths a series of inactive Forbidden Constructs, self-aware humanoid weapons that, as she later deduces, had rebelled against and exterminated most of the
Zonai race. Ganondorf leads the
Gerudo people to attack
Hyrule Castle, which is thwarted by Rauru and his forces. Falsely conceding to Rauru, Ganondorf betrays his subordinate Ardi, a sympathizer of Hyrule's people, and frames her for the attack; she is rescued by the
Korok wanderer Calamo and his companion, a benign Forbidden Construct that Calamo had accidentally activated while exploring the Depths. Under Rauru's surveillance, Ganondorf sends a phantom doppelganger of Zelda to activate a second Forbidden Construct, which absorbs the phantom and destroys its fellow constructs. Ganondorf allows the rampaging construct to distract Rauru while he kills Sonia and takes her secret stone, transforming into the Demon King. He then seizes Hyrule Castle and conjures an army of monsters across Hyrule, including four archfiends serving as their commanders; one of the archfiends, Grimgera, is repelled by Calamo's construct, allowing the safe retreat of Rauru's group. Rauru's forces rally the leaders of Hyrule's allied tribes against Ganondorf: Raphica, the
Rito elder; Qia, the
Zora queen; Agraston, the
Goron chief; and Ardi, who replaces Ganondorf as the Gerudo's leader. The leaders are aided by Calamo's construct, which instinctively travels the land to battle Ganondorf's monsters and the other Forbidden Construct. Upon meeting the benign construct, Zelda recognizes its power source as a shard of the broken
Master Sword that had been sent back in time with her; noting the construct's resemblance to
Link, she names it the Knight Construct. Rauru inducts the Knight Construct and Calamo into Hyrule's army, and entrusts the tribe leaders with secret stones, appointing the four, Zelda, and Mineru as sages to turn the tide of the war. After defeating the archfiends and witnessing the Forbidden Construct's devastation of Korok Forest, Rauru and the sages lead a full-scale attack against Ganondorf at Hyrule Castle. Failing to defeat him, they make a tactical retreat to lure him into the Depths at
Hyrule Field, where Rauru sacrifices his life to seal Ganondorf away. Meanwhile, the Knight Construct and Calamo help distract Ganondorf's army on the surface. The Knight Construct successfully destroys the Forbidden Construct, but ultimately overexerts itself and dies in front of Calamo, who is moved to take root as a tree beside his friend's remains to create a new forest. Zelda's
lady-in-waiting Lenalia designs murals chronicling the war to ensure Ganondorf's defeat in the future; at Mineru's request, however, she reluctantly omits the Knight Construct and Calamo and destroys all records of their existence to prevent the former's technology from being misused, leaving a single piece of its body beside Calamo's tree form as a memorial. In a
post-credits scene, long after Zelda transforms into the immortal Light Dragon to wait through history, the tree is shown to have grown extremely large with the construct piece embedded in its trunk. == Development ==