Secrets of Skyward Sword: The Silent Realm

Welcome to my second entry in the Secrets of Skyward Sword series. In these articles we’ll be taking a look some of the concepts of Skyward Sword that give us insight into longstanding mysteries in the Zelda series. In the first entry, The Presence of Evil, we uncovered the truth behind the ever-returning darkness and evil that has threatened Hyrule throughout the ages. This time, we’ll be examining Skyward Sword’s mysterious Silent Realm, and what implications it might have on the series.

Now remember folks, articles like these contain SPOILERS, so if you ignore this warning and “spoil” the game by reading it, don’t complain to me like several did last time. You have been warned, and if you choose to ignore that warning, it’s your own fault. Read on to uncover more of the secrets of Hyrule’s lore. If you dare.

Skyward Sword introduced us for the first time to a new world called the Silent Realm. This spiritual realm plays a key role in the game, as Link needs to enter it on four occasions to undergo tests set up by the goddess Hyila in order to continue on his quest of destiny. Accessed by through portals, it is only accessible with the combination of both sacred songs and the Goddess Sword, or Master Sword.

Prior to the game’s release, there was much speculation over just what the Silent Realm was. While we can’t say for certain even now, I believe there are some key clues in Skyward Sword that reveal the true nature of the Silent Realm.

Though the game makes little note of this fact, the most important role that the Silent Realm serves is not the four trials Link has to conquer, but the fact that it houses the Triforce. The fourth and final trial helps Link uncover the Sky Keep, which is said to be the home of the Triforce, but that’s not entirely true.

Inside the Sky Keep, Link has to solve a number of puzzles, and at the end of these puzzles he finds the crests of Din, Nayru, and Farore, the gods of the Triforce, on the floor. Rather than physically obtaining the Triforce in the Sky Keep, Link uses these crests, just as he did the Silent Realm trial portals, by plunging his Master Sword into them and being transported to another dimension. Though Fi does not make note of your location as she does in the Silent Realm, the aesthetics are identical. There’s no doubt that the Triforce pieces actually lie in the paralleled Silent Realm, rather than in the Sky Keep proper.

This scenario immediately brought to mind another well-known Zelda realm for me. Though we know all the old stories of Zelda have become corrupted over time, as Phi reminds us that oral tradition is unreliable, we can still get a pretty good idea of the origin story of the Triforce from Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past. Both of these stories cite the original resting place of the Triforce as being none other than the Sacred Realm.

Consider the parallels. A Link to the Past shows us that the Sacred Realm exists as parallel dimension to Hyrule, with its terrain roughly matching that of Hyrule in a mirrored form. In Ocarina of Time the only way to gain entrance to the Sacred Realm is with a magical song and the Master Sword. Both games employ the use of blue portals to connect Hyrule to the Sacred Realm. These are the exact same conditions we see of the Silent Realm in Skyward Sword. A parallel dimension to Hyrule which can only be accessed through the power of the Master Sword and a portal activated by a divine song.

This isn’t all the tales of A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time have to say though. Interestingly enough, when depicting the Sacred Realm, the old stories of A Link to the Past display it as a land of floating islands high above the clouds.

There’s no denying the striking resemblance between the oldest artwork we have of the Sacred Realm and the land of Skyloft we’ve come to know today. While Ocarina of Time’s account isn’t quite as shocking, it too depicts the Triforce’s original resting place as being up in the sky. This has led some in the past to theorize that the portals to the Sacred Realm aren’t actually dimensional portals, but rather that the Sacred Realm is literally floating in the sky, and these portals teleport Link skyward. I believe there’s a more plausible answer.

A Link to the Past shows us that events that occur in one dimension can affect the other. For instance, one of the dungeons remains inaccessible in one dimension until water is drained in another, causing it to be drained in both. This could only be true of a parallel and connected pair of dimensions.

Given what we know of the way dimensions affect each other, as well as what we know of early Hylian history, it’s likely that the Triforce originally rested in the Silent Realm’s parallel of the temple we now know as the Sky Keep. In its original placement, the Sky Keep was just outside of the Sealed Temple, or Temple of Hylia, which made it far too vulnerable to the forces of Demise. Continuing with the premise that the Silent and Sacred Realms are one, when Hylia raised the area up out of the surface world and up into the clouds, it would have affected the Silent Realm too.

The only humans who survived the war with Demise were the humans taken up into the sky on the floating rocks, and therefore the only existing accounts about the original resting place of the Triforce would be that it was contained in a realm made up of rocks floating high above the sky. This would perfectly explain why A Link to the Past’s artwork displays the Sacred Realm as floating islands, while the game itself does not. The artwork would have come from ancient accounts in which the resting place of the Triforce and Skyloft were synonymous. And while the memory of Skyloft would fade over time, the concept of the resting place of the Triforce being high in the sky would remain to the days of Ocarina of Time.

In Skyward Sword’s ending, the statue of Hylia, which houses the Triforce, descends back to the surface world just outside of the Sealed Temple. If we can assume that the the Triforce was returned to safekeeping inside of the Silent/Sacred Realm, then it would likely remain undisturbed until Ocarina of Time. This means that the location of the statue of Hylia has to be close to the Temple of Time we see in Ocarina of Time, as the Triforce lies parallel to the Temple of Time in Ocarina of Time.

The Temple of Time we see in Skyward Sword is highly unlikely to be the same temple we’ve seen in other areas. Both its location and purpose are different. Just as there have been multiple Forest, Fire, and Water Temples, we can conclude that the Temple of Time is also a title that has been used multiple times. Given that its name derives from the fact that it contains a Time Gate, it’s pretty logical that the only other building to contain a Time Gate could become known as the Temple of Time as well.

From the Temple of Hylia to the Sealed Temple, we’ve seen the building just outside the Sealed Grounds change names to fit its purpose. At one point it was just built to honor Hyila, but at another it served as the area from which the Seal of Demise was maintained. Could its name once again change, this time to the Temple of Time, when its purpose once again changed?

Given its location in the forest, similar aesthetics, and the fact that it houses the Master Sword and a time travelling portal, I find it extremely likely that the Sealed Temple becomes the Temple of Time we know from other Zelda titles. If the Sealed Temple is the Temple of Time, and the Silent Realm is the Sacred Realm, then it makes perfect sense that the Temple of Time leads straight to the Triforce, because the Triforce would be resting in the Silent Realm just outside the Sealed Temple.

One last interesting detail is the fact that, although Demise threatens his return in a way that heavily implies his spirit and the Demon King spirit that resides in Ganon are one and the same, the remains of Demise are sealed away in side the Master Sword in the game’s ending. How then could his hatred and power take over Ganon?

If you recall the end of Four Swords Adventures, Ganon, much like Demise, is sealed inside a Sacred Sword. However, in order to complete the Seal, the sword has to be plunged into its pedestal. We also see this concept with Vaati, and in his case, removing the sword from its pedestal released his spirit back into the world.

If Demise was sealed inside the Master Sword, which was then placed on its pedestal, he wouldn’t be able to revive in a new form unless the Master Sword was drawn again. Fast forward to Ocarina of Time and Link has to pull the Master Sword from its pedestal in order to access the Sacred Realm. In doing so, he released the spirit of hatred left behind by Demise, and he opened up a path for Ganondorf to claim the Triforce. Both A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time state that when Ganondorf entered the Sacred Realm and touched the Triforce for the first time, he became the Demon King, the same title ascribed to Demise. It was likely at this moment that the spirit of hatred left behind by Demise escaped its prison and found a new incarnation.

While Skyward Sword certainly doesn’t come right out and say that the Silent Realm is the Sacred Realm, their connections to the Triforce and the Master Sword, as well as the way Hylian lore displays the Sacred Realm as being in the sky, all seem to point to them being one and the same. The old legends weren’t wrong or contradictory, but rather just bits and pieces of the overall puzzle. When we look at all the stories in light of the the happenings of Skyward Sword, the mysteries of Hyrule all seem to come together.