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It wasn’t like the hero to cry.
However, reaching the top of Death Mountain sparked a strange realization out of the young man. He’s climbed up from Kakariko Village, all the way up the hike to get here, jumped from rock to rock, avoided the boulders, the skulltulas, and finally climbed the ladder carved into a large wall to reach the summit of the mountain, but only now, at the top, does he shed a tear for the journey. He’s climbed up here before, on multiple occasions in fact, but the top of the mountain never got this quiet.
The wind whispered stories of how lively this part of Hyrule once was, a part which he previously considered the most desolate and quiet of all the places he’d traveled. But he was just a child back then. Now, the sky grew dark with the ashes of the unruly volcano, the giant owl, Kaepora Gaebora, no longer waited for him on the now busted and splintered wooden direction sign that sat between the Great Fairy’s fountain and Death Mountain’s crater, and, most depressingly of all, the hopefulness he’d always felt standing in the middle of the space—where he stood now—was gone. There were no longer the rustling of feathers, or the faint enchanting music of the great fairy’s magic. No more did birds caw at him as they flew by in the open blue sky. No more did he hear the whispers of the fairies hiding inside gossip stones just below him. Thus, no longer did he have the spark of pride that birthed a fire in his belly which came from tediously scaling the mountain. There was no longer ambition to get stronger in order to fill the shoes of the legendary hero who’d save the world from evil. Now, as the burden of the world as he knew it weighed on his shoulders, he found true silence atop Death Mountain.