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Listen well, young keeper of the lore, and be lessoned in the existence of the most dangerous substance a mortal may hold. Aye, I speak to you of the substance known as the Timeshift Stone. In many ways, these stones act as the magical gemstones of which you are already aware - carrying with them great elemental essence that can influence the equipment they're enchanted into. However, Timeshift Stones are far, far too dangerous to be enchanted into any simple sword or helmet.

These stones, as their names suggest, possess a profound influence on the stream of time, turning forward or back the years of anything nearby. As such, the deposits these stones may be found in make for hazardous, unstable mines, unsuited for extraction by any but the most refined techniques - as did our ancestors in the day they were servants of the goddess Hylia. The stones similarly need to be refined and inscribed to be controllable in most cases. The result is plain: One can create an area in which all objects and plantlife are turned back in time a variable number of years depending on the size and strength of the stone. Or one can do far, far worse.

The greatest and most terrible works of our people involve the usage of these stones to create less ephemeral works. Gates of time in the origin point of the kingdom, the legendary Ocarina of which I'm sure you know well, and it is thought that the Ancients even had some rare Guardian parts commissioned of the stones. These things may have a more permanent effect on the flow of time... Creating one of two scenarios:

The first is a stable loop. When the past is altered in such a way that it was always such. Minor things might be altered safely, such as the placement of a rock, but as long as events proceed as history dictates, there is no cause for alarm.

The second is not so simple. When the timeline is deliberately altered in a way that majorly affects events, a divergence is created. This splits the timeline into the original and altered timeline. We know this has occurred in times past due to the many conflicting events of the chronicles of the heroes of Hylia and the paradoxial influence they have left upon the land. But so it would seem that even divergent timelines may collide once again...

Despite our people's history with the stones, little today remains of these works. It seems perhaps our ancestors, when they went into hiding, also removed as many of the Timeshift Stones as they could, and perhaps sealed them away. To this day we watch for signs of their re-emergence, as the danger of letting them be used unchecked is far too great. May the Goddess of Time forgive our people...