Tolerance isn’t weakness—it is a madness gauge for when a beast loses their mind to its primal instincts. The more tolerant a beast is, the bigger the source pool for their rage. If you cause a tolerant beast to lose their mind… may the gods grant you a quick death.

~Cernunnos, Lord of the Wild Things

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. The sound wouldn’t stop, and after weeks of enduring it, Crow felt he was on the verge of exploding. Fifteen days. He repeated the same day again and again, and that incessant tapping wouldn’t fucking stop. Five taps followed by a silence, then five more.

Woodpeckers filled the entire forest around him, and no matter how many he killed, they were endless. By the fifth day, his fingertips were bleeding from drawing his bow thousands of times. As endless as the birds were, his arrows were just as infinite. He filled his Vortex Pin with more arrows than he could ever shoot in an entire day.

“What the fucking hell kind of trial is this?” Crow roared out into the forest, and the entire place went silent.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

“ARRGHGHH!!!” Crow’s bloodshot eyes bulged as he tried to reclaim his sanity.

*Crow, look!* Nin had tried to call out to him a dozen times and knew Crow was in terrible shape. Even she felt raw every time she surfaced. She even hid away in his Soulscape to avoid the noise.

In front of him was a stele that appeared to have one word etched into it. One fucking word that broke him. No sound came from him, no gasp, no words—just action. Crow shot forward and smashed the stele apart with fire, lighting, wood—whatever the hell he had inside him came out in one go.

Nodes inside his body lit up one by one until the Ogham rune for Oak filled him. Crow was too far gone to know what he had done, or he’d have recognized his heritage glowing. Every tiny bit of mana in his body flowed into the rune, and his right arm turned into blackened wood. Night Fire flared up around his wooden fist, and as it pushed forward at blinding speed, the air itself caught fire.

Boom!

Man flared up like a giant bubble and burst. His punch obliterated the stele, blasting the area with broken rock, fire, and overwhelming mana. Trees in front of him snapped, shattered, and splintered, leaving a swath of destruction that was nearly incomprehensible.

Absolute silence.

Crow stood in that same pose, unmoving. His eyes rolled down to look at his wooden arm.

*Psycho.*

“Haha hahaha!” he laughed, nearly hysterical, and collapsed to the ground, completely drained of energy. “Fuck you, stele.”

*What did it say?* Nin asked. Even she recoiled at Crow’s reaction, never expecting him to have something like that inside him. She felt it for the briefest of moments, something that felt eternal. Even the blood of the dragon gods might not contain that much potential. As a dragon, she’d never felt intimidated by a human, and for that split second, she felt like she was ant hiding in his shadow.

“Patience.”

Nin’s mind stumbled.

*Ha! Haha.*

“Did I fail?” Crow asked after he stopped laughing.

*I don’t know. We are still here, and those damned woodpeckers are silent.*

“Showed those bastards. Patience can kiss my ass. Power is the only real equalizer.”

Clank. Clank. Bang!

Crow turned his head. Where the stele used to be, gears were spinning up out of the ground. A box-like shape rose with it, and then its front fell off and slammed against the ground. A door stood there, its frame lined with interlocking gears, and then the area inside the frame shimmered. Beyond the shimmering door was a room that reminded him of the lobby. It left this forsaken forest and put him back inside the Clocktower.

He sat up to cultivate and bring himself back up to full strength.

*Crow, you need to go. The sun is almost set. There is no telling what will happen if today resets again.*

He stood up with a sigh. “Time is a nuisance.”

Nin could only nod in agreement, and when Crow stepped into the room, her eyes drifted above the only door in the room. Above the door was a sign with one word on it: Haste.

She was swearing before Crow had the chance.

***

Acco cursed the gods that made this Clocktower. The first challenge had him standing on floating gears, but not all of them were circular-shaped. Some even went rotated vertically. Which meant every fifteen minutes, when the clanging started inside his head, he had to squat down and hold on. Everything changed, and on many occasions, his path forward became a dead end, forcing him to backtrack. It took a while to realize the trick was to reach the gears on spindles because while they rotated, they remained fixed.

Normally, a puzzled like this shouldn’t pose any challenge at all. The distance to the door on the far side of this strange place was something he could reach with StarSlide, the official name of the Astrologer’s teleportation ability. The moment he tried, he realized he couldn’t step into the void, and the spell hurtled him across a bridge between gears at a crazy speed that almost sent him off into the blackness below.

Acco wasn’t sure if falling would kill him, but it scared him enough that he wasn’t willing to attempt sliding anymore. He got in a rhythm of jogging at a brisk pace and counting by slapping his thigh as he ran. When he was sure it was almost the fifteen-minute mark, he squatted next to a spindle since it had the smallest amount of movement and wouldn’t throw him off.

Thinking about Crow, he could only shake his head in frustration. “Jerk, you probably do not know what you’ve done. I wasn’t the fucking Dark Star. You were.” Acco glared at the Constellation that had formed within his mind. The most prominent star was a black ball of fire, and if his stare could kill someone, it would have ended Crow. The star near him was just as alarming, and Acco knew it represented Mara. That woman’s star devoured the surrounding light, which meant her affinity for the Void was higher than his. It was so damned humiliating. They relegated him to a weak star in the Constellation that wasn’t even fully formed yet.

“Damn both your mothers! Both of you are my nemesis.”

He sighed as he continued crossing bridges and gears. This place really tested one’s patience. It felt like he’d been trying to cross the room for a month now. And that damned glowing sign flickered occasionally, but that one word glared back at him. It wasn’t helping his mood. “Patience! You got a sick sense of humor.”

The last bridge was before him, and then the clanging started in his head.

“Oh, hell no!” Acco shouted and activated StarSlide non-stop and shot across the bridge even as it started turning. Not willing to wait any damned longer, he jumped before the gap was too far. He practically flew the remaining distance, and when he realized he’d used too much power, he could only wince. His feet touched, but both his ankles twisted, nearly snapping from the impact because of his speed. He lacked the energy to protect himself as he tumbled and rolled, crashing before the door.

He ended up on his back, staring at the hateful sign. He thought he’d never hate a sign more until he turned his head and looked into the next room. More gears and bridges, but this time the sign said: Haste.

“You sick son of a bitch.”

***

Mara sat in a hot spring, soaking while she cultivated. Her body relaxed and connected to the world around her. Her Void abilities had grown tremendously over the last several weeks, and she found a strange pattern inside her mind. There were three glowing lights that she soon discovered belonged to Crow and that Acco kid.

She didn’t fully understand what it was but knew it had to do with how she landed in this place. It was also why she entered the Clocktower. She could sense that Crow wasn’t in any trouble and figured he’d find his way here, eventually. This place was probably a dream come true for that guy.

This was the first time in over a year she’d been by herself. So when she entered this strange place, with a singular mountain covered in snow, its solitude was calming. As much as she lov-loved Crow—did she love him? She did, but as much as she did, he was a walking disaster. Every day was tense, wondering what he’d do, or stumble across, and pray they came out of it unscathed. It was so damned exhausting.

After selecting her door, she appeared before a singular mountain with snow falling all around her. In front of her was a trailhead and a sign above it read: Patience.

Walking up the trail, she found the hot springs and immediately sat in the nearly scalding water. The heat melted away all those tensions. It relaxed her soul, and then her cultivation jumped. It was more than that. Her understanding of the Void grew.

“You are probably sitting in a library, reading,” she muttered, grinning. Watching Crow at the Triskelion Archives was one of the best moments of her life. He was so calm and warm and focused. She liked that about him the most, how he used his head and won through without always resorting to violence. But when it came down to it, he would turn into a beast if it meant protecting her. He wouldn’t even hesitate to throw himself in front of the worst danger.

Sometime in the past year, she’d fallen for him with no reservations in her heart. She loved him because she felt safe with him around, despite his unfated nonsense. It wasn’t something she felt much growing up. Her little sister cared, but she was as cold and calculating as their father, so she always thought they’d turn on her if it benefitted the Teonet clan.

It was time she accepted that she was no longer a Teonet—she was now a daughter of clan Maddox.

“Aii, I must be a fool,” Mara sighed, but the twinkle in her eye and the big smile on her face said she was glad she finally accepted it. She finally dispelled all her doubts.

Clang.

The gears were on the move again, but a door appeared at some point during her reverie. She hadn’t noticed it until the mists from the hot springs cleared. On the other side of the door, she saw a sled and snowy slope. A sign simply said: Haste.

Her eyes grew round, and she clapped her hands in excitement. This was going to be fun!