The door shut behind me, leaving me with just the sound of an irritating ticking echoing through the white room like a hundred little needles tapping against glass.

"You know, I don't think it counts as a proper Dungeon Run when you're literally kidnapping a guy out of his village and forcing him through it!" I yelled at no one in particular.

I turned around, giving it the biggest world-weary sigh I could manage. If the Dungeon cared any about my histrionics, it didn't show any sign. I was tempted to sit down and wait it out – if I had one thing to thank Mum and Dad for, it was learning how surprisingly effective passive non-compliance could be – but one look around the room suggested this was not going to fly.

The space in which I was trapped was pretty empty - all white walls and flat stones underfoot - save for the enormous, suspended hourglass at its centre. The sand inside it was flowing upward, effortlessly defying gravity in a series of slow spirals.

Beneath the soft tick of the hourglass – "still shouldn't be ticking, mate. Pick a horological vibe!" - a different beat thudded, one that was heavier and, somehow, deader.

A low, growling tock to accompany the annoying tick.

The repeat notification – how I was loving all these thoughtful reminders about how doomed I was – blinked in my vision.

[System Notification – Challenge Initiated]

Primal Form Unlocked: Time

Domain: Temporal Flow | Classification: Foundational Concept Status: Active

Objective: Comprehend and master the flow of Time within the chamber. Complete your exit within a single cycle.

Warning: Failure to escape will result in recursive integration with the Well of Ascension.

Outcome: Indefinite containment. Identity dissolution is probable.

System Advisory: Time in this space is not a measurement. It is an active force. Learn its rhythm. Or be rewritten by it.

'Become part of the Well indefinitely.' Wonderful. Keep those stakes nice and low. However, before I could even think about exploring further, another set of rules appeared. Say what you like about the Maker, he does love a rulebook.

[System Notification – Dungeon Mechanics Activated]

Domain Parameters: Temporal Distortion – Realm of Forms

Environment: Non-Linear Temporal Zone Primal Form: Time Trial Status: Active

Mechanics Applied: Time Distortion: All motion and interaction are subject to variable timeflow. Expect inconsistencies in speed, delay, and reaction timing. Success Threshold: Passage requires completion within one cycle. Only precise timing and sustained momentum will allow progression. Penalty for Idleness: Inaction triggers temporal resistance. Delay will accelerate entropy and increase trial difficulty.

System Advisory: Time does not wait. You are already being measured.

"Penalty for idleness?" I said to the hourglass. "All a bit petty, don't you think?"

"Time is a resource to be spent," a replying voice echoed through the room. "A wise man extracts every ounce from each moment."

"Yep, which is absolutely why a lie-in is the best possible start to a day."

Silence.

Apparently, banter time was over.

The sound of the tick and the tock intensified, and the far-too white walls appeared to be pressing in even tighter around me. I could swear the rhythm of that noise grew faster as I waited to see what would happen next.

Then a low buzz joined the sound as the base of the hourglass began to rotate, and I could see a glowing series of footprints surrounding it - toes facing in the opposite direction of the rotation - like this was the perkiest treadmill in the world.

"Okay. Fine. I get it. Look, mate, this isn't a subtle puzzle. I see the point. You want me to move around the hourglass and keep in time with the clock's pace, right? I guess I'm supposed to learn something profound about the nature of time whilst having a jolly little jog?"

This didn't fill me full of joy.

Back on Earth, I had what you might call a professionally strategic relationship with time. It wasn't about filling the hours, it was about using them just enough to stay three steps ahead. Days blurred. Meetings were missed on purpose. Alibis crafted with five-minute windows. As long as I hit my marks and kept my files clean, Griff honestly could not have cared if I spent the rest of the day napping on a fire escape.

It might not sound high-octane, but here's the thing: you don't need to be flashy when you're effective. I didn't run unless someone was chasing me, or I needed to look like someone who should be chased. And even then, I was fast. Fit, too, though I never made a fuss about it. Covert work doesn't get medals for personal bests. You're either back home in time for tea and crumpets, or you're not.

In fact, now I think about it, my impromptu little dash from London on that last day of my life is kind of the whole reason I ended up in this world in the first place, isn't it?

When you look at it like that, me jogging has a literal fatality score attached to it.

Irrespective of my musings, though, the tick and the tock carried on pulsing, and now the sound was starting to press down on my chest, building an almost physically uncomfortable pressure. It felt like the passing seconds themselves were leaning over my shoulder as they vanished into the distance, poking me in the heart and screaming, 'Stop wasting us!'

I suddenly had a whole new appreciation for 'killing time'

Then, just when I was sure I couldn't stand the drama anymore, the sand in the hourglass turned bright blue and an elaborate clock face shimmered into being in the air above it.

This clock was ticking backwards from sixty seconds. Because, of course, it was.

[System Notification – Temporal Trial Initiated]

Task: Synchronise with the Maker's Rhythm Duration: 60 Seconds Objective: Maintain perfect temporal alignment for full duration. Penalty: Any pause, hesitation, or mistimed action will increase trial difficulty and reduce final evaluation score. Note: Rhythm is a force, not a pattern. Feel it. Follow it. Fail it and be retuned.

Okay, so we were doing this were we?

I took a step forward onto the glowing treadmill and began walking, noticing a slight delay. It was like I was moving through something thick and invisible, but despite the drag, I was able to keep stepping. And as I did, the tick sounded, and the delay vanished.

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So, the trick here was to move exactly in time with the ticking sound, was it? Not too tricky. Maybe I could blag my way through this...

"Fine," I said, "I'll play this your way." But then my foot dragged slightly and missed the beat by half a second.

A notification appeared in bright red.

[System Notification – Penalty Triggered]

Synchronisation Failure Detected – Time Distortion Increased: +10% – Temporal flow now unstable. Rhythmic irregularities introduced. Advisory: Further misalignment will escalate distortion severity. Adapt or be overwhelmed.

And then the treadmill sped up.

It was still nothing much worse than walking pace, but I wasn't wild about that turn of events. I tried to step off it, but my feet wouldn't detach. Oh, great. My day is just getting better and better.

I had a brief, very visual, image of a decaying corpse spinning round and round on this thing long after it had walked me to death.

I brought myself into rhythm with the ticking and tocking, this time stepping precisely in time with the beat. There was no further speeding up in the pace. I exhaled, feeling the pressure ease up slightly.

Just keep moving, just keep moving.

But a voice in the back of my mind grumbled in protest, the tone familiar, sardonic, and unmistakably mine. Because this entire room, this entire exercise, was everything I used to avoid on principle.

It wasn't the exertion. I'd spent years with a bug-out bag half-packed and a new identity in my sock drawer. I could run, climb, vanish, and hold a wall-sit for longer than some people held relationships. Physical hardship didn't scare me. No, what clawed at me was the enforced structure. The rhythm. The deliberate minute-by-minute obedience.

Everything in this room was about falling into lockstep, syncing with some cosmic metronome like an obedient hand on a divine watch face. No deviation. No improvisation. No choice but to move in someone else's time. I'd spent my life getting good at not doing that.

Aunt M, of course, would have had something to say about all this. Probably several things. Time - capital T - had been one of her favourite soapboxes.

"People always picture time as a line," she'd told me once, over tea and biscuits and the death of a cat we hadn't particularly liked. "But that's wrong. It's a field. A landscape. Hills. Valleys. Occasionally, a cliff edge. People shouldn't experience it like it's straight. They should wander it. Get lost within it. Otherwise, what's the point?"

Unsurprisingly, as I was ten, I'd mostly wanted her to stop talking long enough for me to finish my biscuit in peace. But the words had stuck, just like everything else she said that , at the time, I had pretended to ignore. I caught myself muttering under my breath. "There's no time to stand and stare," like I was trying to justify why this all grated so hard. I couldn't recall whether that line was actually in Pilgrim's Progress or something Aunt M would say to punctuate it.

"Time waits for no one," the voice rang out around the room again. "And in its waiting, nothing is gained. Purpose requires movement. Always forward. Always aligned."

It sounded like a motto. Or a threat. Either way, I hated it. It was telling me there was no room here for detours or reflections in here. No space to question the point of the journey. Just movement. Always movement.

"Oh, do take a moment off, you giant killjoy!"

In response, the timer flashed twice above the hourglass - speeding up the treadmill - and then, as well as the increased exertion, I felt a more metaphysical struggle begin. It was all I could do to ignore the sudden and crushing need to be on schedule, to fixate on meeting the deadline of one heartbeat after another. Of moving forward because the room demanded it, and it was the only way to live my life.

A headache started to form, but nowhere as mundane as in the centre of my head. It was like my Core was being squeezed tight. I got a wild thought in my head that it was like something was trying to... what? Dislodge my Class.

Nah. I wasn't having this. Running around on a treadmill to a beat wasn't mastery of time, was it? This was pretty much the embodiment of being enslaved to it. Yet, despite my growing ambivalence, I forced myself to keep going, to walk in a circle around the hourglass in time with the ticking. But every time I misstepped, the penalty pinged again.

[System Notification – Penalty Triggered]

Temporal Instability Escalating

Time Distortion: Amplified by +20%

Task difficulty increasing with each deviation from rhythm

Warning: Prolonged desynchronization may initiate recursive temporal feedback

Everything - apart from the treadmill - slowed, and each of my steps started to feel heavier. I could feel exhaustion creeping into my arms and legs now, a sluggish ache that seeped into my muscles, binding me tighter to the ticking sound, forcing me to keep in time or suffer worse.

And that's when the absurdity of it all hit me.

Here I was, doing exactly what the room wanted, following a rhythm just for the sake of it. Where was the value in it? How did this make me stronger, wiser, or any of all those other things I was supposed to be learning? This wasn't mastery; it was mindless adherence.

"Enough," I said aloud, stopping dead in my tracks. I felt a moment of pressure as my feet tried to keep following the rhythm, but they finally obeyed me and stopped.

The ticking, though, intensified, hammering through the room.

[System Warning – Severe Penalty for Stagnation]

Temporal Distortion Surge: +50% Flow deviation detected. Task stability critically reduced. Failure imminent. Resume synchronised movement immediately to avoid entrapment.

"Screw. You." I might even have started to give a tuneful little whistle.

The pressure in the room ratcheted up like someone had wrapped my skull in a drum kit and let a toddler go nuts with the sticks. Every pulse hammered behind my eyes, every beat was a not-so-subtle suggestion: move or suffer.

My whole body twitched, reflexes yelling to get in step, play along, avoid the next punishment. But that was the trick, wasn't it? Get me to react. Reduce me to a rhythm-chasing lab rat, twitching in time with the divine metronome.

No thought. No hesitation. Just obedient, synchronised movement.

And I hated it.

"This what you want, Maker?" I said, forcing myself to stand still even as the weight pressed harder. "Me bouncing to your tempo like a good little instrument?" I squared my shoulders, wobbling slightly but holding. "Well, you can take your sacred groove and rhythm-stick it."

Not quite Braveheart, sure. But given the circumstances - and the headache - it was the best I could manage. The room responded with silence, the ticking paused as though it, too, was considering what I'd said.

For just a second, I wondered if I'd somehow broken the game - yay, go me! - as if my outright rejection of its commands had triggered something within it.

But then a notification appeared, cold and final.

[System Breach Detected – Severe Deviation]

Protocol Violation: Intentional disruption of rhythm synchronisation

Consequence: Final Trial Triggered

Status: Automatic escalation engaged

You have rejected the intended path.

The Well is now watching.

The hourglass exploded. Its sand suspended in the air, hovering in a slow, surreal pattern. Then the ticking resumed, louder than before but now irregular, echoing erratically around the room.

A new timer appeared, this one counting down from thirty seconds.

[System Notification – Final Trial Initiated] Challenge: Resist the Flow of Time

Objective: Withstand the temporal pressure without yielding to movement or rhythm. Duration: Undefined Success Condition: Maintain autonomy. Refuse alignment. Endure.

Advisory: Time is no longer your measure. It is your adversary.

The Well watches in silence.

"You know what, mate? I reckon my only winning move here is to ignore 'the flow of time'. I repeat my earlier commentary. Screw. You."

And in that moment, I let go of any thought of matching the ticking rhythm. I was not here for falling into line with any of the Maker's imposed structures. If there was one thing everyone knew about Eli Meddings, it was that he was absolutely not a slave to the clock. I let my mind drift, not toward any goal in particular, but away from the need for any goal whatsoever.

And slowly, ever so slowly, something strange happened.

The tick and tock grew softer. Becoming background noise, I no longer needed to listen to. The terrible pressure on my core lifted, and all of the resistance against me moving faded. A wonderful calmness settled over me.

It wasn't surrender; it was something else—it was a release from the need to participate.

The room shifted. The fractured hourglass - and all the sand - was gone. That awful ticking had silenced.

In its place, on the far side of the room, was suddenly a door. As with the one that had suckered me in here in the first place, its edges were faintly glowing as if inviting me to pass through.

A new notification popped up.

[System Notification – Challenge Complete] Primal Form: Concept of Time

Insight Gained: True mastery of time lies not in controlling its flow, but in knowing when to let go.

Evaluation: Accepted Progression: Unlocked

The Well acknowledges your passage.

The last part made me grin. It sounded almost like something Aunt M would say. Her or Elsa. But, as the cold very much was bothering me right now, I thought that maybe it was time to have a look at the next room.

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