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It's one-thirty on the third night when Link gives up. On this cycle, that is.
The final door is visible from where he now stands holding the key, but it's on the highest floor of the temple and he's spent the past twelve hours failing to find the path up. There's a chance he could find the way at the last moment, but he has no idea how much longer that could take and even less of an idea about what might be waiting for him behind that door, or how long it will take to defeat it. He only has a few hours left.
And he's so tired.
He's worn the bunny hood almost continuously since he found it, switching to the Goron mask here in the temple only when there's a floor panel to press or a big block of ice to smash. Clomping around in that boulder of a body feels too much like another time when magic twisted him into someone bigger and more grown-up, a hero with a face people thought they recognized. The hero of time was an empty vessel for everyone's hopes, and Darmani was a living person with people who knew and loved him; one was erased from existence after his task was complete, the other died almost before he could begin. And now Link is far from home and the Gorons of the mountain are huddled together for warmth, and a baby cries endlessly.
Link played the healing song for Darmani and freed his restless ghost of its grief and regret, but those feelings had to go somewhere, and now they weigh down on Link's shoulders like solid rock. He's strong enough to carry them. There is a promise to keep and a tribe to save and a cold, hungry baby crying for its papa, and Link can't fix everything but he can at least finish what Darmani began. He's strong. He's as strong as everyone needs him to be. Long ago and far away, people called him the hero of time, and that wasn't him, but he played the part well enough that nobody noticed the deception. Of all the Gorons he's met while wearing the mask, none of them realized he wasn't really Darmani.
But he's still thirteen years old, dashing around a frozen temple on a forsaken snow-covered mountaintop. He forgot to play the time-slowing song at the beginning of the cycle, and Tatl forgot to remind him until the early hours of this third day, and there's no time left and he hasn't even bothered to search for the lost fairies, he stumbled upon two and that's all. He's been a grown man and a Deku Scrub and now a Goron, but on the inside he's still thirteen. There's nothing to eat and it's too cold for him to risk curling up in a corner somewhere for a nap, and he's covered in bruises because he keeps slipping off the icy platforms or forgetting that he switched from the Goron mask to the bunny hood and overshooting his jumps. Tatl's burrowed under his hat to keep warm. Link has no such refuge and nowhere to go except forward. Or back.
The ground rumbles, a reminder of the approach of the moon he can't see from inside the temple. Defeated, Link retrieves the ocarina and plays the song of time with cold, stiff fingers.
Hours shy of three days later, Link is in the same place as before—within sight of the final room but unable to reach it. The bunny hood lets him jump higher, but not that high, and it feels so much worse this time because he went straight to the temple without making the detour to comfort that crying Goron baby. No time, no time.
A tiny hand tugs his hair.
"Hey, Link," says Tatl. "That pillar in the central room... with the chunks of ice inside... go back and look at it."
Link hums questioningly.
"Just do it."
Link hops over the mangled carcasses of two Wolfos as he retraces his steps back to the central pillar. Tatl crawls out from under his hat and flutters before him, jabbing a tiny finger at the flat disk of ice sandwiched between the sections of rock. "Look," she says. "If you hit it hard enough, you can push the ice out. THAT'S why you haven’t been able to get the pillar to line up with the platforms so you can cross them."
Link is even more silent than usual.
"You didn't think to try until now?" Tatl asks, which is unfair because she must not have thought of this solution until just now, either, or else she would've suggested it earlier and saved them all this misery. "Ugh! What a waste of time... was Woodfall just a fluke, or what?!"
The dead Wolfos in the other room could tell her no, but they're even less capable of speech than Link is, so he just lets out a long, long sigh before unlacing the bunny hood. The Goron mask seals to his face like a grasping hand, like Darmani's spirit can't wait to finally take part in fulfilling this mission which from the beginning had been his own. Transformed, Link clomps over to the pillar, pulls back, and shatters the ice-block with a single swing of his fist. The temple itself shakes thunderously as the top section of the pillar falls into place, and Tatl, who'd been hovering next to it, claps her tiny hands over her ears with a pained jingle. She crawls grumbling back under Link's hat, which for some reason has maintained an existence in both of his borrowed forms so far.
Link considers the time of night, considers switching back to his beloved bunny hood, then decides to try another long-neglected technique and boulder-rolls back around toward the stairway which should lead him up to the final room. Darmani's spirit within the mask seems to nod in approval.
(Goht is dead within the hour. It's well past midnight by then, but Link has enough time left to sprint back through the temple and retrieve the thirteen lost fairies which remained. It's an even more arduous task than defeating the mechanical beast, he's beyond exhausted, and the whole effort is pointless anyway since it's undone as soon as he returns to the morning of the first day. It still feels right.)