The Timeline Threat in Storytelling

The further away we get from the edict of Cyrus the Great in 538, the more the resistance gets momentum to stop the building. All good stories like this build in some kind of timeline threat whereby if you don't get this done in a certain window, it's not going to happen and your good efforts will be thwarted. So that is the point of tension we are sitting with. The building is barely still going, but it may be shut down forever. And then we're going to find out what this letter to King Darius was about and what happened in response to it.