Story wise is not at all a problem. Just help the player to understand soon that they won't turn. Problem solved.
Change the tone of everyone with these 7 days and we don't have time and it's so urgent and... Problem solved.
Ok, fine.
Don't get the short/long rest balance "argument"
I mean... if you can take a long rest whenever you want, and with the clock, you can, there's no reason to ever pick a warlock over a wizard.
The game is telling me when it's dark. But if it's not, I can always "click a button" to wait until it is.
Which is basically the same thing. Tomejto - tomato.
This problem is not related to the rest mechanic but to the story telling.
It's *definitely* related to both. And while the storytelling problem is a lot more obvious how to solve - by disentangling all the companion interactions that can be disentangled from the sleeping mechanic (plus, having more cut-scenes per sleep as it seems now, something you also mentioned - ugly yellow exclamation marks in the camp), the mechanics of how rest should work are, unfortunately, not quite as obvious how to solve.
