ummmm sorry i'm super late but this is CRAZY! i feel crazy!!! i've been thinking a lot about seokgyu + betrayal so this is just turning my brain into mush. the way the themes of familial piety and duty permeate both seokmin and mingyu's true desires... how their ancestors have brought them together for the absolute worse. like... the tragedy lies in their similarities and the fact that both of them can't exist in this world bc of the generational cycles. wow. and then mingyu seeing his target, his archenemy in a new, refined sort of light. him accepting that what he must do is evil and by extension he is the evil threatening seokmin. god i don't know what to say!!! sometimes you feel like you have to do the exact thing you don't want to do. also i really love how the ending was full of resignation and defeat, even for mingyu who's supposed to be the winner. but like it sucks for him... "what is epic if not another form of tragedy?" EXACTLYYY. wow i loved this T___T thank u for sharing with us!!!


some standout lines:

Mingyu never knew that being understood could be such a horror.


Mingyu scowls a little. “Even now you’re blaming yourself. Just like you always do. Let me take this, for once. I betrayed you.”


“The gods will reward me for what I have done today.”

The gods will do no such thing. The gods know what Mingyu doesn’t.