Well you fired a huge cannon through all my expectations for where this might go, and i love it!!! The setting you have chosen for this, is so brave, and so very well executed! It’s amazing to see someone venture out of their comfort zone with such skill that if you hadn’t said, I wouldn’t have known! The history and research that has gone into this brings so very much, and the setting you have chosen feels so very appropriate for the ending! And you know, I did not see the ending coming at all! Oh I am feeling so lucky to have such wonderfully imaginative entrants <3 the way you build this, it feels like an old fable about the invincible shogun, i love that what gave him his victories also brought him his end. And that fire pit of tar! There are plenty of striking scenes, but that’s a really powerful one. His confidence in the oracle never being wrong blinding him from the hint in the phrasing of the prediction and his pride in thinking he could outwit death was what brought about his demise, and it feels so very much like a genuine folktale. I love the underlying element in this, the focus on now, and the importance of living in the moment. The shogun was given warning, and spent his last few days in fear alone. Maybe if he hadn’t, he would have changed the prophecy, but because it was all he could see, he didn’t see his ending until it stared back from the mirror. Oh my, you have told this so well. When he leaves the throne room, and then goes back to his wife, I have read this so many times and only just realised he saved her life there, it is written in such a way it could be read as him worrying about himself and her bringing a potential murdered into the building, or his concern that he would open the door and find her dead being so great, he didn’t think about the threat posed to himself and think to disable it. Seriously darth, thank you so very much for this one, there is so much to it and every detail just adds to it <3