I always maintain that harmony of dissonance was born to be a psychological horror, the shit that those kids go through makes my stomach turn to think about.
Maxim is lost and confused, he’s just lost two years of his life and his mind is split down the middle with an entity of pure evil and hatred, wandering a castle that he’s never been in and yet it feels intimately familiar. He doesn’t know that it’s made from him, that something so twisted and sinister could be formed from his will. And the longer he spends in there the more he loses himself to it; he becomes murderous, filled with rage and contempt towards the two people he cares about most in the world, one of whom he ends up killing. Was the real Maxim aware of what was happening in the end? Was he trapped inside his own body, watching himself do these horrible things? He had to have been, he remembers it all even after everything is over. And to know that you brought on all of this horror because you were trying to help your friend, the guilt that would come with that would destroy you.
Meanwhile, Juste is likely having a worse time navigating the castle. At the very least each half of Maxim is confined to its own castle, with Juste he’s constantly travelling between them. Imagine if you don’t know what’s going on, retreading the same places that you swore you’ve been before but everything is wrong. The vibrancy has been drained away, the sky is the colour of a fading bruise, the walls are crumbling and the enemies you could easily defeat are now stronger than you were prepared for. Your one ally in this whole nightmare is someone you haven’t seen in years, he’s acting erratic and in some cases violent, you don’t know if you can even trust him anymore.
And somewhere trapped in this labyrinth is Lydie, and Juste has no idea who took her, where she is, whether she’s safe, whether she’s alive. She could be anywhere, sealed away in some hidden quarters with the monster who took her, or she could have been killed a long time ago by some beast in a random hall. He doesn’t know and as time goes on it becomes more and more terrifying to find out.
And oh my god, the shit that Lydie has to endure. Abducted, blindfolded, being lead to believe that Maxim had rescued her only for him to lock her in a room and leave. Who knows how long she was waiting; Maxim had to leave and find Juste and bring him back to get her, it could have been days alone in that tiny room. And when Juste finally arrives to rescue her, death himself takes her away to be murdered by Maxim, the person she thought was going to save her. Imagine the moment death gave her to him, the relief giving way to horror. She must have been so confused and scared, and I imagine that it took a while for Maxim to drain enough blood to kill her. And then in the end, when she miraculously recovers and wakes up, Juste and Maxim keep everything a secret from her. She remembers it happening, she describes it as a dream but it’s still something she remembers happening to her, it’s there at the back of her mind. Would she forgive Maxim if she knew the truth? I think so, but being lied to about it? That changes everything. To have Maxim back around and welcome him right back into her life, meanwhile the whole time him and Juste are lying to her face about her own death. What happens when she starts to remember more? When the memory of that ‘dream’ becomes more vivid? How horrible is it to be treated like that, how violating.
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