Five Broken Blades

One of the main subplots in the narrative involves Mikail’s personal history with Joon, who oppressed and colonized Mikail’s home country, Gaya. Although the original Gayan Rebellion ultimately ended in the carnage of Joon’s infamous Festival of Blood, Mikail sees himself as the inheritor of his people’s will and participates in the assassination plot as a way to free his fellow Gayans from oppression. However, although Mikail ostensibly fights for their freedom, his actions nevertheless pose an ethical dilemma, for Corland draws several pointed comparisons between Mikail’s behavior and Joon’s, namely through Mikail’s bloodlust.

Although Mikail is overtly focused on instigating a righteous rebellion, Corland complicates this notion by suggesting that Mikail’s mission is more accurately a quest for revenge, and she also draws implicit parallels between Mikail and Joon through the strategic use of hellish battle imagery. For example, with the Festival of Blood—the so-called cleansing of the Gayan rebellion—Joon “brought the hells onto earth” and “crush[ed] the colony’s revolt” (360). Like the devil himself, Joon is depicted at the head of a slaughter that he orchestrates out of sheer greed. Likewise, when Mikail pursues his own battles, he also indulges in violence and bloodlust, even earning the title of “demon” from Euyn and others. Mikail also shows a notable lack of respect for human life and has no qualms about inflicting pain when he kills. As Euyn reflects while observing Mikail’s battle fury, “There is a seething rage, an underbelly to all his charisma that can’t be just from his father punishing him” (167). Although Euyn misunderstands the source of Mikail’s rage, the narrative makes it clear that Mikail’s rage is the result of the traumatic massacre that he witnessed as a child during the Festival of Blood. However, while Mikail’s anger is arguably justified, he also displays an unnatural tendency to revel in violence, and this trait signals his implicit kinship with Joon’s own perspective on murder; if killing is done for his own gratification, Mikail—just like Joon—will actively indulge in inflicting gratuitous pain and violence. 

Corland likewise signals this growing similarity between the two characters through their similarly ominous use of the expression “null.” Though Mikail will use the expression once to signify that he doesn’t feel pain, he primarily employs the word in the same way that Joon does during the Festival of Blood—to mean “no survivors.” Similarly, when Mikail and Euyn are attacked by brigands and when they are later faced with the issue of the bartender and his daughter in Oosant, Mikail tells Euyn “null” and acts to eliminate any threats to his mission—just as Joon conducts his mission to oppress the Gayans. It is also significant that Mikail involves Euyn directly in these murders, for these acts symbolically bloody the hands of the ruler that Mikail would have on the throne. Thus, these patterns insinuate that although Mikail is acting to overthrow an oppressive regime, he may be instituting one that is just as overtly ruthless.