Wow! Thanks so much for taking the time to play and for the awesome tips!
The "ot' should be "of". I always manage to fit one typo in no matter how little text I have :)
The "Death's cold hand reaches out for you." is more of a warning than an alert. It's telling you that if you are in a death-adjacent square on the next turn, you will lose health. I thought it would be more fair for the player that way, but I definitely need a better way to communicate it.
I'll take a look at fixing that "courage" / message overlap as well.
I think you can press any of the direction keys to exit out of the help menu, but I forgot to mention it in the menu itself. Regardless, your suggestion to get rid of the "shift" key makes total sense-- I'll change that in the next update as well.
Spoiler about winning:
Once you have five memories, it's possible to get the "acceptance" ending.
Again, I really appreciate the great feedback! I'll do the same for Wizard Chess soon-- it looks like it's right in my wheelhouse of strategy/roguelike hybrids!