I'm sorry if this is very spoiler heavy D:
I gotta say, doing the ruthless route made me deeply uncomfortable after having played the nice route first. Seeing Asterion in so much distress really bothered me but I really enjoyed the writing. It really does a good job to unsettle the player if they've done the Nice route first. Reading what the effigy did to Asterion just made me so sad and unsettled, like holy hell, and then seeing his mental break. Superb job on the writing!