Death unto Dawn page up

[KizuyaKatogami]

I'm not sure what you mean? ShB and 5.3 are widely praised as the highest points in the story and yet the only deaths were the villains, who you fully expect to die. It rather proves my point, you don't need to kill people off for a story to be good and emotional.

I'm not saying "a character dying makes a story bad", that would be absurd, just that it isn't some metric you need to check off a list in order to be considered a good story.

Both end of ShB and 5.3 relied on random plot armor and plot holes to prevent character deaths (both involving graha). If you need to rely on random plot armor just to prevent a character from dying, that’s bad writing.