I've tried like 5 times now, gradually lowering my "taboos" in the world. The last time I did not do anything beyond harvesting the three mining nodes.
no killing, no luring fireflies, no nothing. But I still get a fail and the Elder tries to kill me.

any ideas?

Ah, that's easy. He asks you to collect colour from two mines, in fact, the one near Nameless Sister's Chamber and the one near Ava's Chamber(you'll need to open her one heart, but actually the colour from the first mine will be enough for this). In order not to make him angry, not only need you to open all 6 veins, but also to collect all the colour from them.

oh, ok. I went that far in some of my saves but I didn't manage to extract from those nodes. And I got these "you will die" warnings. I'll try again

Try asking Uta then

I managed it, seems I did the glyph too quickly the first times or somesuch.

so you can't leave any color at all in the veins? i left a little in one of them because I had too much of the color. i figured since I already mined some of it I completed his task. Guess not.