If you fight Ella having 6 power(i think) you get the bad ending, you can either not fight her or have less power on purpose when you reach that.
As for how far into the game you are, if you just reached that then barely anything, game has a lot of content and originally i think it took me like a week playing every day to reach the end of what was available then.
I also got suckerpunched with a cliffhanger straight from hell (without spoilers: when someone is holding someones head, and then you see the MC’s eyes then bam cliffhanger before shit goes down. If you manage to recognize the scene i’m talking about when you get there from just this i said, give thanks to god you didn’t had to wait 3 months to know what happens next cuz i was dying, lmao) Tho the current cliffhanger from this latest version isn’t as bad since it ends by revealing/confirming one of the big secrets.
Anyway, have fun!