Tearjerker / Shadows over Meridian

• Elyon and the Guardians finally learn that Jade/Kage was never Phobos' minion like they believed. It's just sad to read about their remorse and horror at realizing that they persecuted and nearly killed an innocent girl because of bad first impressions and the false Mage's lies, and thus drove the Shadow Realm's queen into joining the Knights of Vengeance and eventually leading her powerful army into a new war against Meridian on Phobos' side.
  • The revelation about Jade reminds Will of how the former made her feel guilty about framing Raythor in Kage, and she later says Jade was likely right when she said the Guardians aren't true heroes.
  • After Elyon learns that Kandrakar aided Meridian only because of Nerissa's manipulations, she decides that she must make up for her failures by taking responsibility like a true queen, even if she must stop her brother and try to make peace with Kage without the Guardians' help.
• After being informed about the situation with Kage, the Oracle tells the Guardians to remain on Earth for the time being until he can find a solution. The girls feel hopeless at being forbidden to help Meridian in the war they started and not knowing what they can do to make things right with Kage.
  • Cornelia is afraid she won't see Caleb (whose recent behavior is troubling her) again and feels hurt that Elyon is refusing to accept her help. In Chapter 8, she has a nightmare of being attacked in her home by Kage who verbally tears her to pieces about her fear of Elyon no longer needing her. When she wakes up, she hugs Lilian with teary eyes.
• Alchemy feels dismayed that Cornelia and Elyon are spending less and less time with her and befriends Miranda, unaware it's a part of Jade's plan to ruin the Guardians' civilian lives.
• The Guards have been treated with outright hostility by the rebels who see them as remnants of Phobos' reign. The constant insults, dirty looks and threats of imprisonment/replacement have led to many of the Guards wondering if they shouldn't have turned on Phobos in the first place.
  • After Captain Granik and his men are abandoned by Caleb and the rebels for refusing to abandon the castle's defenses in favor of protecting Elyon, Granik correctly anticipates this will be his Last Stand and leads his men against the Shadowkhan invaders in Meridian's name. He loses his life, and Erec, one of his men, is so distraught by it that he violently attacks Caleb and is skeptical of Elyon's promises that she'll atone for letting the Guard down.
• Tynar has it tough. When he gets confirmed on his suspicion that "the Mage's" story about Jade was false, he begs the latter to give him a chance to talk her out of her alliance with Phobos, but she bitterly tells him about how the Guardians and Elyon first attacked her immediately on sight without giving her a chance to explain herself, and Raythor (whom Tynar also tried to convince to stop serving Phobos before Jade's arrival) being the only one who offered her genuine help is the ultimate reason she's allied herself with Phobos. His disappointment is evident when he questions the girls on if Jade was telling the truth. He also loses his respect among his fellow Guards when they blame their bad situation with the rebels on his act of convincing them to turn on Phobos in the first place, and he gets punched by one of them when he tries to prevent them from coming to blows with the rebels.
• Though Caleb's become more aggressive in his refusal to accept the truth about Jade/Kage and the false Mage as well as own up to his actions that led to Kage joining the enemy, Chapter 11 reveals that he wished Phobos' downfall would finally let him live peacefully and marry Cornelia, but the actions of Nerissa, the Knights of Vengeance and Kage forcing him to keep fighting and question everything he believed to be true have been pushing him to his breaking point. His father's refusal to speak about his Missing Mom has led to him incorrectly concluding that she was a victim of Phobos' regiment, which adds fuel to his hatred of any Phobos loyalists. He's also unsure if he's not confessing that he countermanded Elyon's orders about Kage when the latter first showed up due to standing by his decision or being afraid of losing everyone's trust.
  • Julian, still reeling from the revelation that it was Nerissa instead of the Mage who birthed Caleb and started the civil war for her own gain, tries to gently reason with his son who has become paranoid and aggressive from all the years of fighting.
• As Vathek leads an army towards Cavigor, he admits to himself that he deserves Jade's wrath due to his cruel treatment of her and swears to himself that he'll redeem himself by ensuring the Rebellion won't end up becoming just like Phobos' regiment. Witnessing and learning about the treasonous actions of various extremists who're supposed to be loyal to Elyon and his unsuccessful attempt to negotiate peace with Jade in Chapter 24 wear heavily down on him.
• When Yan Lin learns from Hay Lin that Nerissa was "the Mage" all along, she sadly tells how her former friend's Start of Darkness drove their generation of Guardians apart.
• Vera Bexley's beloved grandfather was killed by Mogriffs, and after ten years of waiting for a chance to avenge him, she's dead set on exterminating all the Mogriffs. When the anticipated final victory over Snowpoint's fortress is snatched away by Jade's forces, Vera's more reasonable companions are hard-pressed to convince her to choose pragmatism over revenge. When she learns that Elyon has ordered the northern army to withdraw to the capital in order to consolidate forces in light of the new threat of the Shadowkhan, she has an emotional breakdown, sobbing over having her chance at vengeance snatched away. In one desperate attempt to get her revenge, she deceives her friends into going rogue in what's likely a suicide mission.
  • Vera knows that Albel, one of her closest friends, would try to stop her, so she gives him the slip while going rogue. When he learns about this, he feels he's failed to keep her safe as he promised to her mother.
  • Tinsley, another one of Vera's closest supporters, tries to find ways to bring Vera out of her foul mood as they venture into the enemy territory. Vera's too overly focused on her revenge to appreciate Tinsley's concern over her, and it wears down on the optimistic girl who wishes everyone would get along. After her crush Alan is severely wounded, she's so exhausted by everything Vera's quest has put them through that she tearfully surrenders to Jade in order to get medical treatment for Alan.
• Caroline confides to Tinsley that she feels like a failure to her noble family since she's never been very good at their art of sewing, no matter how hard she tries.
• Jade is still trying to find her way home and misses her family and friends. When she witnesses Windblade's reunion with her mate Metalbeak and their hatchling, she tells the Mogriff to cherish every moment with her loved ones in case she loses them forever.
  • While Jade still wants to reunite with her loved ones, she's realized that she doesn't really want to go back to being human, and worries about how they'll react to her new state.
• After Vera abandons her team when they throw in the towel and Amelia gets from Vathek a confirmation to her suspicion that Vera lied to them about their secret mission, Amelia feels utterly betrayed because despite their constant disagreements, she never thought her rival would stoop so low as to stab the rest of them in the back like this. Vathek empathizes with her sentiment, for he too learned just recently that it was Caleb of all people who played a vital role in making Kage an enemy by countermanding Elyon's orders and refused to confess it.
  • The rest of the group don't take the reveal much better, being devastated to find out that their friend tricked them into deserting and risking their lives for the sake of her personal vendetta.
• Spider changeling Sofia lost her mother and husband in shapeshifter purges, and after Phobos took over, she tried to give her daughter Maya a peaceful life by moving to the north and opening a clinic in Endfield. Though people were wary of them, they had enough respect for Sofia's medical skills to let them be, but after Phobos was overthrown, the trashing of the clinic forced Sofia and Maya to retreat further north and follow a squad of Phobos loyalists to Snowpoint. Despite her previous preconceptions about shapeshifters, Caroline admits that what happened to them was unfair.
• When Vera's judged in Chapter 30, Metalbeak ends up challenging her to knock him out of a circle drawn on the ground, which the injured girl keeps trying to do despite being effortlessly batted away again and again. Though still reeling from her betrayal, her former friends (all of whom she just verbally disowned) are worried for her and tell her to stop this hopeless battle. Even Amelia cannot find any satisfaction in seeing Vera fallen so low in her desperate need for revenge. When Vera resorts to trying to bite Metalbeak's hind leg, even Jade comments it's now becoming sad.
  • In Metalbeak's flashback of the day he killed Jesekiel Bexley, the Nest Butcher remained unrepentant of his actions when Metalbeak held him by the throat, but when little Vera arrived to his burning farm for a visit and started looking for him, he begged Metalbeak to spare her at least. When Vera reached them, Jesekiel apologized to her with teary eyes before Metalbeak tore his heart out and let the other Mogriffs mangle his body before the horrified girl's eyes. They then left her alone in the burning farm, though not before one of them, just to make a point, tore in half the dress Jesekiel intended to give her as a present. Vera's now wearing in her hair the black ribbon from that dress.
  • Metalbeak realizes that by killing Vera's grandfather before her eyes, he turned her into the new Butcher now struggling to stand before him and apologizes to her for that (but she rejects it). He also takes up Jade's offer of calling off her original decision to have a Leech Khan partially eat Vera's shadow and leave her in an ambiguous, awful condition, feeling the girl has suffered enough through her own self-destructive decisions.
  • Even Jade ends up feeling sorry for Vera; though she still thinks Jesekiel had a Karmic Death, Vera is likely a victim of circumstances, with no answer to the question if she'd turned out better or worse without her grandfather's death. It also makes Jade wonder if she'd end like Vera if she allowed her own desire for revenge against Elyon and the Guardians to control her.
• And then Chapter 31 shows that Vera learned absolutely nothing from this, as she escapes and starts a Prison Riot as a distraction so that she can go after Jade in the belief that killing her will enable her efforts to kill Metalbeak. She not only brushes off Tinsley and Caroline's warnings that doing so may lead to the Shadow Realm invading Meridian, but actually tries to kill the latter when she stands up to her, in the process wounding Maya, whom Caroline was trying to protect from Vera.
  • Vera makes it clear to Tinsley that she doesn't even care about risking her own mother to the Shadow Realm's wrath because she views it as betrayal of her grandfather that her mother never tried to avenge him.
• Vathek, upon reflecting on things, comes to the disturbing realization that many in the Rebellion may not have cared about the just nature of overthrowing Phobos and just saw it as means to their own agendas. He is understandably very frustrated at the thought, screaming in rage and punching a wall.
• Chapter 32 sees Vera's now former friends all confess to feeling sorrow for the end of their friendship, and mourn the person Vera once was before hate turned her into a monster.
• In Chapter 36, Phobos has a flashback from his childhood when he studied hard with the intention of becoming a good king and prove wrong the bad things people were already whispering about him. His mother, anticipating he wouldn't inherit the throne, tried to gently reassure him that king or no, he can do great things for Meridian, regardless of the other people's opinions. The memory leads to him ranting privately about his opinion that his mother never really loved him and was ready to cast him aside the moment Elyon was born.

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