Tear Jerker / Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters

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• A horrified Jade, who can only watch as reality and her loved ones fall to pieces around her, bites her thumb and uses her blood to write a desperate command on the last piece of the Book of Ages to try and fix things.
• When Will and Jade are captured by Phobos's forces, Jade is Forced to Watch as Phobos tortures Will in an attempt to force her to hand over the Heart.
• Jade having to listen to Caleb expressing Fantastic Racism against shapeshifters, when she's recently become one herself.
• Uncle seems to blame himself for not being able to stop Cassidy's death and Nerissa's Start of Darkness.
• Nerissa's Start of Darkness came when she killed Yua the Banshee, who was only trying to help her people against a plague.
• Although she eventually realizes that she has nothing to fear, Yan Lin worries for a time that Will and Jade are following in Nerissa's footsteps.
• Rhogular not only rapes Lady Ishol, but tells her husband about it just to rub what he did in further.
• Jade is kidnapped and tortured by Tharquin, a member of the Rebellion that hates shapeshifters with a passion, and while she's rescued and kills her torturer, the "Mage"/Nerissa's healing leaves her with heavy scars on her back, deliberately on her part as part of some twisted "lesson" for her.
  • While Tharquin is a thoroughly unpleasant individual, his views are the result of his father abusively beating them into him as a child to the point that, even as an adult, he's conditioned enough that when Jade's defiant taunts trigger him, he turns the mutilation back on himself.
• Caleb's reunion with his father, who has since become a Broken Pedestal to him, quickly turns into a screaming match, as Caleb calls Julian out on all his amoral actions as rebel leader, while Julian desperately tries to justify himself.
• Elyon's mental tailspin when she realizes that everything she was told about Phobos is true.
• Caleb is corrupted from overusing the Sword of Thanatos.
• Uncle being killed by Phobos. A significant portion of the post-battle chapter is everyone mourning him in their own way.
  • Jade's parents don't show up for the funeral because they couldn't be bothered to cancel a business meeting. And then they have the gall to berate Jackie for having the funeral in America, showing just how out of touch they are with their family.
• Jonathan Ludmoore is a good man seeking to serve his Queen and advance Meridian's medical knowledge and healing magics, but after he accidentally discovers a Dark Secret in Kandrakar's archives, he's exiled and sent to Earth, cursed to never be able to speak of what he's learned to another or they will die.
• Nerissa's Start of Darkness is shown in detail, and we're shown how this once idealistic and heroic woman began Slowly Slipping Into Evil until accidentally killing Cassidy (her girlfriend in this story) while trying to retrieve the Heart from her. She's then left locked away alone for years with nothing but her own grief and guilt driving her insane.
• Jade spends weeks wandering the wilderness of Meridian alone, desperately trying to distract herself from her grief at Uncle's death. It's only after a near-death experience at the vengeful Tracker's hands that she has an epiphany that allows her to let herself go back to Earth, and even then, she's still so traumatized by everything that she's willing to embrace being a monster in order to be the protector that she thinks Meridian needs.
  • The villagers Jade meets are refugees from the Capital who fled in the lead-up to the Final Battle. All have lost loved ones, and question if Elyon's new reign will actually do anything to improve their lives.

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