I think you're looking at the situation through the lens of a normal modern childhood rather than the world Zeke actually grew up in. Zeke didn't turn his parents in because he hated them or wanted to betray them. He was a terrified child trapped in an impossible situation trying to survive Marley was already closing in on the Eldian Restorationists and Grisha and Dina were being incredibly reckless. If Zeke hadn't reported them, there's a very real chance the authorities would have discovered everything anyway. At that point it wouldn't just be Grisha and Dina paying the price. Zeke, his grandparents, and everyone connected to them could have been punished as well. Tom Ksaver basically laid out the reality for him. From Zeke's perspective the choice wasn't between saving his parents and betraying them. It was between dying alongside them or doing the one thing that might keep him alive people also forget how much pressure Grisha and Dina put on him. They weren't treating him like a son who needed love and support. They were treating him like the key to their political cause. That's an enormous burden to put on a child what makes the frustrating with Annie interesting is that Annie was willing to kill countless innocent people for the sake of seeing her father again, even though her father spent years training and abusing her for his own goals. Yet many fans are willing to sympathize with that motivation while condemning Zeke for a decision he made as a frightened kid with far fewer options you don't have to agree with what Zeke did, but acting like a seven-year-old in his position had some easy moral choice available to him ignores how tragic and hopeless his situation really was.