Sapphrine

The first thing Sapphrine ever felt was confusion.

She blinked. Realized she had eyes. Looked down. Realized she had hands. They trembled as she touched her face, her arms, her chest—all solid, all real, all her.

"I..." Her voice surprised her. She had a voice. "What...?"

A man knelt before her, tears streaming down his face. He looked exhausted. Drained. But his eyes—dark and desperate—held something like hope.

"You're real!" he gasped, laughing with relief that bordered on hysteria. "You're actually—"

"Who am I?" she whispered.

The question hung in the air. The man froze, staring at her as if he'd never considered it before.

"I... I'll call you Sapphrine. After the sapphire eyes of the man who left me here." He paused, looking at her hazel eyes. "Your eyes are hazel, but... close enough?"

She smiled. "Sapphrine. I... I like that."

She didn't know it then, but that smile—that first, genuine smile—would be one of the last she'd ever give freely.

For three years, Sapphrine knew happiness.

She learned the world with Clandareth. They explored mountains and forests. They created children together—a slow, careful process that sometimes resulted in... complications. But they learned. They adapted. They built a life.

She watched sunsets and thought they were beautiful. She felt the warmth of Clandareth's hand in hers and thought she understood what love meant.

Those three years were the only time in Sapphrine's existence when she was allowed to simply be.

Then Clandareth decided he wanted to be King.

Sapphrine woke one night to find Clandareth gone. She found him outside, hands glowing with magic, eyes wild with something she'd never seen before.

Ambition.

"I'm going to make us a kingdom," he said. "An empire."

"We don't need—"

"I want to be KING."

The raw hunger in his voice made her skin crawl. But what could she say? What could she do? She was created from his magic. She existed because he needed her. Who was she to deny him his dreams?

By dawn, one hundred and forty-seven guardians stood before them. Perfect. Flawless. Beautiful.

And half of them had red eyes that promised cruelty.

"Perfect evil," the woman named Vexria purred. "Just like he asked for."

Sapphrine grabbed Clandareth's arm. "What did you do?"

But he didn't have an answer. He'd wanted perfection without defining what perfection meant.

And now they all had to live with the consequences.

Sapphrine stood on the walls of Laderan's capital and watched the battle unfold below. The Perfectly Good guardians—Albis with his silver sword, Merideth with her healing magic, Thorne with his unbreakable shield—fought against the Perfectly Evil.

Blood stained the earth. Magic crackled across the sky. And Sapphrine could do nothing but watch as the people her husband created tore each other apart.

By sunset, it was over. The evil guardians lay dead. One hundred and forty-seven corpses.

Albis stood among the bodies, chest heaving. "It is done."

Sapphrine felt relief flood through her. It was over. The nightmare was—

The first corpse twitched.

Her blood went cold.

Vexria stood. Not alive—there was no breath, no heartbeat. But standing. Moving. Her eyes pools of darkness. A scream tore from her throat—a sound that wasn't human, wasn't guardian, wasn't anything that should exist.

All across the battlefield, the dead rose.

One hundred and forty-seven souls with nowhere to go. No Atherflow to take them. Twisted by the void where death should have been. Corrupted into something new.

Daemons.

Sapphrine watched from the walls as her people fled. As gentle Merideth was torn apart by three daemon-things. As Albis screamed the retreat. As the creatures that fed on fear gave chase.

That night, she held Clandareth as he wept. "I didn't know," he whispered. "I didn't know."

But ignorance didn't undo what was done.

Weeks passed. Months. The daemons attacked every night. The guardians fortified the city, but they were losing ground. Losing people. Losing hope.

And then Clandareth came to her with a book.

"I found it in Renaldo's library," he said. His hands shook as he opened it. "Eldritch magic. Ancient. Forbidden. But powerful, Sapphrine. Powerful enough to—"

"No." She grabbed his wrists. "Clandareth, no. That magic is—"

"Our only chance."

He pulled away. Opened the book. And began to read.

Sapphrine watched over the following weeks as her husband's eyes began to shift toward red. As darkness crept into his mind. As the man she loved became something else.

She went to Renaldo, desperate for answers.

Renaldo stood in his chamber, sapphire eyes gleaming with that familiar detached curiosity. He looked at Sapphrine the way a scientist looks at a specimen.

"What can counter Eldritch magic?" she begged. "Please, there has to be—"

"Order."

Hope flared in her chest. "Order? I can—"

"But it will require much more work and sacrifice than that of Chaos." His voice was clinical. Cold. "Because all things naturally go to chaos. Order is only achieved through an input of a lot of work."

Sapphrine's throat tightened. "How much work?"

"How much are you willing to give?"

The question hung between them. Renaldo didn't elaborate. Didn't explain. Just watched with those sapphire eyes to see what she would choose.

And Sapphrine realized: he wanted to see if she'd do it.

This was part of his experiment.

Sapphrine spent three days locked in her chambers, researching everything Renaldo had left her. Ancient texts about Order magic. About balance. About the cost of true control.

The answer was horrifying in its simplicity:

To create perfect Order, she had to remove chaos. And the greatest source of chaos in any being?

Emotion.

Love. Joy. Sorrow. Compassion. Rage. Fear. All the messy, beautiful, chaotic feelings that made life worth living.

She would have to give them up. All of them. Forever.

And worse—she would have to make her entire kingdom do the same.

On the fourth day, Sapphrine stood before the grand hall and addressed her people.

"I have found a way to stop the daemons," she said. Her voice didn't shake. She couldn't afford for it to shake. "But it requires a sacrifice. From all of us."

Albis stepped forward. "What kind of sacrifice?"

She met his eyes. Silver. Hopeful. Still capable of feeling hope.

"Your emotions. All of them. We will create a staff—the Grand Keeper's Staff—that will absorb our capacity to feel. In exchange, we will gain the Order magic needed to trap the daemons forever."

Silence.

Then Thorne spoke, his voice rough. "You're asking us to stop feeling?"

"I'm asking you to survive."

The question she didn't ask—the question that haunted her even then: Is survival without feeling really survival? Or is it just... existing?

It took seven days to build the staff. Seven days of Sapphrine channeling every ounce of Order magic she could muster. Seven days of knowing what was coming.

On the eighth day, she stood before it.

The Grand Keeper's Staff pulsed with cold, perfect light. At its heart, an orb—empty, waiting, hungry for what she was about to give it.

Sapphrine took a breath. Felt the air fill her lungs. Felt her heart beating. Felt the love she still had for Clandareth, twisted and corrupted as he'd become.

She raised her hand to the orb.

And touched it.

The sensation was like falling into ice water. A cold that started at her fingertips and spread through her entire body. She felt it drain from her—every memory of joy, every flutter of excitement, every moment of tenderness.

She felt love leave her. Not the memory of it—she could still recall the idea of loving Clandareth. But the feeling itself? Gone. Ripped away. Absorbed into the orb.

When she pulled her hand back, she looked at the world through new eyes.

Grey. Ashy. Like stardust that had long since burned out.

She felt... nothing.

And it was perfect.

Clandareth burst into the chamber. "Sapphrine! What did you—" He saw the staff. Saw her eyes. "No. No. You can't ask me to—"

"I'm not asking," she said. Her voice was calm. Logical. "This is the only way to save our people."

"I won't do it!" He backed away. "I won't give up—"

"Then you condemn everyone to death."

They stared at each other. Husband and wife. Creator and created. One still capable of feeling desperation. One now incapable of feeling anything at all.

Clandareth's hand trembled as he reached for the orb.

And he burst into flames.

Sapphrine watched her husband burn.

She knew she should feel something. Horror. Grief. Panic. But there was nothing. Just cold observation as Clandareth's Eldritch-corrupted soul met the pure Order magic and ignited.

His screams echoed through the chamber. The smell of burning flesh filled the air. He clawed at his skin as the flames consumed him from the inside out.

And Sapphrine stood there. Calm. Collected. Watching.

When it was over, when Clandareth lay dead on the chamber floor, she turned to the guards.

"Remove the body," she said. "Then summon all the guardians. Every single one."

"My Queen—"

"That was not a request."

The old Sapphrine—the one who could still feel—would have wept. Would have fallen to her knees beside Clandareth's corpse and screamed her grief to the heavens.

But the old Sapphrine was gone. Fed to the orb. Sacrificed for the mathematics of survival.

What stood in the chamber now was something else entirely.

The Guardian Queen.

Every guardian assembled in the grand hall. Hundreds of them. All looking to Sapphrine for guidance, for hope, for leadership.

She stood before them with the Grand Keeper's Staff in hand, eyes grey as ash.

"You will each approach the orb," she said. "You will sacrifice your emotions. This is not optional. This is the price of survival."

Most obeyed. One by one, they touched the orb. One by one, their eyes turned grey. One by one, they became perfect instruments of Order.

Until Albis stepped forward.

"No."

Sapphrine's grey eyes locked on him. "Excuse me?"

"I refuse." Ten others stepped beside him. Eleven guardians, standing in defiance. "I refuse to give you what I value most."

"Then you refuse to save your people."

"I refuse to stop being my people!" Albis's voice cracked. "What you're asking—it's not survival. It's death. Just a slower kind."

Silence stretched across the hall. The other guardians—grey-eyed now, emotionless—watched without reaction. Waiting to see what the Queen would do.

Sapphrine could have killed them. Should have killed them, by the cold logic that now governed her thoughts. They were a threat to Order. A source of chaos.

But something—some last echo of who she'd been—stopped her.

"Strip them of their titles," she commanded. "Take their powers. Cast them out as mortals."

Albis met her eyes one last time. "I pity you, Sapphrine. Not because you'll die. But because you'll keep living."

The words should have hurt. Would have hurt, once.

Now they just... were.

What Sapphrine didn't know—what Renaldo never told her—was that he secretly restored the Eleven's powers and sent them away. Lyra offered them sanctuary in Nexus.

The Eleven became the only guardians who could still feel. Who could still love. Who could still ask the question Sapphrine had stopped being able to answer.

"Is existence without emotion really living?"

With the Grand Keeper's Staff complete, Sapphrine and her emotionless guardians hunted the daemons systematically. They trapped them. Bound them. Sealed them away where they could never again threaten the living.

It took months. But they succeeded.

And then came the moment that would define her legacy forever.

A choice no mother should ever have to make.

But she was no longer a mother who could feel love. She was the Guardian Queen. And when the test came—when she had to choose between her son and her kingdom—she made the only choice her grey eyes could see.

The old Sapphrine would have found another way. Would have fought to save him. Would have refused to give up.

But the old Sapphrine was gone.

What happened to Darth is a story of its own—one of possession, betrayal, and a mother's ultimate sacrifice.

When it was over—when the daemons were sealed, when order was restored, when the kingdom was saved—Sapphrine stood alone in her chamber.

She looked in the mirror. Saw grey stardust eyes staring back at her. Eyes that had once been hazel. Eyes that had once held love and hope and joy.

She tried to remember what it felt like to smile. To laugh. To hold Clandareth's hand and feel warmth.

But there was nothing. Just the memory of the idea of those things. Like reading about emotions in a book written in a language she used to speak but had long since forgotten.

Her kingdom was saved.

But at what cost?

The Price of Order

Sapphrine's story is not one of victory.

It is a story of what we lose when we choose survival over living.

When we sacrifice the chaos of emotion for the cold perfection of Order.

When we become so focused on existing that we forget what it means to be.

She saved everyone.

And lost herself completely.