My Wives are Beautiful Demons

Chapter 828: Sapphire needs to accept herself.

Sapphire and her old version remained staring at each other in the middle of the Genesis War, while around them the past continued roaring without caring about that impossible rupture. Angels fell in flames, fallen angels crossed enemy formations with black wings spread wide, demons shouted orders in ancient tongues, and the earth trembled beneath constant impacts of magic and metal. And yet, in that small space between the two of them, the world seemed to have shrunk. There was no longer an army, a burning sky, or blood across the field. There was only Sapphire before Sapphire, two versions of the same existence separated by twelve thousand years of choices, losses, loves, and concessions.The old version was the first to smile. The smile was exactly as Sapphire remembered it, though she did not want to admit it. Beautiful, arrogant, cruel, and full of an amusement that existed only because everything around it was considered inferior. Alter-Sapphire rested the spear on her shoulder, letting the huge blade tilt backward while the sword remained loose in her other hand, too light to seem threatening and too dangerous to be ignored. She looked at Sapphire as if she were observing a wound finally opened. "I waited a long time to see that defeated face," she said, her voice carrying cold pleasure.

Sapphire did not answer immediately. Her eyes moved over the figure before her with almost uncomfortable attention. They were the same and, at the same time, they were not. The current Sapphire carried the appearance of a woman around thirty-five years old, with mature beauty, firm posture, and eyes marked by decisions that could not belong to a young woman freshly emerged from eras of slaughter. Alter-Sapphire, on the other hand, was in the flower of her age, close to eighteen in appearance, with a still-insolent face, movements full of excess, and an almost offensive energy of youth. Everything about her seemed sharper, vainer, more willing to prove to the world that she existed to dominate it.

"I did not know you were here," Sapphire said at last.

Alter-Sapphire let out a low laugh without taking her eyes off her. "Yes, you did."

Sapphire narrowed her eyes.

"Do not make that expression at me," Alter continued, tilting her head slightly. "We both know that is a lie. You always knew I was here. Maybe not with this face, maybe not with this voice, maybe not waiting in the middle of this old war, but you knew. Today’s Sapphire is only the final remnant of the one who once came closest to becoming a Demon Goddess. You buried the rest beneath layers of romance, family, domestic peace, and pretty excuses."

Sapphire’s jaw tightened, but she remained silent. There were words she could use to deny it. She could say she had matured, that she had changed, that she had stopped being an assassin driven by vanity and excess. She could say that loving Vergil had not made her smaller, and that would be true. But there was another part of the accusation that was also true. She had buried things. She had allowed tools to rust. She had confused tranquility with absence of need.

Alter-Sapphire noticed the hesitation and smiled even wider. "This is not the first time you have tried to go back to who you are. Remember? The last time you felt this useless was against the Heavenly Dragon Empresses. You had that same face then too. The difference is that before, you still had enough rage to stand up quickly. Now you came to me and sat in lotus position, as if spiritual discipline could disguise shame."

Sapphire closed her fists.

She did not answer.

The battlefield seemed to grow louder around them, but perhaps it was only her own irritation making everything more sensitive. The memory of the Heavenly Dragon Empresses passed through her mind like an old blade. It was not only a defeat. It was one of the few times she had truly felt small before forces she could not overcome, and the impotence of that memory had the same bitter taste as the Abyss. Alter-Sapphire knew that because she was part of her. She did not need to guess. She simply touched wounds she knew from within.

"No answer, right?" Alter asked, taking a slow step around her. "Of course you do not have one. Because you know. I know. We know. You did not come here for advice, Sapphire. You came because you were humiliated by a bitch using Lust and realized that if you continue like this, one day Vergil will arrive too late. That is the part that truly terrifies you, is it not? It is not dying. It is being the weak point of someone you love."

Sapphire raised her eyes to her, and anger finally appeared deep in her gaze. Alter-Sapphire stopped walking and pointed the sword directly at her chest. The spear also moved, descending from her shoulder and aligning beside the blade, creating that absurd combination only she could use naturally. "Come," Alter said, her voice losing its mockery for an instant and taking on a truer weight. "Kill me and take your power back."

The current Sapphire remained motionless.

Difficult emotions crossed her face. Anger, yes. Shame too. But there was something else, something Alter-Sapphire had not expected to see there. Tiredness, perhaps. Or sadness. Or a silent understanding that this fight, if it happened the old way, would only repeat the same cycle that had broken her into pieces over the millennia. Sapphire looked at the blade pointed at her, then at the spear, and finally turned her gaze away.

In the distance, Sepphirothy continued fighting.

Her old version crossed the Genesis War with that silver and noble grandeur, the titanic staff spinning in her hands as if the weapon’s weight did not matter. Each movement crushed formations, broke lines, and imposed order where old Sapphire spread chaos. The chrome armor reflected fire, blood, and holy light without losing its visual purity, and the white hair moved behind her like a silent banner. It was beautiful in an almost irritating way. Not Sapphire’s extravagant beauty, but a beauty that seemed born from authority.

Alter-Sapphire followed her gaze.

The young version’s eyes narrowed when she noticed the focus. Then she smiled again, this time with sharper malice. "You envy her."

Sapphire kept looking at Sepphirothy for a few more seconds.

Then answered without trying to defend herself. "Yes."

Alter-Sapphire blinked once.

Then again.

The simple answer seemed to dismantle part of her posture. She had expected denial, wounded pride, anger, or some arrogant justification about not envying anyone. After all, they were the same person. Or at least they should have been. But they were not exactly the same. Alter-Sapphire was a memory, a phase, a version preserved at one specific point of existence. The Sapphire before her carried too much time to lie in the same way.

Sapphire looked back at Alter. "She is enviable, right?"

The young version fell silent.

For the first time, her smile failed.

"It is worse than I thought," Alter-Sapphire murmured, and the aura around her body began to change. A malignant, red-and-gold energy escaped from the ancient armor like war vapor, making the blades in her hands vibrate. "You really did go soft. The old Sapphire would have torn out her own tongue before admitting envy of someone."

"The old Sapphire also ran from everything that looked like weakness," Sapphire replied, with a calm that immediately irritated the other.

Alter-Sapphire’s aura grew. The field around them began to react. Nearby soldiers were pushed away by the pressure, and the sky above seemed to darken in response to the force emerging from her. Even so, Sapphire did not raise her guard. She did not summon a weapon. She did not assume a combat stance. She simply began to walk.

Not toward Alter.

Toward Sepphirothy.

"What are you doing?" Alter-Sapphire asked, her voice suddenly more tense.

Sapphire did not answer immediately. She continued walking through the mental battlefield, passing by bodies, flames, and fragments of ancient weapons. Alter-Sapphire tried to advance after her, but on the first step, her body wavered. The hand holding the sword trembled. The spear grew heavy. She looked at herself with irritation and surprise, as if that world had betrayed her will.

Sapphire stopped walking only when she had her back to Alter and faced the distant war. Her voice came out low, but firm. "We are twins."

Alter-Sapphire went still.

"Even so, I changed my entire face to deny my only original family," Sapphire continued. "I changed skin, features, presence, anything that could remind me that I had come from someone and that someone still mattered. I called that freedom. Maybe it was, a little. But it was also fear. I did not want to owe anything to anyone. I did not want to look like anyone. I did not want to admit that part of me existed before my own will."

For a second, Alter-Sapphire’s entire body changed.

Her red hair flickered, losing strength for an instant. The golden armor seemed to lose definition, and silver traces appeared across it like cracks from another past trying to emerge. Alter’s young face distorted slightly, not in physical pain, but in instability. The image of the exuberant warrior Sapphire wavered, revealing beneath it something older, closer to the origin both of them had tried to deny.

Alter gritted her teeth. "Shut up."

Sapphire turned to her.

"No."

The answer was simple and too calm. Alter-Sapphire seemed to hate that more than any insult. She raised the sword and spear again, trying to recover her previous form, but the mental world had already begun to change. The Genesis War continued around them, but the center of the landscape was bending toward the current Sapphire. Not through brute force. Through acceptance.

"Come on," Sapphire said, walking back toward her. "We are not going to fight."

Alter-Sapphire looked at her as if those words were an offense. "You came here to kill me."

"I thought so."

"Then fight."

"No."

Alter-Sapphire’s malignant aura expanded again, trying to impose the old logic. Power against power. Pride against shame. The young version wanted a battle because that was how she had always understood reconciliation: destroying what threatened her identity. But Sapphire now saw clearly. If she killed that version, she would only repeat the mistake that had weakened her. She did not need to destroy the old Sapphire. She needed to stop treating her as an enemy.

"We need to become one person again," Sapphire said.

Alter went rigid.

The phrase struck something deeper than any blow. Beneath the arrogance, the mockery, and the violence, there was fear. Not exactly the fear of disappearing, but the fear of being diluted into a version she despised. Alter-Sapphire did not want to become a domesticated memory, an old story kept for moments of shame. She wanted to exist. She wanted to fight. She wanted to laugh in the middle of war, carry spear and sword, wear gold and red, be beautiful and dangerous without apologizing.

Sapphire understood that.

"I am not going to erase you," she said. "I need you."

Alter-Sapphire’s face changed.

This time, there was no mockery.

Sapphire extended her hand.

"But you need me too. Because without me, you are only war without a home. Only pride without direction. Only strength looking for a place to bleed. I do not want to go back to being only you. I want you to become part of me again."

Alter-Sapphire looked at the extended hand. The spear trembled in her fingers. The sword was now pointed downward, without the same firmness as before. In the distance, the old Sepphirothy continued fighting, but her image no longer seemed like an accusation. It seemed like a memory. An origin. A mirror Sapphire no longer needed to hate in order to exist.

The young version took a deep breath.

"You became unbearable," she said.

Sapphire let out a low laugh, short and true. "We always were."

For a few seconds, Alter-Sapphire remained motionless. Then, slowly, she lowered the spear. The energy around her stopped trying to crush the field and began to be drawn inward, not as surrender, but as return. When she finally touched Sapphire’s hand, the entire mental world reacted.

Sapphire’s true power awakened all at once.

It did not come as an uncontrolled explosion. It came as the recovery of territory. The ancient armor, the spear, the sword, the arrogance, the current discipline, the love, the admitted envy, the fear of loss, the memory of Sepphirothy, the shame of the Abyss, and the queen who killed angels in the Genesis War began to align within her. Her body was possessed by a force ancient and new at the same time, something that did not reject the past nor completely surrender to it.

Alter-Sapphire smiled for the last time as a separate figure.

"Then do not fall again to someone pathetic," she said.

Sapphire held her hand more tightly.

"I will not."

Alter’s form began to dissolve into red and golden light, wrapping around Sapphire like organized fire. The ancient armor did not disappear completely. Its lines, its grandeur, and its ferocity sank into the soul of the current Sapphire, mixing with the woman who loved, the wife who protected, the queen who still existed, and the warrior who had forgotten her own pleasure in fighting.

When Sapphire opened her eyes inside her own mental world, there were no longer two.

There was only one.

And she was whole.