Sapphire Rosaria/Synopsis

* Young
* Old

## History

400 years ago, in the Aiyeria Empire, Sapphire lived in the Temple of Daybreak and served the goddess of magic, Ixona, as a priestess or Celestial Harbinger. She was not born in an affluent family and was chosen at 6 years of age, freed from any legal ties and obligations to her birth family, and enrolled in Ixona's priestly college of twelve priestesses. She was supervised by not only a senior Harbinger, but also the emperor.

She supervised Ixona's pool, as if any Harbinger allowed the pool to run dry, it was feared that it would bring about the end of the empire. Water was thought to be the start of all life in Aiyeria and thereby was considered sacred. She studied and received better education than those in the noble class, as well as trained to receive a fragment of Ixona's power. All twelve of the priestesses linked their souls together so as to split Ixona's power, as one person alone could not withstand such divinity.

Aiyeria was a land filled with magic users, and so long as the Harbingers did their duty to preserve the One Magic, magic and life would continue to grow and prosper. Celestial Harbingers possessed the most vast library of magic known to man, documenting every single magic thought possible. There, they spent much of their time, reading and mastering different kinds of magic.

Harbinger tasks included the tending of Ixona's sacred pool, guarding her store-room and its contents; collecting ritually pure fire from a sacred hearth; preparing substances used in public rites, presiding at the Harbinger and attending other festivals. Ixona's temple was essentially the temple of all Aiyeria and its citizens; it was open all day and all night. The Harbingers regularly swept and cleansed Ixona's shrine, functioning as surrogate housekeepers, in a religious sense, for all of Aiyeria, and maintaining and controlling the connections between Aiyeria's public and private religion. So long as Ixona's pool and priestesses remained untouched, the walls of Aiyeria would remain intact. The Harbinger's flesh belonged to Aiyeria, and when they died, whatever the cause of their death, their bodies remained within the city's boundary.

The presence of Celestial Harbingers was required for numerous public ceremonies, to which they were transported instantaneously with the power of Ixona. They were deemed uncorrupted by sights forbidden to all other upper-class Aiyerian women, and had reserved ring-side seating at public games and stage-side seats at theatrical performances. Harbingers also had the power to free condemned prisoners and slaves by touching them – if a person sentenced to death saw a Harbinger on their way to their execution, they were automatically pardoned, as long as the encounter had not been pre-arranged.

The chastity of Harbingers was thought to have a direct bearing on the health of the Aieryian state. If Ixona's pool went dry, Aiyeria was no longer protected; the water could only be replenished using the correct rituals and the purest materials. Extinction of the sacred fire through Harbinger negligence could be expiated by the scourging or beating or the offender, carried out "in the dark and through a curtain to preserve their modesty". Loss of chastity, however, represented a broken oath. It was permanent, irreversible; no expiation could restore it or compensate its loss. Sapphire watched in horror as her sisters were drowned in the Sinners' Bath.

Though Sapphire enjoyed her life, when she was once assaulted in the middle of the street. This was seen as blasphemy to Aiyeria itself as well as its gods, and the man was slaughtered on the spot and fed to the dogs. When she was 14, the pool ran dry. She was caught, tried, and found guilty—however, before she was sentenced to death, a cult of magicians ransacked the temple and killed the eleven other Harbingers. Through this, the One Magic was not distributed, but rather kept uniformly in one person—her.

Sapphire, unable to fathom the death of her sisters, went mad and massacred them all as she lost control of her magic. The pool went out for a time over than five minutes, and the Doom rained upon Aiyeria. Earthquakes demolished all infrastructure and magic burst at the seams. She was cursed by Ixona for allowing the empire to die; cursed with immortality and the robbing of her vitality. However, the god of fate saw the fall of Aiyeria as a necessary evil, and though not able to lift her curse, imbued the land with divinity so she could continue living. So long as she kept living there and absorbing it, her life would continue on.

She lived in the ruins of Aiyeria for ages, resuming her life of tending to the fallen structures and guarding the hidden treasures, which proved to be futile, as the lands of Aiyeria became toxic and inhabitable. She was granted a visitor, one day, who was able to survive the harsh climate. He was named Aion and he vowed to become the strongest wizard and they grew close, with him visiting every few months. As he did, he seemed to continue on growing and changing whilst she remained stagnant. He achieved his goal of becoming a Horseman, one of the four greatest wizards in the Pergrande Kingdom.

They fell in love and he asked her to leave with him. And so she waited, for years and years, as the leaves upon the trees changed from green to orange and to red. Vowing to never let herself be betrayed again, she became a staunch worshipper of the gods once more, and they taught her the secrets of her magic. She left Aiyeria and departed for Fiore, deciding to change her life for the better. She was recruited as a member of Fairy Tail by Makarov and joined the guild.