The ambulance siren was the background music to my escape. While the paramedics rushed into the construction site to rescue the watchman—who Lucas, in a masterstroke, had anonymously reported as a victim of a "gas leak"—I limped through the side streets of the East Zone, trying to look invisible.
The problem with having an arm made of solid light is that, even when you "turn it off," the sensation of residual power keeps humming on your skin. My human body ached. My knees complained about the impact on the concrete, and my boots were covered in red mud and mystical tar. But my spirit? Ah, my spirit sang.
The Fervor meter was warm in my chest. I hadn't just defeated an enemy; I had preserved Life. I acted in accordance with Aureus's Code. I saved the innocent, protected order, and didn't give in to the temptation to execute Vitor when he was vulnerable.
"Lucas, is it clean?" I asked, leaning against a graffiti-covered wall, waiting for the night bus.
"Clean is a strong word," his voice sounded exhausted in my earpiece. "I deleted the internal camera footage. The construction company's system will log it as a catastrophic electrical failure. But Dayanne... Vitor's face won't appear anywhere."
"What do you mean?"
"His father, Roberto Alencar. Before the ambulance even arrived, three black cars closed off the perimeter. Private security. They pulled Vitor out of there before the police showed up."
I clenched my left fist. Of course. The divine war doesn't happen on ancient battlefields; it happens in corporate boardrooms. Money is its own kind of magic in São Paulo.
"He's hurt, Lucas. Entropy ate his arm."
"And they have the best doctors money—and maybe magic—can buy. Don't underestimate their ability to heal themselves. It's something else that worries me."
The bus arrived, braking with that characteristic screech. I got on, scanned myBilhete Único[1] (which had a low balance, ironically), and went to the back.
"What worries you?" I whispered, watching the grey city pass by through the window.
"Vitor called you a 'hick.' He knew you were a Vet student. Dayanne, they don't need magic to hurt you. They know who you are in the mundane life."
The knot in my stomach returned. Not the mystical chill of Umbra, but the freezing cold of reality. I was a scholarship student, living in a rental, with a horse that ate more than I earned. Vitor was the heir to an empire.
I got home at almost three in the morning. My studio apartment in Bixiga seemed smaller than usual. I took off the dirty jacket, the smell of ozone and blood still impregnated in the fabric.
I went to the shower. The hot water helped relax my muscles, but my mind was racing. I looked at my right arm. Under the water, the golden light was dim, peaceful. Aureus is safe, reliable. He doesn't demand that I pull my teeth or bleed to have power. But He demands that I handle the strain.
I got out of the shower and grabbed my phone. There was an email notification.
The sender was the college administration. The subject: "Scholarship Review / Registration Irregularities."
My heart stopped.
I opened the message with a trembling hand. It was a formal, bureaucratic text, informing me that an "external audit" had pointed out inconsistencies in my financial documentation and that my full scholarship was preventively suspended pending investigation, which could take months.
No scholarship, no college. No college, no internship that paid for Goiás's stall.
I dropped the phone on the bed as if it were burning.
"Bastards..." I murmured.
Vitor didn't wait to heal before striking back. While I fought with lassos of light and shields, they fought with bureaucracy and influence. They wanted to strangle me financially, pull the rug out from under me, force me to quit or make a mistake.
If I felt hatred now... If I decided to go to the Alencar mansion and smash the gate with my arm of light to demand my scholarship back... that would be vengeance. It would be personal interest. It would be breaking the Code. And my power would weaken.
They were testing me. They wanted me to fall into Umbra through rage.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. I visualized the horse, the pasture, the light.
"You're going to have to do better than that," I said to the empty room.
I picked up the phone again and called Lucas.
"They attacked, Lucas. In my civilian life. They cut my scholarship."
There was silence on the other end. Then, the sound of keys being punished.
"Hang in there, country girl. They have money, but we are the resistance. If they want to play dirty with paperwork, they're going to find out that hackers know how to forge audits too. Nobody messes with Team Light."
I smiled, weak but sincere.
The war had changed phases. I was no longer just protecting innocents from monsters in the subway. I was fighting for my right to exist in this city.
Tomorrow I would sort out the scholarship. Tomorrow I would figure out the rent. But today, I had won. And no one, not even the Alencar family, could take away the certainty that that watchman went home alive.
I turned off the bedroom light. In the dark, my right arm glowed softly, a reminder that, even in the densest night, I was never alone.
[1] Bilhete Único is an electronic ticketing system that unifies all ticketing for transportation into a single system, thus generating benefits for its users, such as integrated fares; that is, the Bilhete Único offers discounts or fare exemptions when using transportation within a specific time period.