Being alone in a dark warehouse with a three-meter-tall avatar of entropy wasn't exactly in my career plan when I enrolled in Veterinary Medicine. But, as they say in my land: if you enter the pasture with a wild bull, there's no point complaining about the fence being low.
The creature had no face, but it was hungry. I could feel it in my soul. It emanated a cold that made the frost of Minas Gerais feel like summer. The shadows that composed its body swirled like dirty oil in a drain, seeking something to undo, to rot.
"Bulwark!" I shouted, raising my arm.
A wall of solid light materialized between us. The creature charged, hitting the shield with two fists that looked like pitch mallets.
Crrreeeec!
The sound was like shattering glass. My shield, which had held back chains and bullets, trembled. Fissures of "darkness" began to spread across the golden geometry of my defense. Umbra magic is corrosive; it doesn't just hit, it infects.
"You're strong..." I growled, feeling my feet slide backward on the concrete, my boots leaving marks on the floor.
The creature roared again, a sound of metal being ripped apart, and struck again. The shield shattered. Shards of solid light flew and disappeared before touching the floor. The force of the impact threw me against a pile of pallets.
I tasted blood. My ribs protested.
The beast advanced, slow, savoring the moment. It fed on chaos, on pain. And I was giving it exactly that: brute resistance. I was trying to impose Order through force, but force against entropy is a losing battle. Entropy always wins in the end, because everything tends toward chaos.
I looked at my right arm. The light was failing, flickering like an old lamp. Fear was trying to creep in.
"Aureus is Preservation. Aureus is Healing."
The words came back to mind. I had always used my Gift as armor or as a tether. Always as something physical, hard. But the light of Aureus is also restoration.
The monster prepared for the final strike. It raised its shadow claws, ready to drain the rest of my vitality, just as Vitor wanted to do with the watcher.
I closed my eyes for a second.
I couldn't defeat it by hitting it. I had to defeat it by... fixing it. That thing was an aberration, a violation of nature, an error in the code of reality. And what do you do with an infected wound? You clean it.
The fear vanished, replaced by a deep calm. An acceptance. I was going to expose myself.
"Hey!" I called out, lowering what was left of my shield. I stood, vulnerable, with my arms open. "You want life? You want vitality?"
The creature paused, confused in its primitive mind. Prey that offers itself?
"Come and get it."
It lunged at me. The shadow claws pierced my shoulders (the flesh, the left side). The pain was hallucinating, an ice that burned. I felt my life force begin to be sucked out.
But this was a Sacrifice. And personal sacrifice for the group or for protection is the evolution trigger for an Aureus Chosen.
My Fervor meter didn't just fill up; it overflowed.
With the creature connected to me, sucking my life, I grabbed its shadow arms with both my hands—the one of flesh and the one of light.
"Now you're mine," I whispered.
Instead of creating a barrier, I reversed the flow. I channeled all the accumulated Fervor, all the faith in goodness and order, and injected it directly into the mass of entropy. It wasn't a Circle evolution, not even a new power. I just made my existing weapon—the tether—a tool for infusion. A Blessed infusion.
"Purification!"
My right arm became incandescent. It wasn't a light that illuminated the environment; it was a light that penetrated matter. The golden glow ran through the monster's black "veins" like liquid gold.
The creature screamed. Not in triumph, but in agony. Entropy needs chaos to exist. The light of Aureus brought absolute Order into its body. I was forcing stability into a being made of instability.
"Go back to the hole you crawled out of!" I yelled, ignoring the pain in my bleeding shoulders. I increased the intensity.
The Avatar's body began to crack. Beams of light shot out from within it, tearing the darkness. The shadows weren't being violently destroyed; they were being healed until they ceased to be shadows. The stolen energy, the pitch, the blood... everything dissolved into inert dust.
The monster tried to break free, but my grip was iron-tight.
"Hold on, Dayanne... hold on..." I repeated to myself, feeling my consciousness waver.
In a final, silent flash, the creature imploded. There was no fiery explosion. There was just a puff, and the three-meter giant dissolved into a shower of fine, harmless ashes.
I fell to my knees. Silence returned to the warehouse.
My vision was blurry. My shoulders burned where the claws had touched, but the wound was already cauterizing, the residual light of my Gift closing the flesh.
"Dayanne!"
I heard Mel's voice from afar, echoing. Footsteps running on the concrete.
I felt hands holding me before I could hit my face on the floor. It was Jão. Mel was beside him, eyes wide, staring at the pile of ashes that was once an incarnate nightmare.
"You're alive..." Mel seemed disbelieving. "What did you do? That thing was going to devour you."
I smiled weakly, as the light of my right arm diminished to a soft, vigilant glow.
"I gave it indigestion," I murmured. "Too much fiber. Too much light."
Lucas spoke in my earpiece, his voice trembling with relief.
"Dayanne? The entropy reading is zeroed out. The Pillar... it's gone. You cleaned the area. Literally."
I tried to stand, but my legs didn't obey. The cost of the Fervor had been high. I hadn't broken my Code, but I had pushed my body to the limit.
"The mercenaries?" I asked.
"Tied up outside," Mel replied, wiping a smudge of soot from my face. "No one died. Thanks to your stubbornness in following the rules."
I looked up at the warehouse ceiling. For the first time in weeks, I felt the scales had balanced. The Alencar family had money and monsters. But we had something they didn't understand: the capacity to bleed for others and turn that pain into healing.
"Let's get out of here," I requested, closing my eyes. "I think I deserve some pão de queijo[1]."
Mel laughed, helping me put my good arm over her shoulder.
"You deserve the whole bakery, country girl."
We left the warehouse, leaving behind only ashes and the echo of a light that even the deepest darkness could not extinguish. The battle of the port was won. But I knew that, somewhere in a luxury penthouse, Vitor Alencar was tasting the bitter flavor of defeat.
And this time, he would know: the veterinarian bit back.
[1] Pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread) is a popular, small, round, baked roll from Brazil, made with tapioca starch (cassava flour) and cheese, resulting in a naturally gluten-free snack that's crispy outside and chewy/moist inside, perfect for breakfast or a snack