I woke up with the rooster crowing, but it felt like I had slept for ten minutes. My whole body was complaining. The bed was warm, but my left shoulder was freezing, as if I had slept with the window open in the middle of a southern winter. It was the price of Devotion. Using the Gift requires faith, and faith, when used as fuel, burns through your physical reserves.
I got up, drank a black coffee strong enough to wake the dead, and swallowed two painkillers. The arm of light was gone, of course. In the material world, I was just the usual Dayanne: an empty sleeve and a lot of stubbornness.
Before leaving for college, I detoured to the upper pasture, where the fight from the night before had ended.
Goiás was grazing near the fence, calm, as if he hadn't turned into a war mount hours earlier. But the scenery... ah, the scenery told a different story.
The yellow Ipê, the tree where the suited Herald had slammed his back, was dead.
Not "wilted." Dead.
The leaves were brown and dry on the ground. The trunk looked like it had been struck by lightning, but without any scorch marks; the wood was gray, porous, crumbling to the touch.
"Spiritual necrosis," I murmured, peeling off a piece of the rotten bark. "What happens there, reflects here."
It sent a chill down my spine. If that "Faceless Man" had touched me or Goiás with that rotten energy, what would have happened to our flesh?
I took the pickup truck and drove to Belo Horizonte. The road felt longer, and every tree shadow seemed to hide a Wraith. I was paranoid. The radio was playing country music, but my head was filled with the buzzing of the Call.
I arrived at UFMG late for Pharmacology class. I sneaked into the auditorium, trying not to draw attention, but it's hard to be invisible when you're the "one-armed girl who always wears dirty boots."
I sat in the back. The teacher was talking about antibiotics, but my mind was drifting. I looked at the students around me. Normal kids. Worried about grades, parties, internships. None of them knew the sky outside was storm-gray. None of them knew that the depression plaguing the dorms could be a nest of Wraiths feeding on loneliness.
"Psst."
I looked to my side.
It was a guy I had never seen in this class. He didn't look like a vet student. He wore a crisp white dress shirt, buttoned to the neck, and dress pants. His hair was cut in a perfect military fade. He stood out starkly from the flip-flop and shorts crowd.
"You dropped this," he whispered, sliding a Bic pen toward my desk.
I hadn't dropped anything.
I looked at the pen. And then at his eyes.
They were blue. But not a normal blue. There was a shine there, deep in the iris, that reminded me of the color of my own arm when I activated the Gift.
"Thanks," I replied dryly, taking the pen with my right hand.
When our fingers brushed, I felt a shock. Not static. It was a vibration, like touching a low-voltage exposed wire.
The buzzing in my ear spiked.
Another Chosen One?
He smiled. A polite, trained smile.
"The Golden Testament says that 'the burden is lighter when shared,' Sister Dayanne."
I froze. The pen almost dropped from my hand. No one at the college knew about my religion, much less my "war name."
"Who are you?" I whispered, a tone of threat in my voice.
"Lucas. I'm from the Ecclesia." He spoke quietly, staring ahead as if paying attention to the class. "We are monitoring the Legion's activity in your region. The energy spike last night... was impressive. For an amateur."
Amateur?
I felt my face burn. I had faced a Herald alone, and he had the nerve to call me an amateur?
"Listen here, pal..." I started, but he cut me off.
"Don't look now, but there is a Legion observer in the hallway." He adjusted his glasses. "They know who you are. That Herald marked your aura. You shine like a lighthouse on the Frontier now."
I glanced at the auditorium's glass door.
Someone was standing out there. An ordinary man, dressed in the campus janitor uniform. But he wasn't cleaning. He was standing still, staring fixatedly at me. And behind him, in my peripheral vision that was starting to pick up the Veil, I saw the shadow twist, forming horns of smoke.
Lucas slid a small folded piece of paper to me.
"The Ecclesia can offer protection. Sanctuary, logistics... support prayer. But you need to get out of the open field. Alone, you are prey. With us, you are a soldier."
The teacher changed the slide.
"Dayanne?" she called from the front. "Can you tell me the mechanism of action of tetracyclines?"
The world stopped. The demonic janitor at the door. The church soldier beside me recruiting me. The professor asking for the answer.
I took a deep breath. The double life was starting to collide.
"Inhibition of protein synthesis, Professor," I answered, without taking my eyes off the janitor outside.
This Lucas guy smirked.
"Good answer. Now, decide if you want to inhibit evil or be consumed by it. Meet me at the campus chapel in twenty minutes."
The bell rang. The janitor vanished. Lucas stood up, grabbed his backpack, and left, blending into the crowd as if he were just another student.
I looked at the paper in my hand. It had a symbol drawn on it: a sword piercing a sun. The crest of the Sanctuary Guard.
I crumpled the paper. I didn't like taking orders. But if the Legion was inside the college, Goiás couldn't help me here.
I needed allies. Or at least, ammo.