Dawn came thin and metallic over the academy, the sky a sheet of pale indigo that made the tide‑light along the canal look like a private pulse. Word of the canal extraction had already threaded through the dorms: a nod in the mess, a clipped "well done" from a drill sergeant, a ledger note that would sit in some file labeled provisional rotations. Attention moved like a current—quiet, inevitable. Arjun felt it at his back as he laced his boots and checked the strap on his satchel. The Astraeon Veil at his throat was a small, steady warmth; the halo of glyphs behind his eyes was folded, private.
Morning drills were blunt and exact. Cadets ran footing courses across tide‑light tiles that shifted underfoot, practiced silent movement through mistbind nets, and learned to read the thin red threads that fatigue left on a mind‑screen. Instructors barked timing and cadence; the academy's pedagogy was a machine of repetition. Arjun kept his hands steady and his breathing even. The micro‑stitch he'd made at Trial Day had become a ledger entry; the ledger entry had become a provisional rotation. The academy had scheduled him for supervised resonance drills that afternoon—Golem‑bond anchors, Phoenix‑root medics, and a timed extraction exercise.
Sigil Theory that morning was a lecture on limits. The professor—an older woman with a voice like gravel and a habit of asking questions that cut through jargon—spoke about sheltered spaces and law. "A corridor can save a life," she said, "and a corridor can hide a crime. The difference is consent, maintenance, and who pays the cost." She paced the front of the hall and made the cadets imagine a stitched lane used to smuggle contraband. The class hummed with uneasy interest. Arjun felt the rectangle of light behind his eyes tighten; the fatigue marker from Trial Day still showed a faint red thread. The Astraeon Veil's halo pulsed once, as if to remind him that every stitch left a trace.
Captain Rhea Sol found him after class without fanfare. She did not praise him; she asked a single, practical question: Can you hold a stitch while someone tries to break it? Her tone carried no accusation—only the weight of a test. He said he would learn. She signed him onto a three‑day rotation: endurance drills, co‑anchoring with a Golem‑bond, and medevac practice with a Phoenix‑root medic. The schedule was precise and unsentimental. No unsupervised stitches in civilian zones, the card read. Reflective logs required after each activation.
The Golem‑bond they assigned was a slow, patient thing—broad shoulders of composite stone and a face like a mason's block. It moved with the deliberate certainty of something built to hold. The Phoenix‑root medic was quieter, hands steady and eyes that watched both body and mind‑screen. Together they made a team that could press a stitch into place and nurse the bearer through the fatigue that followed.
On the second day the instructors staged a contested extraction. Smoke charges popped at the perimeter, and trainees playing civilians shouted and scattered. The exercise was designed to force a choice: hold the corridor and risk collapse, or collapse it early and force the team to improvise. Arjun felt the halo uncoil. The mind‑screen flashed a warning: Stamina drain increasing. Fatigue trace deepening. He named the stones because the screen asked him to name what he would hold. The Astraeon Veil unrolled a narrow ribbon of starlight between two broken slabs—no wider than a shoulder, but solid enough for a stretcher.
Sparks lanced the ribbon when a simulated cutter found the seam. The stitch thinned to a thread. The Golem‑bond slammed its palms to the edges and pressed, grinding its weight into the corridor's borders. The Phoenix‑root medic moved through with a lantern and a steady step, guiding the stretcher along the sheltered path. Arjun felt the fatigue like a hot pressure behind his eyes. He could have collapsed the stitch and forced the team to run the gauntlet. He could have let the construct hold and retreated. Instead he widened the corridor by a fraction—careful, surgical—and paid the cost with a visible thread on his mind‑screen. The ribbon steadied. The extraction completed.
After the drill a junior officer pulled him aside. He was efficient and polite in the way of men who measured people by potential and risk. There are houses who would pay for that steadiness, he said, voice low. He slid a card across Arjun's palm—no flourish, no pressure. Arjun folded it into his pocket and felt the halo dim and flare. The rectangle suggested a practice: Write three honest entries about motive before answering offers. The academy's pedagogy was not only about technique; it was about the ledger of self.
The Phoenix‑root medic taught him how to log. Reflection was awkward at first—naming fear and ambition felt like naming a private weather—but the act of writing thinned the fatigue thread. Three reflective entries later the red line on his screen eased. The Astraeon Veil's halo brightened a fraction. Captain Rhea watched the way he wrote and said nothing; her silence was a kind of approval.
On the third night the liaison returned. He did not offer a contract outright. He offered a story: a frontier world where stitched corridors were worth fortunes to contractors who moved supplies through contested zones; a path to rank that skipped years of academy politics. He spoke in numbers and timelines, in the language of speed. You stitch corridors, we pay, you get rank and credits, he said. The offer smelled of shortcuts.
Arjun thought of the maintenance crew, of the child's toy bobbing in the canal, of Captain Rhea's question about holding a stitch under fire. He thought of the fatigue thread and the way the Astraeon Veil left a visible trace when pushed. He folded the liaison's card into his palm and did not look at it. He said, quietly, that he would not take the contract. The liaison's smile was patient and practiced. Most people say that at first, he said. Then they learn the cost of waiting. He left another card anyway, tucked into the seam of Arjun's jacket by a cadet who had been watching.
Refusal did not end the pressure. The academy had noticed him; so had the world beyond its walls. Offers would come. Tests would come. The stitch had given him leverage and a target. Captain Rhea called him into her office the next morning and did not scold him for refusing. She asked instead about the shape of his motives: Who will you hold with that corridor? What will you protect when you have the authority to stitch maps? Her questions were precise and practical.
He answered as honestly as he could. He said he wanted to hold people—workers, medics, civilians—so that maps did not have to be redrawn by force. He said he wanted to learn to stitch without leaving scars. Captain Rhea listened and then assigned him to a mentorship circle: a small group of cadets who would train together under her supervision, practicing coordinated resonances with Golem‑bonds and Phoenix‑roots until their stitches could be sustained without deep fatigue traces.
The mentorship circle met in a low room lined with practice rigs and maps. They drilled timing and phrasing, the cadence of naming stones and the small rituals that steadied a stitch. They practiced anchoring edges with constructs and routing medics through sheltered corridors. Arjun found the work humbling and exacting. Each successful drill left a thin glow on his mind‑screen; each mistake left a red thread that required reflection.
On the last night of the rotation the academy held a quiet debrief. Captain Rhea read the report aloud—timing, anchor pressure, coordination—and then looked at him. You did well, she said simply. But remember: a stitch is a tool, not a trophy. Use it to hold people, not to hold power. Her words settled on him like a map's margin note.
That night he walked the canal alone, the city's tide‑light a slow pulse along the stones. The Astraeon Veil's halo moved in a rhythm he was beginning to understand. He opened his mind‑screen and wrote the reflective entries the Phoenix‑root medic had recommended: about fear and ambition, about the liaison's offers, about the small, stubborn certainty that had brought him to the academy. Each entry eased the fatigue thread a little. Each entry made the halo steadier.
He slid the liaison's cards into a drawer and closed it without ceremony. The world beyond the academy would not wait forever, but neither would he rush into a stitch that would leave scars. He had learned to hold a corridor under pressure. He had learned, too, that every stitch left a mark—on the city, on the people who passed through it, and on the bearer who made it. The climb would be faster now, but the choice of how to climb had become clearer.