The mentorship circle met in a low room that smelled of oil and old paper, a place the academy used for practical work and quiet reckonings. Maps hung on the walls like patient teachers; practice rigs lined one side, their frames scarred from repeated drills. Captain Rhea Sol sat at the head of the table with a tablet of notes and the kind of attention that made people stop polishing their answers and start thinking honestly.
Arjun took a seat between two cadets he barely knew. Lina was there, her basilisk‑vine coiled around her wrist like a listening thing; across from him sat a lanky cadet named Harun whose sigil was a small, gruff construct that clicked when it was pleased. The circle's purpose was simple: learn to hold a stitch without breaking the bearer, and learn to hold a team without breaking trust. The exercises would be technical, but the lessons were ethical.
Captain Rhea began with a case study. She described a supply node on a frontier world where a contractor had stitched a corridor to move goods through a contested pass. The corridor had worked—at first. Then the contractor had extended it without consent, used it to smuggle weapons, and left the local council to clean up the fallout. A stitch is a tool, she said. A stitch is not a jurisdiction. Her voice was even; the room listened.
They drilled timing and cadence until the motions felt like muscle memory. The Golem‑bond team practiced keystone presses; Phoenix‑root medics ran through triage under simulated stress; Arjun repeated the naming ritual until the words felt less like incantation and more like instruction. The Astraeon Veil's halo hummed at his collarbone, patient and precise. Each activation left a ledger entry; each ledger entry demanded reflection. The academy had made reflection a discipline as much as a rule.
On the second day of the circle Captain Rhea introduced a variable: a liaison from a sanctioned mercenary house would join the drills to observe coordination between cadet stitches and contractor anchors. The liaison arrived in a plain jacket and a smile that had been practiced in many rooms. He carried no cards this time. He carried a dossier and a tone that suggested opportunity rather than temptation.
"You'll be working with contractors in the field," he said, voice smooth. "Most of the Alliance's reach depends on private houses to move things where we can't. Learning to coordinate is practical." He watched Arjun with an appraising look that made the halo at Arjun's throat feel like a small, exposed thing.
The liaison's presence made the drills sharper. The contractors' anchors were efficient and blunt; they favored speed and redundancy over the academy's careful ledgering. In one exercise the contractor's anchor overcompensated and began to pull at the stitch's edges. The corridor shivered. Arjun felt the fatigue thread deepen. He called the cadence Captain Rhea had drilled into them, named the stones, and asked the Golem‑bond to press with a counterweight. The stitch held, but the contractor's anchor left a bruise on the corridor's seam—an ugly, practical reminder that different ethics produced different scars.
After the drill the liaison lingered. He did not offer a contract. He offered instead a blunt appraisal. "You stitch well," he said. "You hold under pressure. Houses value that. If you want to move faster than the academy's ladder, there are ways." He tapped the dossier. "There are houses that will sponsor training, put you on their payroll for a season. You'll learn to stitch under fire and get paid for it."
Arjun thought of the cards in his drawer and the maintenance crew's tired faces. He thought of Captain Rhea's case study and the contractor who had extended a corridor into smuggling. He felt the halo at his collarbone like a compass that had been nudged. He said nothing. The liaison's smile did not change; he left with a polite nod and a promise to watch.
The next assignment came sooner than Arjun expected. A frontier outpost—an Alliance supply node on a ringed world—had requested a short, supervised team to help stabilize a newly opened route. The academy called it a capstone rotation: a mixed crew of cadets, a Phoenix‑root medic, a Golem‑bond, and a contractor liaison to practice real coordination. Captain Rhea selected Arjun for the team and told him plainly why: You held a stitch under interference. You can learn to hold one under negotiation.
They left at dawn. The ringed world was colder than the city, its sky a thin, hard blue. The outpost sat in a shallow basin where tide‑light pooled in crystalline veins and the map still remembered the invasion in small, stubborn ways. The contractor's anchor arrived with a crew that moved like a single organism—efficient, practiced, and impatient with academy caution. Their leader was a woman named Ishaan Rao, whose sigil was a fox‑spirit that watched everything with a skeptical eye. He introduced himself with a handshake that was both warm and measured.
"You stitch well," Ishaan said, as if repeating the liaison's line were a test. "We move things where others can't. We pay for results." He watched Arjun with a look that was almost friendly. "If you want to learn how to stitch for profit, I can show you. If you want to learn how to stitch for people, Captain Rhea will teach you that. Both are useful."
The outpost's problem was immediate: a supply bridge had collapsed into a shallow current, and a convoy of rations and medical crates was stranded on a narrow ledge. The contractor's plan was fast and efficient—anchor a heavy corridor, haul the crates, be gone. Captain Rhea's plan was slower: stitch a sheltered lane, route medics through, and negotiate with a local scavenger band to secure the perimeter. The two plans were not incompatible; they were different in emphasis.
Arjun felt the halo uncoil. The mind‑screen suggested a practice: Stitch a corridor wide enough for a crate pallet; coordinate with contractor anchor; maintain consent with locals. He named the stones and reached. The Astraeon Veil unrolled a ribbon of starlight across the broken planks. The contractor's anchor latched on and began to haul. Sparks flew where metal met tide‑light; the stitch shivered. Ishaan barked a command and his crew adjusted the anchor's tension. The Golem‑bond pressed the edges. The Phoenix‑root medic moved through with a lantern and a steady hand.
Halfway through the extraction a scavenger—young, desperate, and armed with a resonance cutter—stepped into the lane and tried to pry a crate free. The cutter bit the corridor's seam. The stitch thinned. Arjun felt the fatigue like a hot weight behind his eyes. He could have collapsed the corridor and let the contractor's anchor haul the crates in a different pattern. He could have ordered the scavenger detained and risked a firefight. Instead he widened the corridor by a careful fraction and spoke the cadence Captain Rhea had taught him—an appeal to the scavenger's name, a promise of a share if they stepped back and let the medics pass.
The scavenger hesitated. Ishaan's crew tensed. The contractor's anchor hummed. The corridor held. The medics moved the crates through. When the extraction finished Ishaan approached Arjun with a look that was almost respect and almost calculation.
"You did that well," Ishaan said. "You held a stitch and kept people in it. That's rare." He paused. "If you ever want to learn how to hold a stitch and make it pay, find me."
Arjun felt the halo at his throat like a small, steady pulse. He had held a corridor under pressure and negotiated a human choice into the seam. The contractor's offer sat in the air like a coin. Captain Rhea's hand on his shoulder was a quiet anchor. Ishaan's eyes were a map of possibilities.
That night, in the outpost's dim mess, Arjun wrote the reflective entries the Phoenix‑root medic recommended. He wrote about the scavenger's face, about the contractor's efficiency, about the way the stitch had left a faint bruise on the corridor's seam. Each entry eased the fatigue thread a little. Each entry made the halo steadier.
He slept with the Astraeon Veil like a small constellation at his collarbone and woke with the knowledge that the world beyond the academy would not wait forever. Offers would come. Tests would come. The stitch had given him leverage and a target. The choice of how to use it—speed or care, contract or commission—had become sharper. He had learned to hold a corridor under negotiation. He had not yet learned what he would do when the price of holding it was someone else's map.