The courtyard smelled of dust and boiled tea, of hot metal and the faint, old electric tang that people still joked was the invasion's aftertaste. Cadets clustered in rings beneath the academy's glass eaves, uniforms a scatter of muted colors and Alliance trim. Sigils stirred like weather: a basilisk‑vine leaf unfurling with a soft click, a wyvern feather catching the light, a dryad's faint scent of sap. The noise was ordinary—footsteps, a trainer's clipped voice, the rustle of practice maps—but under it all there was the small, private hum that came when something on a person's skin decided to wake.
Arjun kept his hands in his pockets until the bell rang. He was eighteen, sleeves rolled, palms damp from the habit of rubbing his thumb along the seam of his jacket. He had come because the idea of maps and edges and the authority to shape them felt like a promise he could keep if he learned the right language. He had not come expecting anything remarkable. He had not come expecting to be noticed.
The head trainer read the Trial prompt aloud—tend, witness, record—and the cadets moved into small groups. Arjun's group was assigned the market sapling, a stubborn little tree that had survived a century of tide‑light and tram sparks. They knelt in a ring of cracked paving stones and began the slow, ceremonial work: clear the litter, loosen the soil, tell the tree a true story. The trainer's voice threaded through the work like a metronome. Around them the market tiles shimmered faintly and then settled; tide‑light was a thing people treated like weather now, a local quirk you mentioned over tea.
When the sigil opened it was private and immediate. Arjun felt a warmth at the base of his throat, a small pressure like a coin settling into a pocket. A halo of drifting glyphs uncoiled behind his eyes and a rectangle of light unfurled there—his mind‑screen, visible only to him. The portrait that filled it was not a creature he recognized from the training manuals. It was a human‑form, a figure with a faint metallic sheen and constellated filaments that moved as if they traced invisible currents. The name blinked in plain text: Astraeon Veil.
Beneath the portrait a single ability sat like a command: Starbind. A suggested practice pulsed beneath it: stitch a path between two stones; hold it for one breath. The screen showed a small stamina bar and a note: First Watch — Trial Day. No one else saw the rectangle. No one else saw the halo. Around him, Lina's basilisk‑vine recorded the trainer's words into a glossy leaf; a wyvern‑scout above them traced a quick arc and marked the canal's current. The market vendor folded an awning. Life continued.
Arjun's fingers found the cracked paving stone the prompt had named. He followed the mind‑screen's instruction because the instruction felt like a promise he could keep: name the stones, feel the seam between them, breathe out. The air between the two stones shimmered, a thin ribbon of tide‑light knitting itself into a narrow, semi‑solid corridor. It was no more than a foot wide and lasted a single breath, but it held: a strip of starlit surface that muffled sound and made his palm tingle when he touched it.
The courtyard went quiet in the way a room goes quiet when someone begins to sing. Older cadets who had seen every novelty in the academy's first years leaned forward. A trainer's pen stopped mid‑note. Director Sethi, who had come to observe the Trials with a polite, unreadable face, straightened on the veranda. The corridor folded away as the mind‑screen blinked a cooldown. The stamina bar showed a faint red thread. A small fatigue marker had been logged: Micro‑stitch used. Fatigue trace present.
Arjun felt, for a breath, like an extra in his own life. The halo on his mind‑screen pulsed, then settled. The Griffin‑ward he had expected—if he had expected anything at all—was not there. Instead the Astraeon Veil hummed with a quiet, precise intelligence. The suggested practice blinked again: Hold for three breaths with a cooperating sigil; coordinate with a Golem‑bond to anchor edges. The screen offered a list of safe drills and a stern note about cooldown discipline. The rectangle folded away and left him with the ordinary weight of soil on his palms and the extraordinary knowledge that he had done something no one in his group had done.
Word moved faster than the tide‑light. By the time the cadets filed into the lecture hall, two field officers had already taken notes. A junior mentor—Captain Rhea Sol, a woman whose reputation for steady judgment had preceded her—asked to speak with Arjun after the practicum. A mercenary liaison, a man with a trimmed beard and a contract badge, lingered near the academy gates and watched the courtyard with the kind of attention that smelled of offers.
The first class was Sigil Theory, a lecture that began with the invasion's history and the ethics of activation and moved quickly into taxonomy. Arjun sat near the back, the rectangle of light folded behind his eyes like a private map. He listened to the professor explain how sigils had been cataloged, how abilities scaled with rarity, how the mind‑screen was a personal ledger and not a public HUD. He watched other cadets' sigils in the margins of his vision: a dryad's leaf that recorded the professor's cadence, a wyvern feather that twitched at the mention of currents. He felt the Astraeon Veil like a small, patient presence at his collarbone.
After the lecture the field rotation list was posted. Arjun's name was not at the top. He had expected a slow climb: basic drills, a month of supervised rotations, a year of coursework. He had not expected the list to show his name for a provisional early deployment to the canal district—an extraction drill that would test corridor creation under pressure. The note beside his name read: Provisional mentor assigned. Captain Rhea Sol supervising.
The academy moved like a machine that could be nudged by a single, unusual stitch. Captain Rhea's office smelled of coffee and old maps. She did not ask him to demonstrate Starbind again. She asked him instead about the moment he had felt the halo, about the fatigue marker, about whether he understood the ethics of creating sheltered corridors in civilian zones. Her questions were practical, not reverent. She wanted to know if he could hold a corridor while medics moved through it, if he could anchor an edge with a Golem‑bond, if he could resist the temptation to use a stitch for spectacle.
Arjun answered as he had been taught to answer in the neighborhood: plainly. He said the corridor had felt like a seam in the air, like a place where the city's map had a loose thread. He said the stitch had cost him a small, hot ache behind his eyes. He said he wanted to learn how to make stitches that lasted without leaving scars.
Captain Rhea nodded. She signed the provisional rotation and slid a small card across the desk. It was a schedule: three nights of supervised watch at the canal, a Phoenix‑root medic on standby, a Golem‑bond assigned to anchor edges. The card had the academy seal and a single line in the margin: Field officers to observe. Report required.
Outside the office the canal tiles glowed faintly as dusk fell. The market vendors were folding up for the evening. Arjun walked the route to the canal with the Astraeon Veil warm against his collarbone and the private rectangle of light folded behind his eyes. He felt the attention of the academy like a pressure at his back and the mercenary liaison's gaze like a hand at his shoulder. He felt, too, the small, stubborn certainty that had brought him here: that maps were made by people who learned to stitch them.
The first night at the canal was a test of small things. The district had a reputation for sudden fogs and for currents that shifted with the tide‑light. The academy had chosen it because it was a place where a corridor could matter without rewriting a world. Arjun stood with the Golem‑bond at his side, a broad, patient construct whose hands could press the edges of a stitch into place. The Phoenix‑root medic checked his kit and offered a quiet, professional smile.
The call came at midnight: a maintenance crew trapped on a collapsed footbridge, a child's toy lodged under a fallen beam, a small, urgent problem that would become a crisis if the current rose. The team moved with the practiced calm of people who had been trained to treat small disasters as drills. Arjun felt the halo on his mind‑screen uncoil. The suggested practice blinked: Stitch a corridor wide enough for two; hold for extraction; coordinate with Holdfast.
He breathed, named the stones, and reached. The corridor unrolled like a ribbon of starlight across the broken planks. It hummed with a soft, protective sound that muffled the canal's rush. The Golem‑bond pressed its hands to the edges and the stitch held. The Phoenix‑root medic moved through the corridor with a lantern and a steady step. The maintenance crew followed, carrying the trapped worker. The child's toy was retrieved. The stitch folded away as the last person stepped onto solid ground.
When the team returned to the bank, the field officers were waiting. Captain Rhea's face was unreadable until she smiled, small and quick. The academy logged the extraction as a successful provisional rotation. Arjun's mind‑screen showed a new entry: First extraction complete. Fatigue trace reduced after three reflective entries. A small, private glow threaded the Astraeon Veil's halo.
The mercenary liaison approached as the team packed up. He did not offer a contract in the courtyard. He offered instead a card with a name and a time. He said, casually, that there were houses who paid well for people who could stitch corridors under fire. He said the world beyond the academy moved fast and that rank could be bought with risk. Arjun folded the card into his pocket without looking at it. The halo on his mind‑screen dimmed and then brightened; the rectangle suggested a practice: Reflect on motive. Log three honest entries before accepting offers.
He walked back to the academy under the tide‑light, the city's small, altered geography humming around him. He had come to be a cadet, to learn the slow language of command. The Astraeon Veil had given him a stitch and a choice. The academy had given him a provisional rotation and a mentor. The mercenary liaison had given him a card and a world that would not wait.
Arjun slept that night with the rectangle of light folded behind his eyes and the halo of glyphs like a quiet constellation at his collarbone. He dreamed of maps that could be mended with a hand and of edges that could be held without breaking. He woke with the taste of tide‑light on his tongue and the knowledge that the climb would be faster now—because some sigils, once seen, pulled the world forward.