The Council didn't send assassins.
They sent her.
Amara Vellin.
Sloane's former mentor.
Her first betrayal.
And the only woman who ever taught her how to truly stitch pain into power.
---
Twelve Years Ago
The orphanage didn't teach sewing.
It taught survival.
Sloane's hands were bloodied from threading copper wire through scrap cloth. Amara found her in the back alley, hiding from the Matron's lashings, her palms torn but steady.
"You don't need fingers," Amara had said, "You need vision."
And then she gave Sloane her first tool — not a needle.
A seam ripper.
"Unmaking is the first step of creation," she whispered.
Amara took her in. Molded her. Trained her in secret.
And then she vanished on Sloane's sixteenth birthday.
Left behind a single note: "Your first true stitch must be betrayal."
---
Present Day
"She's alive?" Sloane asked Ari, disbelief thick in her voice.
Cassien leaned forward. "Not just alive. She's working with the Council."
Ari pulled up surveillance: Amara walking the private grounds of House Obscura, her signature shroud-drape moving like liquid shadow, her lips smiling politely as three designers dropped to their knees before her.
"She's creating a new line," Ari said, "coded with your psychological profile."
Cassien translated: "She's building anti-Sloane armor."
---
The Seamstress's Power
Amara didn't fight with fabric. She unstitched certainty.
Her signature: Threadveil — an ability that let her unravel her target's sense of self by unpicking the metaphysical "threads" of memory and purpose woven into their clothing.
One touch from her, and you forgot why you started.
You doubted your mission.
You hesitated.
And in fashion wars, hesitation was death.
---
Plan: Beat Her With Her Own Pattern
"We need a counter-design," Sloane said.
Cassien nodded. "One she wouldn't expect."
Ari grinned. "Her old student."
They broke into the abandoned Atelier Oris, the underground lab where Amara trained Sloane.
It was a tomb of fabric ghosts — unfinished gowns that whispered regrets. Looms that spun silence.
And in the farthest alcove…
Sloane found it.
Her first true dress — the one she designed after Amara left her. Unworn. Untested. Embroidered with rage and longing.
It was brutal.
Unforgiving.
Beautiful.
"It rejected every model," she said. "Too heavy with truth."
Cassien met her gaze. "Then it's yours now."
---
Reunion: In the Whisper Hall
Amara chose the stage: the Whisper Hall, a silent amphitheater stitched into the cliffs of Galaxis Prime. No sound could be transmitted. No tech allowed.
Just raw fashion.
She arrived draped in Voidlace — black-on-black, shimmering with forgetfulness.
Sloane wore her old creation.
Thread against thread.
"Your posture is better," Amara noted. "Your silence... still weak."
"You taught me to betray," Sloane said. "Now I return the favor."
They walked.
Circled.
Danced through designs.
Each touch sparked illusions — Amara turning into Sloane's younger self. Sloane aging fifty years in a blink. Memories fell apart. Fabric screamed.
Amara reached out with a gloved hand, aiming for Sloane's neckline — the anchoring thread.
Sloane ducked.
Then ripped her own hem.
Exposing her bare chest — and the scar across her sternum.
A memory no one else knew.
One Amara hadn't sewn.
It was truth Amara never touched.
That was Sloane's counter.
Authenticity.
Amara faltered. Her illusions cracked.
The Whisper Hall echoed — soundless — with a gasp no one heard.
Then Sloane stabbed her seam ripper into Amara's shroud and whispered:
"Unmake yourself."
---
Aftermath
Amara fell to her knees.
Her shroud melted.
Her eyes turned human.
And she whispered, almost lovingly, "You were always more dangerous than I taught you to be."
Then she vanished into dust — a fail-safe woven into her own garment.
A suicide design.
---
Back at the Resistance Base
Cassien wrapped Sloane in a thermal weave, his fingers brushing her collarbone.
"You shook the Council again."
"They'll send worse next time."
"They'll send truth next time."
Sloane looked out at the city.
Lights flickered in the skyline — coded messages from resistance cells. Her victory had reignited hope.
"Let them come," she said. "This empire was stitched from blood and fear."
She stood, turning toward the vault of her next designs.
"And I'm tailoring its undoing."