Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

Chapter 216: Stand Up, Princess Kestrel

Nearly two years ago, the idea of Bastion Cities was approved by the Kingdom Councils and all over the world, numerous of those protected metropolises were chosen and erected.

One of these chosen places was Crescent City, a beautiful city known for the elegance of the people who lived there and for the first ever building made for training Awakeners.

As months passed, Crescent City like other bastion cities began to transcend into a fort. It was not a place meant to be beautiful. It was meant to endure.

Every wall was raised with the expectation that someday the world outside would fail completely and humanity would need a final refuge, a bastion strong enough to hold against Demons and Gehenna when nowhere else could.

That was what bastion cities were made for.

At the same time, the city was expensive, dangerous, and politically important, which meant it drew nobles, ward-smiths, engineers, military minds, and all the kinds of people who wanted to be near a future they could profit from.

Kestrel was born into one of the lesser Highcastle branches, a family with noble blood and little true influence. She was expected to grow into a polished lady, the kind of girl who would smile at banquets, learn alliances, and marry well.

Instead, she grew up in the shadow of unfinished walls, beside training yards full of guards and sword instructors, and she became obsessed with the only thing that ever felt honest to her.

Awakening the Class of Swordsmaster did not help the situation.

Kestrel ultimately broke through the restraints of nobility and started her training.

Training was the best days of her life. Unlike the people around her, the sword—both hers and her opponent’s—did not flatter her.

The sword did not care who her father was. It only answered skill.

That was why Kestrel loved it.

Even as a child, she was a nuisance. She stole practice blades. She challenged the city guards. She kept coming back after every defeat with bruised shins, torn sleeves, and a furious little glare that made grown men groan when they saw her approaching.

Kestrel was a strange princess as others used to say. She did not want praise. She always wanted another fight. Another lesson. Another chance to defeat the person standing in front of her.

As she grew, the guards in Crescent City started warning each other when she was coming.

By the age of seventeen, the sword instructors had learned that the only way to make her leave was to beat her so thoroughly she could barely stand, and even then she would often demand a rematch by the next morning.

By eighteen, she was beginning to win.

Kestrel was never the warmest girl, and she was never the easiest to be around. She was impatient with ceremony, bored by flattery, and openly contemptuous of people who mistook status for strength.

Even though she was pretty good at it, she did not care for politics and speeches, unless the politics involved duels, military authority, or the right to challenge someone who thought themselves untouchable.

In Crescent City, that attitude made her a problem.

Whenever anyone saw a flash of her emerald hair they would hide their swords immediately because they knew that holding a blade around her meant you’re asking for a duel.

Her parents tried to keep her in the castle, but nothing could stop Kestrel’s burning drive.

She sneaked out one day and climbed the Mountain of Moon, where she found the oldest Swordsmaster in Crescent City.

Rather than showing her respect, Kestrel immediately challenged the old man to a fight. Appalled by her audacity, Ugbard, the legendary Swordsmaster refused her.

But Kestrel didn’t stop. She sneaked out of the house every day, climbed the very tall Mountain of Moon, just to demand a duel.

The second time Kestrel hauled herself over the final ledge of the Mountain of Moon, her lungs burned and her legs trembled, but her voice carried all the arrogance of a noble who had never been told no by anything that mattered.

Ugbard sat in the clearing before his hut, a weathered man with gray-streaked hair tied loosely back, a blade resting across his knees. He did not open his eyes when she landed.

"Did you not hear me last time you old bag! I am Kestrel of Highcastle," she announced, drawing her sword from her back. "I’ve beaten every instructor in Crescent City. Now I’m here for you. Fight me."

Silence. The wind tugged at her emerald hair. Ugbard did not move.

"Are you deaf, old man?" She stepped closer, boots crunching on stone. "I said fight me."

Ugbard opened his eyes then—slowly, like a door in an empty house. He looked at her the way one might look at a particularly noisy bird, and then he closed them again.

"You are a child swinging steel at shadows," he said. "Go home."

Kestrel’s grip tightened on her sword. "Are you a coward, old man? Are you scared of a scrawny girl like me? A legendary Swordsmaster afraid to fight a princess?" She laughed, sharp and mocking, the sound echoing off the mountain rock. "I heard you were the greatest. But you’re just a relic too afraid to even stand."

Ugbard exhaled through his nose. The sword across his knees caught a glint of pale light, but he said nothing else.

Kestrel stood there, chest heaving, every muscle screaming to lunge at him, to force the fight. But something in the stillness of him held her in place. She spat to the side, sheathed her blade, and stalked to the cliff’s edge.

"I’ll be back tomorrow," she said.

He did not answer.

She came back the next day. And the next. And the next.

Every morning, before the sun crested the eastern wall of Crescent City, Kestrel was already climbing. The Mountain of Moon was tall and cruel, its path riddled with loose shale and sudden drops, and she took it at a pace that left her hands bleeding.

She would find Ugbard in the same position, cross-legged, sword before him, and she would demand a duel. She would insult his age, his legacy, his silence. She would call him a forgotten relic, a coward hiding from his own name. She would challenge him with every blade she could smuggle up the cliffs, and every time he would refuse.

"Your fire is only noise," he told her on the fifth day.

"You mistake stubbornness for strength," on the ninth.

"Go break yourself against someone who cares for your tantrums," on the fourteenth.

And each time, Kestrel would scream her frustration into the empty sky, throw her sword at the ground, and climb back down with her teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached. She would return to the city, ignore her parents’ furious lectures, and lie awake replaying every word she should have said.

The guards learned to avoid her entirely. The instructors she used to challenge now refused to even make eye contact. She was a storm with nowhere to land, a blade without a whetstone, and the edges of her patience were beginning to fray into something desperate.

Weeks passed. The frustration calcified into a quiet, gnawing thing. She still climbed, but her insults became hollow, her challenges half-hearted.

She would stand in the clearing, stare at Ugbard’s unmoving back, and feel something crack inside her chest. She was not winning. She was not even fighting. She was just a girl shouting at a mountain, and the mountain did not care.

On a particular stormy day, instead of staying indoors like her parents had told her, Kestrel went for the mountain again.

The sky over Crescent City was dark and blue. Thunder rolled in from the distant peaks like the growl of some buried beast, and by the time Kestrel reached the base of the Mountain of Moon, rain was already lashing the stone in sheets. The path, treacherous on the best days, had become a cascade of mud and rushing water.

Any sensible person would have turned back.

Kestrel started climbing.

Lightning split the sky above her, and the thunder that followed shook the rock beneath her fingers. Her boots slipped on wet stone; she caught herself with raw, burning forearms and kept going.

The rain hammered her skull, plastered her emerald hair to her face, filled her mouth with the taste of sky and iron. Wind shrieked through the crags, trying to peel her off the mountain like a hand swatting an insect.

She did not stop. Could not stop. Something had broken loose inside her, something older than pride, and it pushed her upward through the fury of the storm.

When she finally pulled herself over the ledge, her entire body was shaking. The world was a roar of water and wind. Her hair clung to her cheeks and neck. Her clothes were heavy with rain, and every breath scraped its way out of her lungs.

But she was there.

Ugbard sat in the center of the clearing, cross-legged, his sword laid before him on the wet stone. His back was to her. Rain streamed down his shoulders, his arms, the still line of his spine.

But he did not move. He did not acknowledge her. He simply sat, as immovable as the mountain beneath him, while the storm raged around them both.

Kestrel watched him. Thunder boomed across the peaks, a sound so vast it seemed to swallow the world. Rain lashed her face, and still she stood there, looking at the old man’s back, at the sword gleaming darkly on the stone, at the utter peace of his posture in the heart of chaos.

Something inside her finally let go.

She fell to a complete bow. Both her knees hit the stone, jet body folding forward until her forehead pressed into the freezing, rain-slick rock. Her arms stretched flat in front of her as water pooled around her.

"Please!" Her voice tore out of her, cracked and raw, swallowed almost instantly by the wind. She pushed her face harder against the stone. "I am deeply sorry! I apologize for my insults. I am nothing. I am but a mere spark compared to your flame. I insulted your wisdom. I insulted your silence. I called you a coward when you were the only one brave enough to refuse me."

A sob wrenched itself from her chest. Rain or tears—she could not tell anymore. "I have been a fool. An arrogant, stupid fool. Please." Her fingers curled against the wet rock. "Please train me. I will obey. I will listen. I will be silent when you tell me to be silent. I will do every single thing you ask, no matter how small, no matter how hard. I swear it. I swear it on my name, on my blood, on the blade I haven’t earned the right to carry. Just... please."

She wept. No words now, only the shaking of her shoulders and the raw sound of a pride finally shattered against something larger than itself. Thunder rolled. Rain beat down on her back like a thousand tiny hammers. She stayed bowed, face to the stone, waiting for the silence to be her answer.

Then she heard movement. The soft shift of cloth. The quiet scrape of bare feet on wet rock.

Ugbard stood. She could sense him, towering somewhere above her, and then his shadow fell across her prone form.

"Stand up, Princess Kestrel."

His voice was deep and calm, carrying no cruelty or triumph. It was simply steady, like the mountain itself was speaking.

She lifted her head. Rain streaked down her face, catching in her lashes and dripping from her chin.

She looked up, and he was there—the old Swordsmaster, looking down at her with an expression that was not quite soft but no longer distant.

There was something in his eyes she had never seen before. Approval, perhaps. Or recognition.

"Now," Ugbard said, "you are finally ready."