Heroine Creation: All My Summons Are Custom Made

Lancet only smiled a little and settled in as the aerocycler finally lurched forward. The machine lifted from the platform with a low roar, its fan blades catching the morning air as it accelerated into the road beyond the bastion.

Jet kept talking as they went, a steady stream of commentary about the weather, the roads, the monsters sometimes seen near the outer routes. For most of the ride, he kept hammering on the idiot confidence that made students think they could survive things people twice their age avoided.

”You may be awakened and all. And yeah, that’s pretty cool and you’re all not immune to danger. And you’re certainly not immune to death.”

Lancet half-listened, half-watched the world open up around him.

The aerocycler carried them deeper and faster beyond the safe inner roads, past secured lanes and out toward territory where the land itself began to feel less civilized.

The ground changed first. The neat city pavement gave way to rougher stone, then open stretches of earth scarred by old travel, then roads that looked more like warnings than infrastructure.

As they moved on, the sky widened overhead, and the distant outline of the mountains slowly began to dominate the horizon.

Deathrock loomed somewhere far ahead, though still hidden behind layers of rock and storm. Even from this distance, the land felt different, as if the air itself had become more severe the farther they traveled.

Lancet kept trying to remember what the name ’Deathrock’ was for, and the story behind it. He could ask Jet but he stubbornly wanted to remember it himself.

After reading Awakener Supreme dozens of times, it felt like a personal insult if he couldn’t remember a particular thing.

When at last the aerocycler slowed and the driver pointed him toward the edge of the mountain route, Lancet climbed down onto the hard ground and looked around.

Jet held out a hand for the fare. Lancet counted out the Notes and passed over seven thousand without complaint. The driver took them, whistled softly, and gave him one more long look that was somehow both amused and worried.

”You be careful, kid,” he said. ”Deathrock is basically a Second World citadel.”

Lancet clenched his jaw. ’That’s right! It’s a citadel still in contention.’

”If the Demons sniff you out in that place,” Jet continued, ”well... if you don’t fall off the mountain first, or get fried by the lightning, or freeze to death in the storms, then they’ll eat your flesh and drink your soul. Best of luck.”

Then he climbed back into the aerocycler, shook his head once more, and drove away before Lancet could answer.

Lancet watched him go and let out a quiet breath of his own. ”Well, he got grim pretty fast.”

The line vanished behind the departing machine, leaving him alone with the mountains.

The silence hit him immediately.

It was not the silence of the academy, where the quiet always felt temporary and full of other people waiting around the corner. This was different.

The land was wide and open and almost unnervingly empty, the kind of emptiness that made even one person feel too loud. The wind slid across the stone in thin, cold fingers. Far in the distance, the mountains rose in jagged formations like broken teeth against the sky.

Above them, dark clouds dragged themselves slowly across the horizon, making the whole region look older than the city and meaner than the roads he had left behind.

Lancet adjusted the bag on his shoulder and stared out at the mountain range.

”Yup,” he muttered after a moment. ”Pretty eerie.”

The wind answered him by brushing dryly over the rock beside his boots.

He exhaled, more amused than uneasy. ”The path to getting stronger isn’t easy.”

Then he looked up toward the peaks.

”All I have to do now,” he said, more to himself than to the world, ”is find the tallest mountain here.”

So he started walking.

At first it was easy enough to tell which way looked higher, but the closer he got to the range, the more deceptive the landscape became.

One ridge rose sharply only to reveal another behind it. One tower of stone looked impossible until he realized it was still not the tallest thing in sight.

He climbed a slope, descended a broken ridge, crossed a stretch of loose rock, and then stopped to squint up at something that turned out to be only the shoulder of a larger formation. Twice he muttered to himself that the mountain had clearly been built by someone who hated hikers.

Once he nearly trusted a path that turned out to be a trick of the terrain and had to walk back down while muttering about the insulting confidence of geology.

Still, the place was almost entertaining in its own way. Every step made the world feel more remote, more dangerous, and more deliberate. The wind grew colder. The sky grew heavier. The mountain chain began to feel less like a destination and more like a test designed by something that enjoyed watching arrogant people reconsider their decisions.

Lancet kept climbing.

The peaks changed as he went deeper. Some looked broad enough to carry storms. Others were narrow, violent towers of black stone and slick cliff faces that disappeared into mist before he could make out their tops.

Lightning flashed occasionally in the far distance, and every time it did, the mountains looked briefly sharper, as if the sky itself were trying to reveal which one it wanted to strike first.

Then he saw it.

A mountain unlike the others.

It rose higher than the rest, a brutal, impossible column of stone driven upward into the clouds. Its sides were steep and unforgiving, scarred by weather and time, with jagged outcroppings that made it look less like a natural peak and more like some ancient fortress of rock abandoned by the gods.

Dark storm clouds circled above its crown, and every few seconds lightning flickered near the top as if the sky had grown irritated by its refusal to bow.

Lancet stopped walking.

He stared up at it for a long moment, his expression slowly shifting from searching focus to certainty.

Then, with a quiet nod, he said to himself, ”Yup. This is the one.”