Shadow Slave

In the ensuing silence, the smile slowly disappeared from Cassie’s face, replaced by confusion. Feeling the sudden tension, she asked:

“Uh… what’s wrong?”

Sunny sighed.

“No, nothing is wrong. It’s just that that direction is the one we wanted to avoid.”

After some thought, he added:

“That’s where I came from yesterday. There’s a lot of scavengers down there.”

The blind girl’s face fell.

“Oh.”

Nephis, who was quietly listening to them, gave him an indecipherable look and finally spoke:

“Tell us more about the castle.”

A shadow of the previous excitement returned to Cassie’s eyes. With a serious nod, she began describing her vision.

“I dreamt of a vast, ruined city built of weathered stone. It was surrounded by tall, impregnable walls. Various monsters were wandering its narrow streets. In the center of the city, the was a hill, and on that hill stood a magnificent castle.”

She smiled.

“But there were no monsters in the castle! Instead, it was full of people. I think… no, I’m sure that they were Awakened. Some were guarding the walls, some were going about their lives without a care in the world. There was food, safety, and laughter!”

‘Well, that sounds great.’

existed, then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared

you see

to remember.

Sunny leading me through the gates

her doll-like face, beaming with so

vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl

glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked

showing much emotion, she thought for

Then we will

***

the sea was still retreating, they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the

then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That

they first met in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about

made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked, the more she seemed to

impression turned out to

nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie,

to talk to people. Every time she tried to convey something, she would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall

was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s

she simply chose to talk as little as

general weirdness, was

fact, she was just shy

to that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let his jaw

line with how

At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster.

she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite.