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.’

of their problems would be solved.

see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her

gates of

smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny

he was stuck on a certain detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was

at Nephis, trying

Star, however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then slowly

Then we

***

and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know the girls a

came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing

of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing

taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning

out to

After talking to her a bit more and

use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to say. Often, she would

habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really bad at emoting them! As a result, her face

to talk as little as

of that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating

just shy and completely inept in

stop himself from staring at Nephis

in line with

always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other hand, were relegated to exist far away in the

Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still