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.’

castle really existed, then all of their problems

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her face

Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle!

face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t

talking about reaching the

head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on

Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and

Then we will go

***

they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp.

almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had to do with

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 Changing

a bit apart from the world. She was mysterious, aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns 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

out

her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie,

to convey something, she would either 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.

Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she

talk as little as possible or

multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible

fact, she was just shy and completely

himself from staring at Nephis with wide

the hell? That’s not in line with how a

character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like

that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she