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.’

then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared

see

remember. Then, her face

leading me through the gates of

beaming with so much joy that Sunny

when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there some meaning behind

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

as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought

we will

***

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 process, Sunny

sudden realization, which almost made his

gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only served to reinforce that

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 to know. That silent, indifferent confidence was arresting,

out to be

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

though she had no idea how 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 silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to say. Often, she would forget to

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

why, most of the time, she simply chose to talk as little as

weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the

just shy and completely inept in communicating with

that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from

the hell? That’s not in line

were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on

that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact,