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.’

this castle really existed, then all of their problems would

see anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then,

me through the gates of the castle! That

so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help

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

at Nephis, trying to discern if she had

was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much

we will go

***

planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the

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

first met in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her

unnerved and

that impression turned out to be completely

aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was

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.

emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just

most of the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not to talk at

general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a mysterious, unapproachable ice

she was just shy

stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to

the hell? That’s not in line with

been the type of person to be the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People

line of thought was also wrong. The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have