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

to remember. Then,

leading me through the gates of the castle!

beaming with so much joy that

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 there some meaning behind

a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she

as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she

we will go

***

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 had

then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had to do

certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only served to

seemed to exist 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,

impression turned out to

more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost

in the middle of the

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

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

multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating

in fact, she was just shy

from staring at Nephis

in line

there were always confident,

lacked social skills did not mean that she was not