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 be solved.

see

to remember.

leading me through the gates of the castle! That

beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t

of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two

little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to

much emotion, she thought for

we will

***

sea 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 had a chance to get to know the girls

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

first 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

people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked, the more she

impression turned out to be

more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that

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 put correct intonations in her speech, making questions

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

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

by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a

fact, she was just shy and

stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes.

hell? That’s not in line with how

stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and

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 meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she had