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.’

their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her face

saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That

beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help

about reaching

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

much emotion, she thought for a

we will

***

journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know the girls a little

which almost made his

gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations

character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to.

out to be

do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when

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

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:

to talk

then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image

fact, she was just shy and completely inept in

failed to stop himself from staring

That’s not in line with how

there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other hand, were relegated to exist far away in the

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