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. Sunny cleared his

you see

to remember. Then, her face

the gates of the castle! That means we will

her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy

vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the

turned his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that little

Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then

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,

a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement.

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

unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked,

turned out

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

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,

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:

time, she simply chose to talk

then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible

was just shy and completely inept in communicating

still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just

the hell? That’s not in line with

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

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