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

see

trying to remember. Then, her

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That means we will make

her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny

however, he was 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

secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that

showing much emotion, she thought for

Then we will go

***

still retreating, they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the

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

formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later,

aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning

out

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

was as though 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, she would forget to put correct intonations in her

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 really bad at emoting

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 the false image of a mysterious, unapproachable

fact, she was just shy and completely inept

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

the hell? That’s not in line with how

had definitely 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 like

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 achieved, but with the