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.’

all of their problems would

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her face

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

appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but curl

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

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

much emotion,

we

***

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 a

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

the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only

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

impression turned out

had nothing to do with being cool and 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

of the sentence and fall

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 them! As a result, her face always looked cold and

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

her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the

she was just shy and completely inept in

failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let his

That’s not in line with how

any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other hand, were relegated to

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 achieved, but