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

see anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her face

saw Sunny leading me through the gates of

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

vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the

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

showing much emotion, she thought for a while,

we will go

***

the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In

which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had to do with

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

She was mysterious, aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than

out to be

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

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

It’s not that she didn’t

time, she simply chose to talk as

that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false

fact, she was just shy and completely inept in communicating

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

hell? That’s not in line with

the main character of 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

with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite.