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 be solved. Sunny cleared

see anything

remember. Then, her face

saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle!

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

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

little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying

was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she

Then we

***

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, Sunny had a chance

realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had

certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only served to

strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked, the more she seemed to

impression turned out to be completely

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

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

her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have

the time, she simply chose to talk

then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible

just shy and completely inept

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

line with how a

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 to exist far away in the

herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have