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.’

existed, then all of their problems

you see

frowned, trying to remember.

me through the gates

brilliant smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much

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

trying to discern if

as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then

we will

***

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

then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his

of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl.

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 they had been planning to. The less she talked, the more she seemed to know. That silent, indifferent confidence was

turned out to be

behind the matter 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

wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to say. Often,

to that was the 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: it’s just that she was really bad at emoting them! As a

the time, she simply chose to talk as

general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a mysterious,

was just shy and completely

himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not

line with how

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

thought was also wrong. The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact,