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.’

really existed, then all of their problems would

see

remember. Then,

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

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

he was stuck on a certain detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle,

a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that little discrepancy,

Star, however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and

Then we will

***

some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp.

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

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

mysterious, aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled,

that impression turned out to be

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

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

in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that

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

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

was just shy and completely

realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to

the hell? That’s not in line with

always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other hand, were relegated to exist

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,