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.

see

to remember. Then, her face

through the gates of the castle! That means

beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but curl

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

turned his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern

much emotion, she thought for a while, and then

we will go

***

and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the

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

Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later,

strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than

turned out

her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was simply an incredibly, ridiculously…

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

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 result, her face always looked cold and

she simply chose to talk as little as possible or

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

was just shy and completely inept

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

That’s not in line with

confident, strong people

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,