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.’

of their problems

see

remember. Then,

gates of the castle! That means

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

detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching

head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had

enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for

we will go

***

and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the

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

the confident, distant

from the world. 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 they had been planning to. The less she talked, the more she

impression turned out to

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 that Nephis

of the sentence and

people, Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t

time, she simply chose to talk as little

multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the

fact, she was just shy and completely inept in

coming to that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from

That’s not in line with how a protagonist should

always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on

she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that