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.’

their problems would be

you see

trying to remember.

saw Sunny leading me through the gates of

beaming with so

however, he was 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

secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if

Without showing much

we will

***

time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know the girls

a sudden realization, which almost made his

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

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 arresting,

that impression turned out

truth 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 that Nephis was simply an incredibly,

though she had no 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

showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really bad at emoting them!

why, most of the time, she simply chose to talk

that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a mysterious,

in fact, she was just shy and completely inept in communicating

his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at

not in line with how a protagonist should

character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her

Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the