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.’

castle really existed, then all of their problems would be

you see

remember. Then, her

Sunny leading me through the gates of the

doll-like face, beaming with so

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

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

ever. Without showing much emotion,

we

***

and then spent some 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

that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization

Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only

taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often

that impression turned out to

actual 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

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 matched what she was trying to say. Often, she would forget to put correct intonations in her speech,

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 result, her face always looked

the time, she simply chose to talk

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

was just shy and completely inept

Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at

That’s not in line with how a protagonist

main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself

did not mean that she was not strong.