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. Sunny cleared

you see

to remember.

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

with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t

It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl

trying to discern if she had picked up

enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought

we will

***

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

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

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

apart 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

turned out

to her a bit more and

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

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

to talk as little as possible or not

was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a

shy and completely inept in

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

the hell? That’s not in line with

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

not mean that she was not strong.