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.’

existed, then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny

see anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her face

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That

her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that

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

Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked

enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion,

Then we will

***

had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny

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

when they first met in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior

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 seemed to know. That silent, indifferent confidence was arresting, and sometimes even

impression turned out to be completely

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, ridiculously…

in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was

like many introverted people, Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that

of the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible

weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating

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

but still failed to stop himself from

not in line

At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and

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