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

you see anything

to remember. Then, her face

gates of the castle! That

face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but

It was that, when talking about

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

however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then slowly

Then we

***

planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny

which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That

met in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing

patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been

turned out to be

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

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, making questions sound like

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

talk as little as possible or not

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

shy and

to stop himself from staring at Nephis

That’s not in line with how a

Nephis had definitely been the type of person to be the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other hand,

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