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.’

then all of their problems would be solved.

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her

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

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

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

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

Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then slowly

Then we

***

and preparing to abandon the temporary camp.

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

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 Star’s past only

bit 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 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

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

words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to

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

of the time, she simply chose to talk as little

added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating

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

that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He

in line

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

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