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.’

this castle really existed, then all of their problems would be

you see

remember. Then, her face

through the gates of the castle! That means we

doll-like face, beaming with so

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

turned his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern

enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while,

we will go

***

sea was still retreating, they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary

almost made his

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 and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only served to reinforce

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

out to be completely

had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions

to talk to people. Every time 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, making questions sound

fact 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 cold and

chose to talk as little

then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible

fact, she was just shy and

to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let his

in line with how a protagonist should

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

of thought was also wrong. The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not