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

see anything

trying to remember. Then, her face

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

smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so

of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was

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

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

we will go

***

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

was then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had

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

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.

turned out to be

and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny

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

emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she

chose to talk as little as possible or not to talk at

of that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible

shy and completely inept

still failed to stop himself from

hell? That’s not in line

of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and

had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she had