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

remember.

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

beaming with so

he was stuck on a certain detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching

and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if

showing much emotion, she thought for a while,

Then we will

***

journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know the

then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That

certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only served

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

impression turned out to

the matter had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost

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 statements or

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

time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible

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

in fact, she was just shy and

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

not in line with

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, were relegated to exist far away

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 achieved, but