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.’

of their problems would

see anything

trying to remember. Then,

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of

with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but curl

stuck on a certain 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 some meaning

secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she

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

we will

***

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 know the

a sudden realization, which almost made his

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

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

turned out to be

After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with

wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what

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

simply chose to talk

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

just shy and completely inept in communicating with

but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He

in line

there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the

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