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

you see anything

trying to remember. Then,

gates of the

so much

It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two

and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying

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

we will

***

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

sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had to do with

met in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl.

her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked, the more

that impression turned out to be completely

talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted

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

not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really bad

talk as little as

together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image

she was just shy

with all his might but still failed to stop himself from

in line with how a protagonist

mind, Nephis had definitely 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 in the

that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she had achieved, but with the added layer of