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 anything

to remember.

through the gates of the

so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help

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 two

at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up

showing much emotion,

Then we

***

then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the

made his

certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and

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. That silent, indifferent confidence

that impression turned out

a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was simply an incredibly,

how 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

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

the time, she simply chose to talk

general weirdness, was

she was just shy and completely inept in communicating with

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

That’s not in line with how a

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

Star 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