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.’

really existed, then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny

see anything

trying to remember.

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates

doll-like face, beaming with so much

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

secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she

Star, however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a

Then we

***

for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary

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

the 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

turned out

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

wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to say. Often,

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 cold and

she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not

general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a mysterious, unapproachable ice

just shy

realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not

line with how a protagonist should

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

not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might