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 be solved.

see anything

to remember. Then, her

leading me through the gates of the castle!

brilliant smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but curl

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

little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked

showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and

Then we will

***

time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary

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

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

taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more

that impression turned out to

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

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 sound like statements or

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 cold and

the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not

weirdness, was ultimately responsible for

fact, she was just shy and completely inept in communicating with

his might but 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 protagonist should

any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other

was also wrong. The fact that Changing 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