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 solved. Sunny cleared his

see anything

remember. Then,

leading me through the gates of

so much joy that Sunny couldn’t

when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of

Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on

enigmatic as ever. Without showing much

Then we will go

***

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

he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his

confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about

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

that impression turned out

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

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

that was the fact 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 cold

the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible

multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a

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

that 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 let his

not in line with how a protagonist should

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

that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant