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.’

existed, then all of their

see

to remember.

Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That means we

doll-like face, beaming with so

was that, when talking about reaching the castle,

his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that

much emotion, she thought for a while,

Then we will go

***

the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary

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

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

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

out

nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis

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 sound like statements or vice

It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just

why, most of the time, she simply chose to talk

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

in fact, she was just shy and completely

himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes.

not in line with how a

his 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

line of thought 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