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 problems would

see anything

to remember. Then, her face

leading me through the gates of the castle! That

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

a certain detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only

head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying

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

Then we will go

***

the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In

which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization

Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident,

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

out

aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny

either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what

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

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

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

just shy and completely

to stop himself from staring

the hell? That’s not in line with how a

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 other hand, were relegated to exist far away in the background. Now,

and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have