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.’

all of their

see

trying to remember.

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

with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help

vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there

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

Without showing much emotion, she thought for a

Then we

***

the sea was still retreating, they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance

sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement.

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

patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked, the more she seemed to know. That silent, indifferent

that impression turned out to be

a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie,

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

introverted people, Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that

simply chose to talk as little as possible or not

general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for

was just shy and completely inept in communicating with

from staring at Nephis with wide

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

the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like

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