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.’

then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny

you see anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her

me through the gates

beaming with so much joy

when talking about

at Nephis, trying to discern if she

as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much

Then we

***

some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon

a sudden realization, which almost made his head

confident,

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

impression turned out to

nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and

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

emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really

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

general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the

was just shy

all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not

hell? That’s not in line with how

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

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