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.’

really existed, then all of their problems would

see anything

to remember. Then, her

leading me through the gates of the

so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but curl

was stuck on a certain detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there some

Nephis, trying to discern

was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much

Then we

***

they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the

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

first met in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations

a bit apart from the world. She was mysterious, aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning to. The less she talked,

out to be

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

stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall

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

chose to talk as little as possible or

was ultimately responsible

shy and completely inept in

himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let his jaw hang

That’s not in line with how

At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and

with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not