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 be solved. Sunny cleared

see anything

to remember. Then, her

the gates of the castle! That means

so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but curl

that, when talking about reaching the

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

as ever. Without showing much emotion,

we will

***

for the journey and preparing to abandon

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

front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only served to reinforce that

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 confidence was arresting,

out to

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 was simply an incredibly,

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

habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings:

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

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

just shy and completely inept

failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with

line with how a protagonist

the center stage, there were always confident, strong

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