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.’

their problems would be solved.

you see

to remember. Then, her

me through the gates of the castle! That means

her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy

stuck on a certain detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about

little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if

as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought

we will go

***

and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny

was then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode

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

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

out

actual truth behind the matter had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more

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

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 always

why, most of the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not to

her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for

just shy and completely inept in communicating

himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes.

not in line with

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

that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she had achieved, but with the added layer