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.’

of their problems would be solved. Sunny

see anything

trying to remember. Then, her face

gates of the castle! That means

beaming with so much joy that

when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of

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

Star, however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much

Then we will go

***

for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know the

that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had to do

Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing

was mysterious, aloof and rather cool. Her taciturn character and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and

out to

behind the matter had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions

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

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

the time, she simply chose to talk as little

multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately

shy and completely inept in communicating with

but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He

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 other hand, were

was also wrong. The fact 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