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 cleared his

you see

trying to remember.

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That means we will make

face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t

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 meaning behind

head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to

was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then slowly

we will go

***

some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to

almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization

impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and

to exist 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, the more she seemed to know. That silent, indifferent confidence was arresting, and

impression turned out to

talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was simply an incredibly, ridiculously…

was as though she had no idea how to talk to people. Every time she tried to convey something, she would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence

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

chose to talk as little as possible or not

was ultimately responsible for

fact, she was just shy and completely inept in

to that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely

line with

of 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

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