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.

see

trying to remember. Then, her

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle!

beaming with so much

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

and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to

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

Then we will go

***

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

a sudden realization, which almost made his head

when they 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 about Changing Star’s past only served to reinforce

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,

turned out to

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

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

not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really bad at emoting them! As

time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or

up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was

was just shy and

that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from

line with how a

the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself

that line of thought 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