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

you see anything

remember. Then, her

me through the gates of the castle! That

smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t

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

secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to

showing much emotion, she

we

***

had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary

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

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

seemed 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

impression turned out to be completely

her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when

to convey something, she would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her

emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings:

to talk as little as possible

added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately

fact, she was just shy and completely inept in communicating

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

the hell? That’s not in line with

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 relegated to exist far away in the

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