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.’

castle really existed, then all of their problems would

see anything

trying to remember. Then, her

gates of the castle! That means

smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that

however, he 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

Nephis, trying to discern if she

showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then

we will go

***

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

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

formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her

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

out to be

being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized

use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence

the fact that, like many introverted people, Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have

why, most of the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or

together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for

in fact, she was just shy

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

line with how a

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

social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She