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.’

their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared his

see

frowned, trying to remember.

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

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

about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two

head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to

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

Then we

***

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

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

impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s past only served

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

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

the sentence and fall silent.

that was 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 feelings: it’s

she simply chose to talk as little as

by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a

she was just shy and completely

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

That’s not in line with how a protagonist

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 relegated to exist far away in

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 might have meant the opposite. She still achieved