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.’

really existed, then all of their problems would

see anything

remember. Then,

me through the gates of the castle! That means we will make

doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny

It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was

trying to discern if she had

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

we will

***

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

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

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

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

out

behind the matter had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was simply an

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 and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to say. Often, she would forget to put correct intonations in her

Nephis was not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that

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

her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a mysterious, unapproachable ice

shy and completely inept in communicating with

all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let his

in line with how a

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

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 everything that she had achieved, but with the