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.’

this castle really existed, then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny

you see anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then,

gates of the castle! That means we

doll-like face, beaming with so

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

his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked

however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for

we

***

the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In

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

confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star’s

unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than

that impression turned out to be

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

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 speech, making questions sound like statements or

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 just that she was really bad at emoting them! As a result, her face always looked cold and

she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not to talk at

of that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image

fact, she was just shy and

realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with

not in line with how

had definitely been the type of person to be the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself

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