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.’

then all of their

see anything

to remember. Then,

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle!

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

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

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

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

we will go

***

had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance

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

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 that

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 arresting,

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

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

not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s

chose to talk as

was ultimately responsible for creating the false image

in fact, she was just shy and completely inept in

from staring at Nephis with wide eyes.

hell? That’s not in line with how a protagonist should

center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on

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