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 cleared

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her face

through the gates of the

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

was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind

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

as ever. Without showing much

we will go

***

preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In

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

of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the

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

out to be

a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized

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

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

she simply chose to talk as little

was

shy and completely

but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with

That’s not in line with

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

social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact,