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

see anything

remember. Then,

leading me through the gates of the castle!

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

certain detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about

glanced at Nephis, trying

showing much

we will

***

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

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

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

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, and sometimes even

that impression turned out to

actual truth 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

middle of the sentence and

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

time, she simply chose to talk as

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

shy and

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

hell? That’s not in line with

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

lacked social skills did not mean that she was