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.’

their

you see

to remember. Then, her

through the gates of the

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

turned his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern

however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion,

Then we will go

***

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 to get to know the girls a

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

impression of the confident, distant

made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often

that impression turned out to be

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

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

emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that

the time, she simply chose to talk

up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible

was just shy and completely inept

all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just

That’s not in line with

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

that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she had achieved, but