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.’

castle really existed, then all of their problems

you see anything

trying to remember. Then, her

me through the gates of

so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help

was that, when talking about reaching the castle,

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

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

we

***

the sea was still retreating, they 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

a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement.

Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident,

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

turned out to be completely

actual truth behind the matter had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their

of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what

of openly showing her emotions. It’s not that she didn’t have feelings: it’s just that she was really bad

most of the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not to talk at

together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately

shy and completely inept in communicating with

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

the hell? That’s not in line

the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the

that line 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