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 problems would be

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her face

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates

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

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

glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had

much emotion, she thought for a

we will

***

preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In

then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his

had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior

world. She 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

turned out to

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 was simply an incredibly, ridiculously… painfully

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

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 emoting them! As a result, her face always looked

to talk as little

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

just shy and completely inept in

failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He

That’s not in line

Nephis had definitely been the type of person to be 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 other hand, were relegated to exist far away in the

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