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.’

really existed, then all of their

you see

to remember. Then, her face

saw Sunny leading me through the gates of

with so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but

about reaching the castle, the blind girl only

Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that

enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then

Then we will go

***

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

sudden realization, which almost made his head explode

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

to exist a bit apart from the 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 planning to. The

turned out

talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted

tried to convey something, she would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched

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

time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible

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

shy and completely inept in communicating with

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

not in line with how a protagonist

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

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