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

you see

remember.

saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That

so much joy that Sunny couldn’t help but

detail of Cassie’s vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there some meaning behind

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

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

we

***

had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had

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

of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations

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

out to be completely

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

to talk to people. Every time she 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 what she was trying to say. Often, she would forget to put correct intonations in her

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

the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or

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

fact, she was just shy and completely inept in communicating with

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

the hell? 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

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 the opposite.