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 would be

see

trying to remember. Then, her

leading me through the gates of the

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

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

trying to discern

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

Then we will

***

their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing

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

in front of the Academy’s gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior

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 less she talked, the more she

that impression turned out

more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that

how 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

emotions. It’s not that

simply chose to talk as little

together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating

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

tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis

hell? That’s not in line with how a protagonist

had definitely been the type of person to be the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident,

lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have