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 problems would be solved. Sunny cleared

you see

remember. Then,

me through the gates of

face, beaming with so much

however, he was 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 of them. Was there

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

as ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought

Then we

***

then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know the girls

to a sudden realization, which almost made

gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl.

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 to know. That silent, indifferent confidence was arresting, and sometimes even

impression turned out to be completely

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

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

the fact that, like many 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 bad at emoting them! As a result,

talk as little as possible or

of that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for

in fact, she was just shy and completely inept in

to that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from

in line with

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

not mean that she was not strong. In fact,