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.'

their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared

see anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then, her

me through the gates of the castle! That means we will

appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn't

when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned

trying to discern if she had picked up on that little discrepancy,

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

Then we will

***

breakfast 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 to know the girls a

made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had to do

they first met in front of the Academy's gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star's past only served to reinforce

patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and rattled, often revealing more than they had been planning

that impression turned out to be completely

After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was simply an

something, she would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall

to that was 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:

time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not

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

shy and completely

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

the hell? That's not in line

person to be the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like

line of 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. She still achieved

She was still dangerous.