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.'

existed, then all of their problems would be

you see

remember. Then, her

Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That means we

brilliant smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so

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

trying to discern if she had picked up on that little

much emotion, she thought for a while, and then

we

***

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

a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had to

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

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

that impression turned out

and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with

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 speech, making questions

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

talk as little as possible or not to

her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false

she was just shy

himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He

That's not in line with how a

mind, 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 exist far away in the

lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she had

She was still dangerous.