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

see

to remember. Then,

gates of the castle!

doll-like face, beaming with so

of Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned

trying

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

Then we will go

***

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

came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That

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

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

impression turned out to be

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

the middle of the sentence and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she was trying to say. Often, she would

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: it's just

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

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

was just shy and completely inept in communicating

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

the hell? That's not in line with how a protagonist

there were always confident,

wrong. The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not

She was still dangerous.