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 solved. Sunny

see anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then,

Sunny leading me through the gates of

her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn't help but curl

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

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

much emotion, she thought for a while, and then

we

***

still retreating, they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon

which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization had

a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing

seemed 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

impression turned out to be

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

openly showing her emotions. It's not that she didn't have feelings: it's just that

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

was ultimately responsible for creating the false image

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

still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes.

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

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

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

She was still dangerous.