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.'

really existed, then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared his

you see

trying to remember. Then,

the gates of

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

was stuck on a certain detail of Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind

turned his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she

as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much

Then we

***

they had their 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

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

the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations

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 had been planning to. The less she

out to

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

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

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:

the time, she simply chose to talk as little as

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

she was just shy

Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis

line with how a protagonist should

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 background. Now,

herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have

She was still dangerous.