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.'

this castle really existed, then all of their problems would

see anything

to remember.

me through the gates of the castle! That means

appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy

was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them.

secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had

Star, however, was as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much

we

***

some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the

almost made his head explode from

when they first met in front of the Academy's gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident,

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 talked, the more she seemed to know. That silent, indifferent confidence was arresting,

turned out to

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 Nephis

was as though she had no idea 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

her emotions. It's not that she didn't have feelings: it's just that she was really bad at emoting them! As a

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

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

was just shy and

to stop himself from staring

That's not in line with how

always confident, strong people like her and Caster. 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.