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.'

castle really existed, then all of their problems would

you see

trying to remember. Then,

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle!

her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that

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

little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern

ever. Without showing much emotion, she thought

we will

***

sea was still retreating, 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

sudden realization, which almost made his head explode

the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star's past only served to reinforce that

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

turned out to be

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

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 and fall silent. Her tone never matched what she

in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It's not that she didn't have feelings: it's just that she was really bad at emoting them! As a result, her face always

chose to talk as little as possible or not

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

she was just shy and completely inept in

Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to

not in line with how a protagonist should

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

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

She was still dangerous.