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

frowned, trying to remember. Then,

Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That means we will make

face, beaming with so much joy

when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there some

little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on

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

Then we will

***

journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a

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

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

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, and

impression turned out to be completely

the matter had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing

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 to put correct intonations in her speech, making questions sound like

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 that she was really bad at emoting them! As a result, her

simply chose to talk

general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a mysterious,

in fact, she was just shy and completely inept in

still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let

in line with

any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong

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

She was still dangerous.