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

you see anything

frowned, trying to remember. Then,

through the gates

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

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

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

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

we

***

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

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

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

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

impression turned out to

to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that Nephis was simply an incredibly,

would either use the wrong words or stumble in the middle of the sentence and fall silent.

that 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: it's just that

the time, she simply chose to talk

weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the

was just shy and

his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He

line with how a protagonist should

person to be the main character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster.

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.