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.'

all of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared his

you see

to remember.

saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the

brilliant smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn't

detail of Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle,

secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she

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

Then we will

***

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

a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from

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

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

impression turned out

more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted

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

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 she was really bad at emoting them! As a result, her face always looked cold

most of the time, she simply chose to talk as little as possible or not to talk

multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a

fact, she was just shy

that realization, 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 let his jaw hang

hell? That's not in line with how a

center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on

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

She was still dangerous.