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

you see anything

remember. Then, her

through the gates of

so much joy that

Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there some meaning

trying to discern if she had picked up on that little discrepancy,

as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion,

we

***

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

then that he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing realization

of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different

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 planning to. The less she talked, the more she seemed to know. That silent,

impression turned out to

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

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

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

time, she simply chose to talk as little as

of that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a

she was just shy and completely inept

coming to that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes.

not in line with how a protagonist

character of any event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and Cassie, on the other hand, were relegated to exist far away in the

and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she had

She was still dangerous.