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

you see anything

frowned, trying to remember.

leading me through the gates of the castle!

beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn't help but curl his

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

his head a little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she

Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then slowly

Then we will

***

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

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

of the confident, distant girl. Later, her

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, indifferent confidence

that impression turned out to

bit more and observing their

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 was trying to say. Often, she would forget to put correct intonations in her speech, making questions sound like statements or vice

openly showing her emotions. It's not that she didn't have feelings: it's just

to talk

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

she was just shy and

failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely

That's not in line with how a protagonist should

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

did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite.

She was still dangerous.