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.'

of their

you see anything

trying to remember. Then, her face

leading me through the gates of the castle! That

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

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

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

as enigmatic as ever. Without showing much emotion,

Then we

***

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

sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That

of the confident, distant girl.

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

that impression turned out to be completely

a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized

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

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

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

together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible

was just shy

to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide

not in line with

there were always confident, strong people like her and

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

She was still dangerous.