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 would be solved.

you see

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

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

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

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

we

***

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

came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head

certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing

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, indifferent confidence was arresting, and

impression turned out to

and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions

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

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

chose to talk as

then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible

she was just shy and completely inept in

from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not

the hell? That's not in line

definitely been the type of person to be the main 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 background.

wrong. The 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 achieved everything that

She was still dangerous.