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 would be solved. Sunny cleared his

see

remember. Then, her face

me through the gates of the castle!

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

when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was

little and secretly glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had

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

Then we will go

***

retreating, they had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process, Sunny had a chance to get to know

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

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

exist a bit apart 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

out

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

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.

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

talk as little as possible or not

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

was just shy and completely

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

not in line with how a protagonist

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

and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it

She was still dangerous.