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.'

all of their problems would be

see anything

trying to remember. Then, her

me through the gates of the

smile appeared on her doll-like face, beaming with so

talking about reaching the

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

showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then

we

***

breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the

he came to a sudden realization, which almost made his head

Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about Changing Star's past only served

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 than they had been planning to. The less she talked, the more she

turned out to be completely

truth behind the matter had nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost fainted when he realized that

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

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

simply chose to talk as little

together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false image of a mysterious, unapproachable

she was just shy and completely

might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed

not in line with how

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

was also 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

She was still dangerous.