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.

you see anything

remember. Then, her

saw Sunny leading me through the gates of the castle! That

so much joy

that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned

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

much emotion, she thought

we will go

***

the 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 process, Sunny had a chance to

realization, which almost made his head

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

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

impression turned out to be

bit more and observing their interactions with Cassie, Sunny almost

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

not in a habit of openly showing her emotions. It's not that she didn't have feelings: it's just that she was

time, she simply chose to talk as little as

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

she was just shy and

might but still failed to stop himself from

in line

there were always confident, strong people like

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

She was still dangerous.