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 solved. Sunny

you see

trying to remember. Then, her

leading me through the gates of the castle!

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

on a certain detail of Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the two of them. Was there some meaning behind

trying to

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

Then 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.

came to a sudden realization, which almost made his

Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her behavior and the different revelations about

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

turned out to

bit more

no idea 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 forget to put correct

openly showing her emotions. It's not that she didn't have

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

of that added up together, then multiplied by her general weirdness, was ultimately responsible for creating the false

fact, she was just shy and completely inept in communicating with

failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide eyes. He just barely managed to not let his

That's not in line with

stage, there were always confident, strong people like

also wrong. The fact that Changing Star had problems with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong.

She was still dangerous.