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 cleared his

you see anything

frowned, trying to remember.

I saw Sunny leading me through the gates of

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

Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the castle, the blind girl only mentioned the

trying to discern if

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

Then we will

***

time planning for the journey and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the process,

which almost made

met in front of the Academy's gates, Sunny had formed a certain impression of the confident, distant girl. Later, her

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 seemed to know.

out

nothing to do with being cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and observing

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 statements

fact 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

to talk as little as possible or not

was ultimately responsible for creating

shy and completely inept in

coming to that realization, Sunny tried with all his might but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with wide

That's not in line with how

event. At the center stage, there were always confident, strong

mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant

She was still dangerous.