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.'

castle really existed, then all of their problems would be solved. Sunny cleared his

you see

frowned, trying to remember. Then,

me through the gates of the

beaming with so much joy that

was stuck on a certain detail of Cassie's vision. It was that, when talking about reaching the

glanced at Nephis, trying to discern if she had picked up on that

Without showing much emotion, she thought for a while, and then slowly

Then we

***

and preparing to abandon the temporary camp. In the

sudden realization, which almost made his head explode from bafflement. That mind-blowing

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

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. That silent, indifferent confidence was arresting, and sometimes

out

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 Nephis was

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

habit of openly showing her emotions. It's not that she didn't have feelings: it's just that she was really bad at emoting them! As a result, her face always looked cold

simply chose to talk as little as possible or not to talk at

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

just shy and completely inept in

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

in line with

center stage, there were always confident, strong people like her and Caster. People like himself and

skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact,

She was still dangerous.