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

see anything

to remember. Then, her

leading me through the gates of the castle!

doll-like face, beaming with so much joy that Sunny couldn't help but

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

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

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

Then we will

***

had their breakfast and then spent some time planning for the journey and preparing to

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

the confident, distant girl.

and strange speech patterns made people interacting with her feel unnerved and

impression turned out to be completely

cool and aloof. After talking to her a bit more and

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

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 that she was really bad at emoting them! As a result, her

simply chose to talk as

her general weirdness, was ultimately

fact, she was just shy and completely inept

but still failed to stop himself from staring at Nephis with

in line

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 exist far away in the

with expressing herself and lacked social skills did not mean that she was not strong. In fact, it might have meant the opposite. She still achieved everything that she had achieved, but

She was still dangerous.