Stanley ran as fast as he could. The Nova was gone, but he couldn’t be sure when he would return. He slowed time whenever he could move faster.

He didn’t know how far he had run. He just kept on running. After what felt like forever, he finally saw a glimpse of light.

"Light!" Sheila shouted the moment she saw it.

Stanley nodded and slowed down finally as he needed to catch his breath. He and Sheila arrived at the end of the cave, to an opening that was completely covered in what looked like vines and roots.

Stanley touched a lot of them and found out that they were quite stiff all in all. He put Sheila down and pushed the vines aside to see the opening properly. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

The space to go out was way too small, and as a result, the two of them had to instead crawl their way out of the small hole.

Stanley crawled out first into the mud, and once he was out, he pulled Sheila out as well.

He saw the entrance to the cave that led people to the town. It was nothing but a patch of roots from an overgrown tree that covered it up.

Once Sheila was outside, Stanley paused for a moment and looked at the massive sloped cliff to his side. The cliff had a forest on it, which surprised him.

He’d never seen a forest on the cliff before, so he was surprised to see such a thing exist.

"How is there such a large forest on the cliff?" Stanley asked Sheila.

"Cliff?" Sheila looked around but didn’t find any. "There’s no cliff here. We ran for at least 2 hours, if not more. We are far beyond where the cliffs are. Given that we ran east... we must be in the Eylish Mountain range."

"Mountains?" Stanley asked in a surprised tone and looked at the sloped cliff again. It turned out that it was not a cliff, but rather a mountain. "Oh, so this is what a mountain is like. I had always thought of them as big, pointy rocks like the cliffs."

"I don’t think we can afford to care what you thought they looked like for now," Sheila said. "Let’s go."

Stanley nodded and carried her, rushing down the mountain through the uneven path. The path, while obviously unfamiliar, felt somewhat easy to tread through for the most part.

Ever since a child, Stanley was used to running down uneven paths in the field or playing hide and seek with his brother in the forest. While foreign, the path felt familiar to him, so he kept going.

Sheila looked at the shadow the mountain had cast and the other mountain range in the east that barely have some light on the tip.

’It’s already close to 4 pm,’ she thought. She hadn’t realized it had already been this long.

The day for her had somehow been short and long at the same time. So many things had happened from the Crawler attack to her snooping in the mansion, then finding the cave, getting caught by the mayor, and then escaping it all, while also escaping from the Shadow Nova, Raven herself.

That was perhaps the most stunning bit about her whole day right there. Not once, but twice had she managed to get away from the Shadow Nova, one of the most popular Nova in history.

Sheila caught herself almost getting happy and forced herself to be serious about the situation.

’East...’ she thought, looking at the upcoming mountain that Stanley would have to cross to get to the other side.

"No!" she suddenly shouted as she realized something.

Stanley found himself unable to stop as he had been running downhill and nearly tripped over himself. At the last second, he managed to slow down time, slowing himself in the process, at which point he reoriented himself backward and dug his sole onto the ground to stop himself.

Sheila felt a sudden burst of inertia hit her, as she nearly fell out of Stanley’s arm. Her bandages pulled on her right hand, hurting it once again.

"Argh!" she cried out in pain.

Stanley paused and looked down. "Are you okay? you shouted. Is everything alright?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said, grunting in pain as she still hadn’t dealt with her hand. "I’m fine."

Stanley frowned. "Then why did you scream?" he asked. "You said no."

"Yes," she said. "We need to go in that direction."

Stanley looked in the direction that Sheila had pointed and saw that it was a sudden right turn from where they were.

"Why there?" he asked, confused.

"Over this mountain is a town, I’m sure of it," Sheila said. "If not here, it’s after the next mountain. However, if we head there now, that is the obvious place that the Shadow Nova will go to. We need to get as far away from her as we can."

"Oh, okay," Stanley said and turned right before running.

Now that he was at the base of the mountain, running became a lot more controllable.

"Aren’t you tired?" Sheila asked. "You’ve been running for hours now."

"Tired? Yes," Stanley said with a blank look on his face. "Extremely. But I can somehow still run. I don’t know why."

"Hmm," Sheila thought for a bit. "Are you getting stronger?"

"Stronger?" Stanley asked and felt his own strength. Was he getting stronger?

"I can’t tell," Stanley said. "Maybe?"

’Then...’ Sheila thought. ’He must still have all the soul from the ones that died, and he must be slowly absorbing them, using them up as his body uses that energy to keep him going.’

She had realized that if she kept him going on forever, she could theoretically get him to get rid of most of the souls he had collected before he absorbed it all.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have such a luxury. It was maybe for the best, as she would feel extremely guilty for doing that to someone who had saved her.

"We will have to stop soon," she said. "It will get dark any time now. We need to find some dry woods to make fire out of and stay the night."