CHAPTER 51: COFFE

Everyone was sitting around the dining room table. Caelan had made coffee, trying to lighten the mood, but the tension was still evident on everyone’s faces.

Rhys, however, felt the first sip calm him, at least a little. The coffee tasted good. Surprisingly good, coming from Caelan. Still, he didn’t dare say anything. The moment wasn’t right for praise.

Jess took a sip from her cup without taking her eyes off Rhys. She placed the cup on the table and spoke calmly.

"Why did you come back?" she asked."Did Milo send you?"

Rhys held her gaze for a few seconds before answering.

"No, I came on my own. Milo loves this place too much to send me... even me."

Jess narrowed her eyes.

"Then speak bluntly, you know I don’t like wasting my time."

Rhys took a deep breath, then rested both elbows on the table and clasped his hands together.

"Eun-woo is an esper," he said. "We freed him from the Research Center. We have nowhere else to go. Arthur attacked our shelter, and we barely escaped with our lives."

Jae looked down, Caelan stopped moving the spoon in his cup, and Eun-woo tensed. He kept his gaze fixed on his coffee, as if hesitant to drink it.

Jess didn’t seem shocked. She just took another sip of coffee, thoughtful.

Finally, he put the cup aside.

"Come out," she said quietly. "I need to speak with Rhys alone."

Jae stood first, then Caelan. Eun-woo, on the other hand, sat with his eyes lowered, his fingers tightly gripped against his cup. He was hesitating. Rhys noticed it immediately.

"Can he stay?" Rhys asked, turning to Jess.

She looked at him silently for a few seconds, as if weighing the request. Finally, she nodded, albeit with some reluctance.

"Fine."

Eun-woo looked up at Rhys. Under the table, he squeezed Rhys’s hand tightly. Rhys instantly sensed something bothering him, but assumed it was Rong Ye’s absence.

Meanwhile, Jae and Caelan walked out without saying anything.

Jess crossed her arms.

"It’s always the same with you," she said. "You act on impulse, without thinking beyond the next step."

Rhys looked away for a second, but then looked back at her.

"I had a plan," he said in a low voice. "A... half-baked one. But Arthur ruined everything."

"It’s not about having one plan," Jess countered. "It’s about having several. Thinking about possibilities, and the possibilities that grow out of those possibilities. You have to learn to always move as if you’re a hundred steps ahead, or you’ll be buried under the rubble of your first mistake."

Rhys nodded silently. There was no arguing with him. Jess was right. She always had been.

His mind returned, unwillingly, to the first day he arrived at that place. He was fourteen years old, with an explosive temper and scars that still hadn’t healed.

Milo had brought him there, wounded and half-conscious, after rescuing him from an ambush. Rhys was still a soldier back then, and he made that clear from the start. He was rude, distrustful, and refused help from "rebels."

But Jess wasn’t fazed. She handled Rhys from day one, without condescension or compassion. She spoke to him coldly when necessary and firmly when he exploded.

She never treated him like a wounded child or an enemy. Jess taught him to be quiet, to observe, to not react without thinking first.

Rhys never said it out loud, but ever since then, he’d begun to see her as a maternal figure. Someone who’d helped him grow.

He came back to the present when Jess sighed and held her cup again.

"Milo’s still covering for you, even though he’s not here," she said, without looking at him. "I know him. I know that, despite everything, he approves of what you’re doing. Even if he doesn’t tell you."

"Are you still...?"

"Married, yes," Jess interrupted. "Unfortunately."

Rhys raised an eyebrow, surprised by the response.

Jess and Milo had always seemed like one of those couples who, even though they lived apart —he in the city running the Burrow, she in the middle of the woods maintaining the settlement— remained deeply connected.

He’d seen them argue, of course, but he also knew the affection they shared. And the son they had together was the most obvious bond of that love.

For a moment, neither of them said anything.

Then Jess looked straight into Rhys’s eyes.

"Now that you’ve brought an esper and a member of the Lee family, you better be prepared for whatever comes next."

Rhys sighed.

"You asked me to be blunt," he said, sitting up straight. "So here it is: I think Nolan is responsible for Rong Ye’s disappearance."

Rhys didn’t know how she would take it. Jess had been looking after Nolan long before he’d arrived here. Nolan was something like her adopted son.

Jess just nodded, her eyes glued to her cup.

"I already suspected it," she said calmly.

"Why?" Rhys asked, not hiding his surprise.

A slight smile appeared on Jess’s lips.

"Nolan’s like five times that guy’s size," she said. "There’s no way someone like that could escape him. Only an idiot would believe that."

Rhys clenched his jaw.

"If you already suspect it, why don’t you do something?"

"Nolan won’t hurt Rong Ye," she said. "His hatred for his father is so great that physically hurting Rong Ye wouldn’t give him any satisfaction. So, for now, he should be safe."

Rhys nodded cautiously, but something in Jess’s expression made him frown. For a moment, he thought he saw a faint amber glow in her eyes.

He was about to say something else, but Eun-woo squeezed his hand under the table.

Rhys leaned slightly toward him, lowering his voice.

"Are you ok?"

Eun-woo shook his head slightly. His lips barely moved as he whispered:

"Nebu’s not here."

Rhys blinked, confused.

"Did you lose it?"

"I don’t know," Eun-woo murmured. "I didn’t notice when he left."

Rhys didn’t know whether he should feel relieved or worried. Part of him was grateful that the creature was no longer coiled around Eun-woo’s neck... but the other part couldn’t ignore the fact that an interdimensional entity, small or not, was running around unchecked.

"But leave that for now", Jess continued. "What worries me is Eun-woo. Does he have a guide?"

Rhys shook his head.

"No, he doesn’t have one."

"That will be a problem."

Rhys hesitated for a moment, lowered his voice, and said, somewhat embarrassed:

"In fact... there’s a chance I could be his Guide."

Jess stared at him, surprised. It was only for a moment, but Rhys noticed. She quickly composed herself.

"You’re sure?"

"I don’t know," he said. "I still don’t fully understand. But Eun-woo claims I am. He says we could bond."

Jess looked at them carefully.

"Then I need to show you something."

***

Jess led them through the woods without saying a word at first.

Rhys walked beside Eun-woo, their fingers intertwined. Eun-woo kept looking around, scanning every corner of the forest with a restless gaze, but Nebu was nowhere to be seen.

"We’ll look for him later," Rhys whispered, gently squeezing his hand.

"We had to move the settlement," Jess said. "The old one was attacked. Many people died."

Rhys frowned.

"Were they attacked by Blackwood people?"

Jess shook her head, without turning around.

"No. It was... something else."

The word floated, heavy with weight.

"Something else"?" Rhys repeated.

"We don’t know what to call it yet," Jess replied. "It wasn’t a Rift like the ones we know. It just... appeared. Out of nowhere. As if there had never been a barrier separating it from this world."

Eun-woo looked down, his gaze tense.

"An interdimensional creature?" he murmured.

Jess raised an eyebrow.

"Some believe that. But it didn’t behave like the others we’ve encountered. There was only one. And the massacre was devastating."

Rhys swallowed.

"And what happened to it?"

Jess paused for a few seconds, as if still struggling to make sense of what she’d seen.

"It vanished as suddenly as it appeared, as if something had summoned it. But it left something behind—something I want to show you."

They continued walking until they reached the entrance of a cave hidden in the vegetation. Jess took a flashlight from her shoulder bag and turned it on. A beam of yellow light pierced the darkness.

Eun-woo shuddered as soon as they crossed the threshold.

Jess looked over her shoulder at them.

"If you felt it, then whatever that was definitely isn’t from this world," she told Eun-woo, continuing to move forward.

The passageway was narrow, but as they descended, the space widened. The cave ceiling rose higher, and soon they began to see natural light streaming in from an opening high above.

Jess stopped a few feet from a strange formation.

"This is as far as I go," she said. "Normal humans get sick if we get too close to that. We had to ask some Guides for help to move it here, but we couldn’t destroy it."

Rhys hesitated.

"Are you sure we should...?"

"You won’t understand until you see it," she said.

Eun-woo, without letting go of his hand, looked at him firmly.

"Let’s go."

Rhys hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. He took the flashlight Jess offered him and continued forward, Eun-woo at his side.

The air thickened. The cave seemed to absorb sound, their footsteps made no echo. The flashlight cast eerie shadows on the rocks.

Then Rhys raised the flashlight and shone it ahead.

And he saw nothing.

Not a single figure. Not a single object. Nothing.

"I don’t understand..." Eun-woo muttered.

And then something in Rhys’s mind clicked.

The coffee Caelan made that morning tasted good.

That damn coffee tasted good.

Caelan ruined absolutely everything he cooked. Without exception.

Rhys whipped around, startled.

"Jess!"

But Jess wasn’t there.

The light streaming through the opening in the ceiling suddenly disappeared, as if someone had slapped a giant hand over it.

The cave fell completely silent, so silent that Rhys could only hear his own heartbeat and the faint pressure of Eun-woo’s hand clutching his.

Then the ground beneath their feet gave way... and they began to fall.