?Chapter 1483:

    “I can’t say for sure.” Eaton shook his head faintly. “But based on the medicine Corrine gave me—the vial—there’s some good news. It works. It suppresses the outbreaks without any visible side effects.” A silver lining, however faint.

    Yet…

    The moment Eaton mentioned the vial, Corrine’s mind drifted elsewhere—straight to Jonathan.

    When she had first received the vial, she instinctively questioned his intentions.

    Not because she was paranoid, but because Jonathan and Nate’s rtionship had always been vtile—two men whose animosity could poison even the purest gestures.

    Still, the time hade. She needed to talk to Jonathan, face-to-face.

    As she drifted into thought, Jules and Eaton began discussing Nate and Corrine’s mysterious marriage arrangement years ago.

    Eaton hadn’t looked surprised when he heard about the marriage arrangement. What surprised him was the news that Corrine had epted Nate’s proposal.

    “You just said yes?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

    Corrine blinked, snapping back to the moment. She hesitated, then gave a slight nod.

    Before she could speak, Eaton scoffed. “What’s so great about the Independent Continent? A nest of arrogant elites and cold-blooded opportunists. You must be desperate to want to marry into that mess.”

    Corrine was briefly stunned into silence.

    Eaton might have been the only person alive bold enough to trash-talk the Independent Continent like that, especially when most people treated every square inch of it like sacred ground. It was a fortune!

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    “I just agreed to his proposal,” she replied mildly. “Marriage is still a long way off.”

    Eaton’s lips curled into a sardonic smirk. “How far off could it possibly be?”

    The three of them sat lingering in conversation within the sterile quiet of the research institute. Evening had fallen, and the clock struck six.

    Eaton stood quietly, watching as Corrine and Jules disappeared into the distance before the easy calm on his face slowly gave way to a hard sternness. His eyes lifted to the horizon, where amber clouds bled across the sky, zing like old memoriese to life. There was a glimmer in his gaze—wistful, heavy. Nostalgia, maybe. Regret, more likely.

    He remembered the great fire from years ago—how the sky had glowed with the same merciless red, scorching and unforgiving. That night had felt like the end of everything.

    Back then, he thought running away had been the smartest choice. But in truth, it was only the start of something far more inescapable. No matter how many turns he took or how far he fled, fate had a way of circling him back to where it all began—like some cruel game with no exits.

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