Flashback — Twenty Years Earlier
Nan Estate — Private LaboratoryThe air hung thick with formaldehyde and ambition.
A baby screamed—shrill, raw, instinctive. The sound echoed off the tiled walls like an alarm bell no one would answer.
Dowager Nan loomed over the child strapped to the steel gurney, her trembling hands steadying a glass vial of iridescent blue fluid.
"The Nan bloodline must evolve," she murmured, soaking a cloth in the solution.
"Even if it burns."
She pressed the cloth to the infant's left cheek.
The baby's skin bubbled. Blistered. Turned red like spilled paint.
Not a cry—a wail.A sound that bent the air.
Then—
"Stop!"
Lorraine Lancaster burst into the lab, hair unpinned, rain dripping from her sleeves.
She lunged forward, yanking the child—her child—into her arms.
"You monster! Our deal was for research, not—this!"
Dowager Nan's lips curled into a viper's smile.Her cane cracked hard against Lorraine's spine.
"Silence, girl. Or shall I tell your husband about your little affair...with my son?"
Lorraine flinched.The baby in her arms continued to scream.
Present — The Web Unravels
Rain clawed down the windowpanes of the abandoned church like nails.
Sienna stood before the glass, tracing her reflection with a fingertip—the crimson scar that had been part of her face since infancy.
"All this time...My own grandmother."Her voice trembled with disbelief—then steeled into something else.Resolve.
Behind her, Lin Zhao placed an old, rust-bitten key on the table.
"The answers are in the west wing of Nan Manor.The records, the test vials... even the blueprints for Veritas Prime."
He paused.
"But we can't get in without her."
"Lorraine?" Silas asked.
Lin nodded.
"The wing's coded to her DNA. She gave it once... she can open it again."
Silas pulled out his phone—then stilled.
One unread message.From Vivian.
"Mother's waiting.Come alone,or the old woman dies at dawn."
Sienna turned.
Silas's jaw clenched.
"It's a trap," he said.
"Of course it's a trap," she replied. "The question is—who's baiting who?"