Chrollo chose to embrace death.
Blood ran from the corner of his mouth, yet his eyes stayed clear and bright. "I know you have ways to drag me back into the world of the living. That no longer matters."
Seeing the Fourth Prince's state had already settled the decision in his mind. If Ronin could pull Tserriednich back from whatever waited below, there was no reason he could not do the same for Chrollo. But as Chrollo himself had said, it would mean nothing.
Even returned, he would only be a puppet on Ronin's strings.
He tilted his head toward the sky.
Dawn was breaking. Night was already being driven out. He could not quite name the feeling in his chest. Strange. Almost quiet.
He had failed to keep Meteor City from being preyed upon. Yet the ones responsible for Sarasa's death were gone. The Fourth Prince who had ordered it. Lisnos who had carried it out. The tattooist who had hovered at the prince's side for years. All of them dead.
Whether Sarasa would forgive him once he reached the other side… he doubted it.
His hands had taken too many lives along the way. Many of them had been as innocent as she once was.
He felt no regret.
Kurapika's figure appeared behind Ronin. He dragged Kortopi's limp body like a discarded carcass.
Seeing Chrollo's upturned face, accepting the end, Kurapika's eyes burned a deeper crimson.
Inside the vault he had found Pairo's head.
The Phantom Troupe did not deserve a clean death. They should have knelt before Pairo, begged for forgiveness, and then burned in hell for eternity. That was the only ending they had earned.
Ronin heard the footsteps and turned. He felt the storm of emotion rolling off Kurapika at once.
There was nothing useful left to say. He simply stepped aside, clearing the path so Kurapika could stand before Chrollo.
Kortopi's body hit the ground at Chrollo's feet.
Chrollo did not react. His gaze stayed fixed on the lightening sky.
Ronin felt the last of Chrollo's aura vanish.
He was gone.
"Big Brother Ronin… can you bring them back?" Kurapika's voice was tight. His scarlet eyes held nothing but rage and the bitter refusal to accept this ending.
Ronin shook his head. "Not now."
Two reasons. No materials ready. And more importantly, he had finally confirmed what he had only suspected: Beyond Netero had been pulling strings from the beginning.
Revenge was not finished.
Kurapika's expression froze.
"Take the bodies," Ronin said. "And the Scarlet Eyes. We leave now."
Kurapika's lips pressed into a hard line. For the first time he refused to simply follow. He stepped forward hard. "Why not?"
Ronin frowned. "Because—"
Kurapika cut him off. "Because you think someone is still watching? Because you're afraid they'll strike while we're distracted?"
"Yes."
Ronin allowed himself a small breath of relief. If Kurapika already understood, good.
But the younger man only smiled, cold and mocking. "You never cared about the Kurta. You never cared about revenge. From the start the only thing that mattered to you was the Scarlet Eyes."
Ronin's eyes narrowed.
So that was how Kurapika saw him.
He would not deny that the eyes ranked higher than pure vengeance on his personal list. That did not change the fact that he had walked the path of revenge the entire time.
Of the twelve Troupe members—Hisoka excluded as the infiltrator—more than half had died by his hand. Including their leader.
Without him, how many would Kurapika have managed to kill before the voyage to the Dark Continent even began? In the original timeline Kurapika's focus had already shifted from hunting the Troupe to simply recovering the eyes.
Now the Troupe was all but extinct, and simply because Ronin refused to immediately force Chrollo's corpse into an Impure World Reincarnation, Kurapika was trying to give him orders.
Where did that confidence come from?
"What exactly are you trying to say?" Ronin's voice stayed level. The disappointment in his gaze was harder to hide.
"Are you still the Big Brother Ronin I know?" Kurapika did not back down. He closed the distance another step and glared straight up into Ronin's eyes.
"Have I ever done anything that harmed the Kurta?" Ronin's presence pressed outward, heavy and cold. He ignored the question and answered with his own. "Was everything I did unrelated to revenge?"
"You're thinking it, aren't you?" Kurapika's words came sharp and fast. "Without you I would never have finished this. I'm just the tool who gave a few suggestions. All the real work was yours. Isn't that right?"
The aggression hung in the air.
Ronin looked down at the shorter man for a long moment. Then he smiled.
The punch came without warning.
Kurapika's chains reacted on pure instinct, forming a barrier across his midsection.
It was not enough.
Ronin had already released the Yin Seal, but the Nen remaining in his body was still substantial. The blow was pure Enhancement, raw and overwhelming. The chains shattered on contact.
The fist drove into Kurapika's abdomen with a solid, sickening impact.
Kurapika did not fly backward.
Ronin's hand opened against the younger man's stomach and stayed there. Chakra flooded in. In the space of a heartbeat the marks of the Four Symbols Seal bloomed across Kurapika's body.
The seal did not target Kurapika's own Nen.
It locked onto a second presence already living inside him.
The sealing completed in an instant.
Ronin's gaze lifted past Kurapika toward the ruins beyond.
Applause echoed across the broken ground.
A tall figure stepped out of the shadows, two others at his side.
One Ronin recognized—Adlai, a specialist from the Hunter Association.
The other was a stranger in person, yet familiar from the memories of the original timeline. A girl who moved like a puppet, dressed in a sailor uniform. The one Ging Freecss had once marked as an extreme threat.