The Ouroboros hung in the void, a speck of absolute black against the star-dusted tapestry. It was positioned far enough from Planet Vegeta to be undetectable, yet close enough for its enhanced sensors—and Astra's own senses—to drink in the horrific spectacle. He had come alone. This was not a sight for his people. This was a burden for the architect to bear.
The Frieza Force fleet arrived with silent, malevolent grace. The flagship was a monstrous obsidian claw, dwarfing its escorts. It radiated a cold, cosmic malice that pressed against Astra's senses even at this distance. And within it... a presence. A singularity of power and cruelty that made the ambient energy of The Cradle feel tame. Frieza.
[Appraising: Frieza (First Form)]
[Power Level: 1,200,000]
[Status: Amused, Bored, Genocidally Intent.]
The number was academic. It was so far beyond his own 45,000 that it ceased to be a measure and became a fact of nature, like the heat of a star. There was no fighting this. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
He watched as King Vegeta, in a final, pathetic act of pride, flew up to confront the flagship. Astra's [Appraisal] saw the King's power flare to its maximum—around 12,000—a gnat buzzing at a god. The outcome was as inevitable as physics. A single, contemptuous gesture from Frieza. A pinpoint blast of energy. And the King of all Saiyans was reduced to atoms, his signature vanishing from the cosmos without a ripple.
Astra felt nothing. No satisfaction, no grief. The King had been a tool, and then an obstacle. His death was a data point, confirming the futility of the old ways.
Then, the main event began.
A sphere of light, beautiful and terrible, bloomed from the flagship's belly. It was not a laser or a missile. It was a Supernova-in-a-bottle, a contained stellar annihilation. It drifted slowly, almost lazily, towards Planet Vegeta.
Astra watched, his mind perfectly calm, his [Stellar Forge] and [Circlet of the Architect] analyzing the energy composition, the spatial distortions, the sheer, awesome power of total planetary disintegration. He was a scientist observing the most destructive experiment imaginable.
The ball of light touched the atmosphere.
The planet did not explode. It unraveled. The crust peeled back like the skin of an orange, the mantle vomited forth into the vacuum, the core was exposed for a blinding instant before it too was consumed by the all-devouring light. The blood-red world that had been the cradle of his second life, the source of so much pain and ambition, was methodically, completely, erased from existence.
Millions of Saiyan Ki signatures—warriors, children, elites, low-class—flared in a final, collective scream of terror and rage, and then were snuffed out. A race, save for the few hundred he had stolen, was extinguished.
He felt it. A psychic shockwave of death, a tide of finality that washed over him. He did not flinch. He accepted it. This was the price of his future. This was the fertilizer for the world he was building.
As the light faded, leaving behind an expanding cloud of incandescent gas and dust, a new, chilling notification appeared in his vision. It was not from the System. It was from the Watchtower Partition, which had been monitoring not just Vegeta, but the space around it.
[WATCHTOWER ALERT: Anomaly Detected.]
[During the planetary destruction event, a localized spatial rift opened and closed within the debris field. Duration: 0.003 seconds.]
[Energy Signature: Match confirmed. It is the same signature as the entity that killed the Power Level 42,000 being.]
[Analysis: The destroyer of the unknown entity was present at the destruction of Planet Vegeta. It observed the event.]
The breath froze in Astra's lungs. Something else had been there. Something that had killed a being nearly as powerful as Frieza's first form. It hadn't intervened. It had just... watched.
The galaxy was not just dangerous. It was stalked.
He had just witnessed one apocalypse, and in its shadow, he had discovered the silhouette of another, far more enigmatic and terrifying one.
He input the coordinates for Vesper. The Ouroboros turned its back on the graveyard of the Saiyan Empire and jumped.
He returned to a world holding its breath. He landed on the plateau, where every colonist and Saiyan was gathered, their faces pale, looking at the sky as if expecting Frieza's fleet to appear at any moment.
Astra walked to the center of the Nexus dais. He looked out at his people, their fear a palpable thing.
"It is done," he said, his voice flat, devoid of the cosmic horror he had just witnessed. "Planet Vegeta is gone. The Saiyan Empire is a memory."
A wave of grief and relief washed through the crowd, a confusing, painful mix.
"We are all that remains. We are the legacy. From this day forward, we are no longer refugees or exiles. We are Vesperians. Our past is ash. Our future is ours to build."
He didn't tell them about the other watcher. That was a burden for him alone. They needed certainty. They needed a rock.
He had given them a front-row seat to armageddon by proxy. Now, he had to give them the will to live in its aftermath. The architect's work was never done. He had just laid the foundation upon the greatest graveyard in Saiyan history.