The creation of Sanctuary marked a golden age for the Vesperian people. The two worlds—Vesper, the world of industry and community, and Sanctuary, the world of peace and rejuvenation—became the twin pillars of their civilization. The portal between them was a constant, gentle flow of people. Warriors from Sunstone would spend their rest cycles walking the silent, glowing forests, their battle-hardened spirits soothed. Colonist engineers, weary from complex calculations, would find their clarity restored by the singing crystals.
Astra observed it all, a silent guardian. His power was now a settled fact, like the law of gravity. He no longer needed to demonstrate it; its presence was implicit in the very safety they enjoyed. He spent his time split between The Cradle, pushing his limits further in the 1:500 time bubble, and Vesper, subtly guiding its development.
It was during one of these periods of quiet observation that the Watchtower Partition, which had been silently monitoring the galactic background for years, triggered an alert. This was not a flag for a fleet or a spatial anomaly. It was subtler.
[WATCHTOWER ALERT: Anomalous Subspace Communication Detected.]
[Frequency: Hyper-Encrypted, Non-Standard.]
[Content: Unreadable. Pattern suggests high-level strategic coordination.]
[Point of Origin: Deep Space, Uncharted Territory. Destination: Multiple, scattered.]
This was new. This wasn't the brutish chatter of the Zarlac Syndicate or the arrogant broadcasts of the Frieza Force. This was the communication of someone who did not wish to be found. The encryption was of a type his System-enhanced [Appraisal] couldn't immediately crack. It was a level of sophistication that rivaled, or even surpassed, the Tuffles at their peak.
He focused the Watchtower's entire processing power on the signal, using the [Circlet of the Architect] to run decryption algorithms based on cosmic background radiation patterns. It was a needle in a haystack the size of a galaxy.
Days passed. Then, a breakthrough. A single, repeating fragment of the message was isolated and decoded. It wasn't text or speech. It was a symbol. A complex, geometric sigil that resolved into a familiar, terrifying shape.
A stylized, grasping hand, surrounded by a halo of fire.
The symbol from the dead entity's armor. The symbol of the watcher.
The message was a beacon. A call to arms, or a status report, from the same faction that had killed the Power Level 42,000 being and observed the destruction of Planet Vegeta. They were out there, moving in the shadows, and they were communicating.
Before he could process the full implications, a second, more immediate alert screamed for his attention. It was from the long-range sensors monitoring the space around the former Planet Vegeta.
A single Saiyan pod, its design archaic and battered, was adrift in the debris field. Its power signature was faint, flickering, but unmistakably Saiyan. And it was heading on a slow, decaying trajectory towards a nearby yellow star.
Somehow, against all odds, one more had survived.
Astra's mind, a moment ago stretched across the cosmos contemplating a hidden war, snapped back to a single, desperate life. The calm was over. The storm of the wider galaxy was pressing in, bringing with it both a chilling mystery and a lone, surviving echo of the past. The Architect's work was never done.