Taru – First-Person POV
The old man's words clawed at my mind like a persistent echo.
Frieza killed Beerus.
Even as Faye and I left the underground shelter behind, the revelation coiled tighter around my thoughts, squeezing out everything else.
The wind howled across the ruins of Earth, carrying the scent of ash and decay, but it was the silence that pressed hardest against my senses. No hum of life. No distant chatter. No careless ki flickering in the air. Just the weight of a world that had been bent to the will of a single, ruthless force.
I hovered above the shattered skyline, Faye floating beside me.
We didn't speak. We didn't need to. Silence had long since become its own language between us, one of understanding, of shared purpose, of unspoken tension.
Faye glanced at me, his pink hair swaying slightly in the stale breeze. "You're thinking really hard," he said, his voice light but his eyes sharp. He flipped upside down, arms crossed behind his head, as if the ruined city below were nothing more than a passing curiosity.
"You always go quiet when you're planning something."
I almost smiled. Almost. "I need information."
"You want to fight him?" Faye asked, his tone shifting, testing.
"No." I
The word left my lips before I could second-guess it. It surprised even me.
Faye righted himself, his playful demeanor fading. "That's… surprisingly mature of you my love ."
I didn't answer. My gaze remained fixed on the horizon, where the remnants of a once-thriving planet stretched into the distance like a graveyard. "I've already fought enough monsters."
Faye didn't push. He didn't joke. He simply nodded, as if he understood the weight of what I wasn't saying.
"So?" he prompted after a moment.
I exhaled, the air leaving my lungs heavy with the dust of this dead world. "Take us to the Sacred World of the Kai."
Faye's expression darkened. "You think anyone's still alive there?"
"I don't know."
"But if there's anywhere untouched by mortal history…"
"…it's there."
Faye closed his eyes. Divine light shimmered around him, soft and radiant, unlike the violent distortion of Instant Transmission. Kai teleportation didn't tear through space. It simply was, as if reality itself bent to accommodate us.
And then, Earth was gone.
The air changed first.
Cool. Fragrant. Alive with the scent of flowering trees and something else, something metallic, something wrong. The moment my feet touched the grass,
I knew.
The Sacred World of the Kai should have felt alive. Ancient. Peaceful. A sanctuary for divine beings, untouched by the chaos of mortal realms. But this… this was something else entirely.
Crunch.
I looked down. Fragments of purple crystal crumbled beneath my boot. The grass beneath it was streaked with black, not burned, not dead, but changed. The sky above remained a pale, endless blue, but the trees… the trees were wrong.
Enormous obsidian pillars stood between them, humming with restrained destruction energy. Hakai. Not the wild, consuming force I knew, but something controlled. Something cultivated.
"Hakai…" I murmured.
Faye turned slowly, his eyes wide as he took in the unnatural order of the world around us. "This isn't natural."
"No," I agreed. "It isn't."
The gardens still existed, but they had been disciplined. Every tree stood in perfect, mathematical rows. Streams had been redirected into geometric canals. The stone pathways had been replaced with polished black flooring, engraved with Frieza's imperial crest.
The Sacred World had been reshaped, not destroyed, but refined into something Cold and Beautiful but still unsettling.
I crouched beside a flowering plant. Its petals, once white, were now silver. I brushed one lightly with my finger. The flower folded shut instantly, as if recoiling from my touch.
"…Everything's adapting," I said.
Faye frowned. "To the destruction energy?"
"To prolonged exposure."
He knelt beside me, his fingers hovering over the grass. "So this place wasn't destroyed."
"No." I stood, my voice low. "It evolved."
That thought bothered me more than ruins ever could. Someone had taken this world and reshaped it with intention.
There was respect here, twisted though it was. Genuine, in its own way.
We moved deeper into the gardens. No voices. No laughter. No apprentices carrying fruit. No Elder Kai grumbling about the state of the universe. Only the wind, whispering through the trees like a ghost.
Even divine ki felt… absent. Not hidden. Gone.
I reached out with my senses, stretching them as far as they would go. Nothing. No flicker of life. No trace of the Kais who had once called this place home.
Faye did the same. Minutes passed. Then more. Still nothing.
He lowered his hand slowly, his expression grim. "I can't find a single Kai anywhere ."
Neither could I.
No Shin. No attendants. No trainees. No life.
Only the lingering memories of what had once been, pressed into the land itself like footprints in stone.
I stopped beneath an enormous white tree. Its trunk had partially crystallized into violet stone, as if the world itself had begun to petrify.
"…They aren't hiding," I said.
Faye looked at me, his voice barely above a whisper. "You think…?"
"They're dead?"
The word hung between us, heavy and final. I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because I didn't know.
A breeze stirred the branches overhead. For the briefest moment, I thought I heard distant laughter, soft, fleeting, like an echo from another time. Then it was gone.
This world remembered its caretakers.
But none remained to answer.
Elsewhere…
Frieza's Palace
Whis stood quietly beside the immense observation window, his staff glowing softly in the dim light.
Concentric rings of light spread across its crystal orb before collapsing into a single image: the Sacred World of the Kai..
Two figures moved through the abandoned gardens.
The Saiyan.
The foreign Kai.
Frieza didn't turn around. He didn't need to. His voice was calm, almost amused. "They went there."
"Yes," Whis replied evenly.
"They are searching the Sacred World."
Frieza's gaze remained fixed on the stars beyond the palace. "They'll find nothing."
"No."
Whis gently rotated his staff, the image shifting as the two intruders moved deeper into the altered landscape.
"They're examining the alterations instead."
A pause. The air in the chamber thickened, pressing against the walls like an unseen force.
"The Saiyan appears to be the observant type ," Whis said.
Frieza's lips curled, just slightly. "Oh so the monkey noticed my beautiful improvements.. ."
"He noticed everything."
Whis inclined his head. "He has already concluded that the world adapted rather than fell."
Frieza finally turned, his purple-red eyes gleaming with something akin to curiosity. "Good, An ape with sense..hmph ."
Another silence settled between them, heavy with implication.
Then Whis added quietly, "they are searching for Kais, based on the technique used by that young Kai with the saiyan.. ."
Frieza's smile widened, slow and deliberate. "Then perhaps…he's search will lead them a to me."
Frieza's tail swayed behind him, a lazy, predatory motion. "I do hope so."
The stars outside the palace distorted briefly, bending under the weight of his aura. Somewhere far below, on a world that no longer knew peace, two travelers moved through the ruins of a divine sanctuary, unaware of the eyes watching them.
And waiting.