Echo

He knelt on one knee, one hand braced against the cold rock while the other pressed tightly to his chest, gasping so hard it felt as if he might cough up his own lungs.

Every breath felt like inhaling fire, turning into a cloud of white mist the moment it left his lips, only to dissipate instantly against the stone.

The suffocating green aura that had swirled around him, once like a raging flame, now flickered like a dying candle before retracting and fading into nothingness.

His bulging muscles slowly returned to their original state, his terrifying bulk shrinking back down to his naturally lean frame.

His hair, which had stood up in a wild, golden mane, seemed to lose its charge as if doused in cold water, slowly collapsing and turning black, clinging to his sweat-drenched shoulders.

But when he finally raised his head, his eyes had changed.

The crimson pupils that had been filled with fear, madness, and repression for the past forty-one years were now left with only the dead, ashen gray of a storm's aftermath—bottomless, as if they had swallowed everything whole.

All his rage had been spent, leaving behind a hollow void and a fatigue that had seeped deep into his bones.

Yet, beneath this absolute exhaustion lay a stillness like stagnant water—cold as a frozen lake, reflecting nothing, but terrifyingly rigid.

"Forty-one years..." he murmured, his voice as raspy as sandpaper on stone. "Everything that built up over forty-one years... all of it exploded at once..."

He slowly straightened his body, tilting his head to look at the sky of Vampa, stained the color of blood by the dim red star.

The light was bright, but cold and utterly devoid of warmth.

Just a moment ago, at the peak of his power when every shackle within him had been shattered, he had vaguely sensed something watching him from a distance so vast it defied comprehension.

The feeling was ethereal, like a hallucination, yet it was clear and impossible to ignore.

"Was it one of Frieza's men... finally tracking me down?" he muttered, his cracked lips curling into a bitter, ironic smile that carried a hint of relief. "Or... something else entirely?"

He looked around.

All that surrounded him were endless stretches of fresh lava and ruins.

This was the "home" where he had spent forty-one years, and the prison that had kept him trapped for just as long.

And now, he had destroyed most of it himself.

An unprecedented sense of emptiness washed over him; the freedom was dizzying, layered with an even deeper confusion.

"No matter who you are—" Broly's voice grew louder, echoing across the deathly silent wasteland, though only the flowing magma responded. "Since you saw it, since you felt it—"

He clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles turned white, yet there was no trace of madness in his eyes, only a cold, chilling resolve.

"Then come."

"I've had enough of this hellhole."

The dim red star in the sky hung coldly, stingily casting its unchanging light, stretching Broly's long, lonely shadow across the scorching rocks.

In the Supreme Kai World, the air felt frozen.

The crystal tip of the staff in Whis's hand still held the pale golden ripples from his recent energy scan.

The moment he had softly spoken the words "Saiyan," even the space within the temple seemed to tremble.

Son Goku, who had been sitting cross-legged on the polished floor, sprang up like a coiled spring.

The floor beneath his feet cracked into a spiderweb of fissures as he transformed into a blur, instantly appearing before Whis.

His usually smiling eyes were terrifyingly bright, burning with an internal fire like two small suns ignited in the dark.

"A Saiyan? Really a Saiyan?" His voice trembled with excitement, his hands clenching into fists until his knuckles turned white. "Besides Vegeta and me, there's another Saiyan alive? Where? Is he strong?"

Whis floated gracefully backward, holding his staff horizontally to gently block Son Goku, who was nearly pressing against him.

The crystal on the staff glowed with a soft light, quietly neutralizing the aura overflowing from Goku.

The angel maintained his gentle smile, though a hint of deep-seated gravity flickered in the depths of his eyes.

"Mr. Goku, please control your energy," Whis said, his voice clear and possessing a strange, soothing power. "I merely captured a trace of a very pure Saiyan bloodline signature from that distant energy fluctuation. Whether it is truly a living Saiyan or merely a residual energy imprint... we will have to confirm that for ourselves."

"Then what are we waiting for!" Son Goku spun around abruptly, his white martial arts gi snapping in the air.

The space around him began to distort slightly, and golden ki leaked from his skin, forming a thin halo around him.

It was the instinctual response of his Saiyan blood to a powerful opponent—every cell in his body was screaming, every nerve tingling.

"What's the rush?" Beerus's voice was as cold as ice water, dousing the excitement instantly.

The God of Destruction had already sat upright, his purple cat ears twitching atop his head.

He rested his chin on one hand while tapping the armrest of his chair impatiently with the other, each strike echoing in everyone's chest.

"Vampa?" Beerus scoffed, his purple eyes filled with disdain. "A garbage dump the universe has all but forgotten, a dump not even space pirates bother to visit—what kind of decent warrior could come from there? It's probably just some discarded trash exiled when Planet Vegeta was destroyed—the kind that couldn't even turn into a Super Saiyan."

As he spoke, the light in the temple dimmed.

Although the God of Destruction kept his aura contained, the sheer pressure was enough to make it difficult to breathe.

"But Lord Beerus," Whis gently rotated his staff, the tip tracing an arc in the air, leaving ripples in space like water. "Based on what I sensed, the intensity of that energy is actually quite a bit higher than the current base forms of Mr. Goku and Mr. Vegeta."