Here begins the next grand chapter of Kaelar'
---
"Power is not earned in isolation. The stars test all flames, even those born from divinity."
—Taneleer Tivan, the Collector, upon observing Kaelar's emergence
---
A Sky Torn Open
One week after the Vault's awakening, Vorthar's upper atmosphere cracked with a blinding arc of tachyon lightning. Not natural. Not local.
An interstellar breach tore through space—a ruptured corridor of Kree origin. It was a collapsed Quantunet Transit Gate, a long-abandoned intergalactic highway used only by major powers like the Kree Empire, the Shi'ar Dominion, and the Galactic Council.
From its heart emerged a battle—two Kree destroyer-class warships chasing a smaller ship cloaked in refracted invisibility, veering violently into Vorthar's orbit. The smaller craft, despite all odds, escaped the barrage… but plummeted into the northern range of the Oblivion Spires, a haunted place even Vorthar's flame priests dared not tread.
The sky whispered: "Foreign fire has fallen."
---
Kaelar, driven by the pulse of the Flame within, arrived at the crash site the next day.
The ship was sleek, silver-black, carved in a design unknown even to Vorthar's records. It pulsed with hyperionic radiation, barely stable. Inside, Kaelar found its pilot—bloodied, unconscious… and glowing with volatile quantum energy.
She awoke before Kaelar could speak.
Her name: T'Rel Thannis, former Nova Corps Centurion, now a rogue archivist hunted by the Kree for stealing a forbidden relic—the Star Hammer of Arcturus, said to have once wounded a Celestial.
"I stole it to hide it," she said. "They'd use it to end galaxies."
The Hammer pulsed in her satchel—too large to be real, yet shrinking to a handheld object with a whisper. It sang when Kaelar came close.
"You… carry Architect Flame," she murmured. "You're not like the others."
Kaelar reached for the Hammer.
It responded.
The instant his fingers touched it, the weapon ignited in luminous flame—not of fire, but concept, intent, will. It accepted him. Not as owner. As equal.
---
The Kree Come to Burn
Within hours, the sky flared again.
A Kree Vanguard Legion descended from the fractured orbit gate, dropping in Juggernaut suits, armed with antimatter lances and gravitic snare-fields.
"Turn over the Hammer and the rogue," their commander barked through amplifiers, "or Vorthar will burn as heretic scum."
Kaelar stood between them and the flamebound woman.
"You threaten my world," he said, raising the Hammer. "Let me show you how we answer threats."
The battle that followed shattered three mountain peaks.
Kaelar's power, newly awakened, fused with the Hammer's ancient memory. He didn't just strike with force—he struck with stories, every blow echoing the will of past wielders. A hammer forged to shape stars now roared with flame-born intent.
Kree mechs crumbled. Juggernauts fell. The commander tried unleashing a micro-singularity bomb, only for Kaelar to absorb the unstable core through sheer will and transmute it into a searing nova spear, hurled back into their warship.
Vorthar's skies cleared again.
---
After the battle, T'Rel activated a final distress beacon—not to summon allies, but to broadcast a warning across known space:
"To all major powers,
The Hammer of Arcturus is sealed.
The Flameborn of Vorthar guards it now.
He is not a relic.
He is not alone."
The transmission reached the Shi'ar, the Skrulls, the Ravagers, and even Xandar.
It also reached Asgard.
---
Kaelar stood atop the mountain ruins, the Hammer humming silently beside him.
T'Rel approached. "They'll keep coming. You've made your mark."
"I didn't choose this," Kaelar said.
"You did," she replied. "The moment you stood between us and them."
Kaelar looked toward the heavens.
He could feel it now—the Architect's dimension, the trials, the burgeoning might rising within.
He was no longer just Flameborn of Vorthar.
He was a name now whispered across the stars.
---