Chapter One
Light.
Not the gentle kind—no dawn, no horizon—but a merciless, all-consuming brilliance that pressed against Kara Zor-El's closed eyes as if the universe itself were trying to burn its way inside her.
A sharp, rhythmic beeping cut through the white.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Her chest rose in a sudden, painful gasp.
Air tore into lungs that had forgotten what breath was, and her body convulsed against restraints she hadn't known were there. Muscles tightened, then screamed as sensation flooded back all at once. Every nerve felt awake and raw, as though she had been struck by lightning and told to live through it.
"Kara Zor-El," a calm, measured voice said, echoing softly within the pod. "Suspended rest cycle complete. Neural activity restored."
Her eyelids fluttered open.
The sun filled her vision.
It loomed beyond the cockpit canopy, impossibly close—an endless sea of fire rolling and folding in slow, deliberate motion. Solar flares curled outward like living things, golden and violent and beautiful. Time itself seemed to stretch thin in its presence, each second dragging as though the light had weight.
She stared, unblinking.
Instead of pain, something else bloomed inside her—warmth, deep and resonant, as if every cell in her body were answering a long-forgotten call. Her heartbeat steadied. Strength flowed where weakness should have been.
She felt… full.
"Warning," the voice continued evenly. "Stellar radiation levels exceed Kryptonian baseline parameters."
Kara didn't look away.
The flames reflected in the glass, dancing across her face, and with them came memory.
Krypton's sky had been red that day—always red—but brighter than she remembered, fractured by the towering crystal spires of the city. She could still feel the smooth floor beneath her boots, the way sound carried too cleanly in the Hall of El.
"You are… with child?" Kara had asked, disbelief plain in her voice.
Aunt Lara stood beside Uncle Jor-El, one hand resting protectively over her abdomen. She smiled—soft, almost fragile.
"Yes."
The word felt impossible.
Natural birth had not occurred on Krypton for centuries. Children were grown, refined, perfected—designed to serve purpose and function. Choice had been engineered out of the process long before Kara was born.
"And Krypton," Jor-El had said quietly, "is dying."
The plan followed—escape pods, suspended rest, a distant yellow star. A friend who would raise the child yet to be born. Kal-El.
Her cousin.
Her responsibility.
"I won't go," Kara had said immediately. She'd been nearly seventeen cycles—old enough to choose, old enough to stand with her family at the end. "If Krypton falls, then I fall with it."
Lara had taken her hands then, eyes shining. "You will go," she whispered, "because he will need you."
That was what broke her resolve.
Alarms screamed.
The memory twisted—sirens echoing through the city, the sky burning with weapons fire as General Zod's coup tore Krypton apart. Kara remembered waiting on the launch platform with her parents and Jor-El, watching the horizon for Lara's transport.
It never came.
"Kara," Jor-El's voice cut in—urgent, desperate. "There is no more time."
She had tried to protest, tried to argue that she could stay now, that she did not need saving—
The world went dark.
The memory shattered as the pod shuddered.
Kara blinked hard, breath hitching as the present snapped back into place. The cockpit lights glowed softly now, systems humming to life around her. Her restraints disengaged with a hiss, and she floated forward instinctively before righting herself with a thought she didn't remember learning.
Her body felt… different.
Lighter. Stronger. Every movement precise, effortless. She flexed her fingers and watched golden light ripple faintly beneath her skin before fading.
"Fifty-two Earth years, four months, and seventeen days have elapsed since launch," the voice said.
She froze.
Then, deliberately, she exhaled.
"Later," Kara murmured. "I shall… think upon that later."
"Acknowledged," the voice replied. "I am Kelex. I have been assigned to your care."
The pod began its descent, the blue curve of Earth slowly filling the viewport.
The hours that followed were pain and wonder intertwined.
Earth's atmosphere pressed against her in ways Krypton's never had—richer, denser, alive. Her senses rebelled, then adapted, sharpening until sound and color threatened to overwhelm her. Kelex guided her patiently, teaching her how to breathe, how to focus, how to listen.
And, when she could finally stand without trembling, how to speak.
The language was old—fragmented, preserved from ancient databases, never updated. Kara repeated words carefully, rolling them across her tongue.
"Good… morrow," she said at last, brow furrowed. "This world doth feel most… abundant."
Kelex paused. "Linguistic patterns indicate Early Modern English."
She smiled anyway.
When she emerged above Antarctica, the world spread out beneath her—endless white broken by dark, moving shapes in the sea below. Kara descended, hovering just above the water as massive whales surfaced, their songs echoing through her newly awakened hearing.
One rose higher than the rest, its vast eye turning toward her.
Kara beamed, laughter bubbling out of her chest as she waved without thinking. For a long moment, they simply regarded one another—two strangers sharing the same sky.
Then she rose again, heart light, and turned her gaze back to the stars.
"Kelex," she said, excitement threading her voice, "thou didst speak of one named Thor."
"Yes," Kelex replied. "An Asgardian. You are advised to locate him."
She closed her eyes and listened.
Past the wind, past the ocean, past the pulse of the planet itself—until she heard it. Thunder. Metal. The unmistakable clash of battle.
Her smile sharpened with purpose.
"Then let us make haste," Kara said.
She shot upward, breaking through the atmosphere in a streak of light, racing toward the sound of a god fighting a machine.
And for the first time since Krypton fell, Kara Zor-El chose where to fly.