The Pyre was an astronuclear weapon of Skrull origin. It is a device capable of triggering the detonation of a star. The Skrulls originally never intended to use the Pyre, believing atronuclear war to be unthinkable among civilized races. However, when the plant-based aliens called the Cotati infected the Kral System, Skrull emperor Kl'rt the Super-Skrull opted to deploy the Pyre on Kral to stop their spread, hoping the sacrifice of billions of civilians would in turn save trillions of lives more.^[1]

Following the union of the Skrull and Kree empires into the Alliance, Hulkling become emperor of the combined races,^[4] and he led the fight against the Cotati to Earth.^[5] When the Cotati invaded Earth, Hulkling was urged by his royal guard to deploy the Pyre on the Earth's Sun.^[1] Due to Hulkling's reluctance to sacrifice the Earth to stop the Cotati, Hulkling was captured and impersonated by his grandmother R'Klll to give the command herself.^[2]

Although Hulkling was rescued by his husband Wiccan, when he confronted R'Klll, she had already ordered the deployment of the Pyre.^[6] With the Sun's temperature beginning to rise, Wiccan teleported himself and Captain Marvel and the Human Torch to the Sun to try to contain it. They were then joined by Super-Skrull, Captain Glory and Mur-G'nn.^[3] On Earth, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four had been alerted of the Pyre's deployment. Tony Stark managed to deduce the workings of the Pyre, and used teleporting technology to inject the Sun with reprogrammed Unstable Molecules that disrupted the Pyre's mechanism by attacking the denser elements it was injecting on its core until the balance was restored, causing the device to shut down and avert the Sun's destruction.^[2]