WARNING: The following contains spoilers from Empyre: Avengers #3 by Jim Zub, Carlos Magno, Espen Grundetjern, and VC's Ariana Maher, on sale now.
The Avengers are busy at war, trying to defend the Earth from the Celestial Messiah Quoi and his plantlike Cotati beings.
In the war, the Avengers had to split up to take on different missions, and one of them went deadly wrong. Ka-Zar headed down to his home in the Savage Land with Black Knight, Brother Voodoo, and Scarlet Witch, where they ended up battling two heroes under the Cotati control — Shanna and the Man-Thing.
By the time that Ka-Zar freed his wife from the Cotati influence that turned her against her husband, the aliens struck a deadly blow. The Cotati brutally impaled Ka-Zar. This series already saw the apparent death of Black Panther, would Ka-Zar join him as a victim of this alien invasion?
The good news is that the death didn't stick, and it was the two heroes that Ka-Zar and the Avengers battled when they reached the Savage Land that saved his life. Shanna and Ka-Zar's son Matthew watched as the Cotati drove a blade straight through him, leaving him dying. While the Cotati thought Shanna joined their cause, the death of her husband snapped her out of it, and she lashed out and destroyed the enemies in the Savage Land.
Then. Shanna pulled out a healing device from the pages of Marvel Comics. In something similar to the Lazarus Pit in DC, there is a way to bring someone back to life in Marvel, and Shanna used it here. She picked up Ka-Zar and carried him to the waters in the Savage Land that she said once saved her. She hoped they could save her husband as well, and it worked. They almost ran out of time, but after a flash of blinding light, Kaz-Zar and Shanna stood side-by-side, ready to continue the fight.
But what was this healing pool? How did taking Ka-Zar to the waters in the Savage Land heal his wound, a blade through his chest, and bring him back to life? This goes back to 2013 and the pages of Savage Wolverine #3-4. In this story, Shanna, Wolverine, and Amadeus Cho ended up in the Savage Land together and had a plan to get to the mountain hiding the mysterious ancient machine and destroy it once and for all.
This event took place early in the third issue. The tribe stretchered a reaper to the chief, injured at the hands of Wolverine and Shanna. The chief used a vial of liquid, and when he dropped it into the dinosaur's mouth, it revived him and brought it back to life. Later in that same issue, a battle ends with a spear thrown through the midsection of Shanna. It was almost a duplicate of the injury that nearly killed Ka-Zar in Empyre: Avengers #3.
Amadeus Cho asks the chief how to save her, and he tells of a dangerous, ancient ritual. What Savage Wolverine #4 revealed was that this wasn't the water of the Savage Land, but the life-blood of Man-Thing. The chief cut into Man-Thing, and it covered Shanna completely. When she came out, she was alive and well, with the force of the Man-Thing flowing through her blood, making her one with the Savage Land. Now that she has saved Ka-Zar, he shares this bond with Shanna, and both heroes are now one with the Savage Land.