I was only five when the war finally ended. Five years old, and yet I already understood enough of the world to know that it could be cruel beyond imagination. The Great War had left Germany hollowed, scarred, and starving. Cities were shadows of their former selves, and the countryside was littered with bodies, both of men who had marched to fight and of families too poor to survive the winter. My earliest memories are filled with frostbitten mornings, the smell of coal smoke in the streets, and the muffled sobs of neighbors who had lost everything.
My mother tried to shield me, but she herself was frail, coughing constantly, her cheeks sunken from lack of proper food. She would wrap me in her arms and whisper, "Johann, remember what you learn. Knowledge is armor stronger than any sword." I clung to her words as though they were a life raft, a small tether to the world of warmth and order she tried to create amid the chaos. My father, scarred by the war both in body and spirit, returned from long days of labor with eyes haunted by faces that would never come home. He rarely spoke, but when he did, his voice carried weight: "Pride, Johann. Let pride carry you when everything else fails. Use every gift you have. Life will demand it, and you must answer."
Even at that age, I began to notice things others did not. I could feel the faint fading of life before it ended, the final beats of hearts that pulsed their last. At first, I thought it was my imagination—a child's attempt to make sense of the sudden, silent deaths that surrounded me. But it was not imagination. I felt it, like a subtle vibration through the air, a pattern that told me when life was slipping away. When our neighbors froze to death in the winter night or succumbed to fever, I felt the cessation, the quiet departure of vitality, and it awakened something inside me.
The first time I spoke of it, my mother hushed me gently. "Johann, children sometimes imagine things," she said, but I knew I was not imagining. I had already begun learning a truth most would never see: life was fragile, and death could be sensed, manipulated, and perhaps, one day, controlled. I did not yet understand the full extent of my gift—what would later be called Hematocinesis—but I sensed the potential in the rhythm of blood and heartbeats.
By the age of six, I had begun experimenting in small ways. Birds, insects, even the family cat became subjects of my quiet study. I would focus intently, willing them to move or remain still, testing the boundaries of my control. These manipulations were feeble, almost imperceptible, yet they brought a thrill, a sense of mastery that no child should feel. And as I practiced, I began noticing patterns, differences in strength and resilience, and the cruel inequity of survival. Weakness, I realized early, was punished relentlessly.
The world outside continued its collapse. Food was scarce, medicines were rarer still, and the shadows of political turmoil stretched across our streets. By seven, I had watched friends and neighbors die slowly, helplessly, victims of disease, hunger, and desperation. I began to catalog them in my mind, noting the ways their hearts faltered and the speed at which life fled. I learned to separate grief from observation. Mourning was a luxury; understanding was a necessity.
At eight, I understood power. I began experimenting more deliberately, focusing on the flow of blood itself. I discovered I could influence small quantities within my own body—accelerating healing, stiffening muscles, controlling minor injuries. When I fell ill or scraped myself, I could hasten recovery. The process was slow and exhausting, leaving my young body trembling and fevered, but I persisted. Every success, no matter how small, confirmed the path I had chosen. Strength, I learned, was not given—it was seized.
My parents both tried to guide me. My mother spoke of compassion, of using knowledge for the betterment of others. My father, more pragmatic, encouraged discipline, observation, and endurance. He would tell me stories of his time in the war, of comrades lost to weakness, of the inevitability of survival for those who adapted. "Observe, Johann," he would say, "not everyone can be saved. But those who endure, who rise above, can shape the world."
By the time I was ten, both parents had succumbed to the harshness of the times. My mother, exhausted from disease and deprivation, died quietly in her sleep, leaving me with a mixture of sorrow and a strange, cold clarity. My father followed not long after, wounds from the war poorly treated, compounded by malnutrition and hardship. Alone, I understood what he had meant: pride, self-mastery, and control were the only things that could sustain me.
The loss sharpened my abilities. I discovered I could sense life over increasing distances, detecting the rhythm of hearts through walls and streets, through dozens of meters. The pulse of a child hiding in fear, the labored breathing of a laborer returning home—each beat a lesson, each life a calculation. I trained rigorously, testing the limits of my perception and control. At night, I would lie awake, listening, pushing my abilities, feeling the echo of mortality ripple outward. I became patient, methodical, and increasingly cold.
School brought new challenges. I excelled beyond my peers, mastering subjects that required memory, logic, and precision. Medicine, natural sciences, and anatomy became my playgrounds. I learned to manipulate not only my own body but also the blood of small animals, calculating dosages, reactions, and limits. I experimented discreetly, aware that exposure would provoke fear or violence. Through these early experiments, I gained insight into pain, healing, and regeneration—knowledge I would later refine into something terrifyingly precise.
By sixteen, my control was formidable. I could influence blood flow to accelerate healing or create localized destruction. I experimented with crude constructs, small simulacra of myself, testing reflexes, speed, and endurance. I had become a predator of knowledge, a master of subtle force, calculating life and death with scientific rigor. The world around me—war-torn Berlin, politically fractured Germany—was irrelevant except as a source of information. Weakness existed everywhere, and it was my task to observe, measure, and someday eradicate it.
The rise of extremist movements and whispers of Nazi ideology reached my ears as I matured. Others became swept up in fervor, blinded by rhetoric. I remained detached, analyzing, calculating. I understood that supremacy, control, and the removal of weakness were not mere ideology—they were survival. My powers, my intellect, and my discipline made me a force the ordinary could never comprehend. And I waited. I trained. I endured. I refined.
By nineteen, I could sense nearly every heartbeat in central Berlin. I knew strength and weakness instinctively. I could manipulate, harm, or preserve life with a precision unmatched by ordinary humans. And in my quiet moments, I reflected on the lessons of my parents, the tragedies of my childhood, and the inevitability of power. Life itself became an equation, and I—Johann Schmidt—would be its master.
Every heartbeat I heard, every drop of blood I moved, every clone I created or destroyed, every experiment I conducted—it was preparation. Preparation for the world that would one day kneel to control, strength, and precision. The first drop of blood I moved had been a spark. The heartbeats I detected from across streets had been warnings. And now, I was ready to become something beyond humanity, beyond morality, beyond fear itself.