The air in Harmony Creek, Ohio, smelled perpetually of wet earth and distant silage. It was 1958, and life moved at the speed of a hymn sung on Sunday morning. The silence here wasn't peaceful; it was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic churn of the tractor or the lowing of cattle, a deep, pervasive quiet that felt utterly separate from the modern world.
For young Thomas, a name he would later shed for a title, the world was simple: God, Family, and the unrelenting, back-breaking work of the farm. They were insulated, believing the outside world, especially the coastal centres of spectacle and sin, held nothing of value. Thomas knew the world only through the lens of scripture and honest toil, utterly unaware of the gleaming, fabricated spectacle Vought International was already constructing hundreds of miles away in their air-conditioned coastal headquarters, building their stable of marketable "heroes." The very concept of a supe as a product was anathema, a profane thought that simply had no space in Harmony Creek.
His family was devout to the point of asceticism, adhering to an old, non-denominational faith that viewed wealth with suspicion and interpreted every good harvest, and every ill wind, as direct divine intervention. There was no room for accidents, only God's plan, which was often inscrutable but always just.
Their community was small, centered around the whitewashed meeting house where sermons focused on humility, service, and the dangers of earthly pride. The pastor, an elderly man named Silas who had known Thomas since baptism, preached against the rising tide of idolatry, railing not just against movie stars but against the new "miracle men" appearing on the national wire services, Supes packaged by Vought as modern deities.
Thomas's father, a man whose hands were thick, permanently bowed, and often cracked from guiding a plow, never hesitated to quote Proverbs: "A good man obtains favor from the Lord, but a man of wicked intentions He condemns." He taught Thomas strength came not from muscle or earthly achievement, but from steadfast belief and moral rectitude.
Anything extraordinary, anything beyond their humble scope, was immediately filtered through the Word, turning the unexplained into the assigned. They were suspicious of new things; television was Satan's lure, and even the minor miracles they read about in the Bible were not to be expected in the current, corrupt age, unless God had a sudden, specific need.
Thomas was a good boy, quiet, earnest, and increasingly large. By the time he was seventeen, his frame suggested not just strength, but an inhuman density, a fact he desperately tried to conceal beneath worn denim overalls and excessive humility.
His adolescence was spent in ceaseless labor, his education drawn more from the King James Bible than any textbook. He was capable of working crushing, long hours under the relentless summer sun, wrestling feed sacks that strained grown men, and hauling bales until his spine almost gave out, rarely needing to pause for rest.
This daily, mundane grind had, for years, masked the true extent of his abilities. He simply thought he was a very strong farm boy, possessing a robust constitution, not realizing the absolute minimum effort he was expending was already a feat of abnormal strength that defied physics. His body felt less like his own and more like a heavy, ill-calibrated machine waiting for a purpose, a silent, physical pressure he couldn't name, a constant, irritating reservoir of kinetic potential that farming almost, but never quite, satisfied.
He often felt a faint, buzzing tension in his muscles, like taut piano wire waiting to snap, and he had learned to subdue it with intense physical exertion and even more intense prayer, trying to humble the brute force that lived inside him. This constant, internal monitoring fostered a deep cognitive dissonance: he was taught humility, yet housed a destructive, prideful force.
The first definitive incident, the moment that shattered the boundary between the mortal and the miraculous, happened on a searing Tuesday afternoon in August. The dust on the dirt track was so fine it coated the tongue, and the heat pressed down like a physical weight, creating shimmering, unstable distortions in the distance.
His younger sister, Clara, a girl of six with ribbons perpetually tangled in her hair, had been playing near the old water pump, a cast-iron beast secured decades ago by a heavy, century-old steel chain wrapped tightly around a sturdy oak fence post. Clara, trying to show off by running her fingers along the cooled metal, had gotten her small hand horribly jammed, a rogue link had snapped shut and was biting deep into her knuckles against the pump base.
Her cries were high, thin, and immediately frantic, the sound of pure, uncomprehending pain that cut through the haze of the summer heat.
Panic, a rare and violent sensation for Thomas, seized him. It was a chemical explosion in his blood, overriding thought, overwhelming all reason. He didn't have time for thought, let alone prayer or scripture. He only saw his sister's face turning white, the chain link biting deeply, drawing a shocking line of crimson. It was a pure, primal, visceral need to protect, surging from his soul with a force he had never known. This wasn't anger; it was the terrible, unthinking instinct of a weapon finally triggered.
He threw himself against the massive pump, intending only to push the base enough to release the pressure. Instead of pushing, the unholy current of his power surged through him. It felt like grabbing a live wire: a searing heat radiated off his skin, and for a split second, the air pressure around him seemed to visibly change, vibrating with latent energy.
The sensation was terrifyingly good, a release so profound it felt like a spiritual high, a moment of true, unadulterated mastery that was immediately followed by crushing guilt. He was a vessel, and something terrible, awesome, and not him had filled it.
There was a catastrophic sound that seemed to tear the stillness of the afternoon: a sound like heavy fabric being ripped into a thousand pieces, followed by the screeching, wrenching groan of metal that failed instantly under impossible stress.
The immense tension of the chain, which held the pump fast, suddenly focused entirely on Thomas's point of contact. The sturdy oak fence post, long considered a permanent fixture, was simultaneously yanked cleanly out of the ground, its fibers protesting loudly before splintering at the base, leaving a crater of turned earth.
The heavy steel chain, where Thomas's hand had connected with it, was stretched, twisted, and cleanly fractured in two places, its thick links failing like cheap wire.
Clara was free, tumbling backward, gasping, her fingers bruised and bleeding but whole. She didn't look at the chain; she looked at her brother, his face pale and his eyes wide with a fear that mirrored her own. Her cries quickly turned to frightened whimpers, not from the injury, but from the impossible noise and the sudden, unnatural violence she had witnessed her brother unleash.
Thomas stood staring at the wreckage: an oak post uprooted, the ground scarred, and industrial steel, the hallmark of human strength, broken like kindling.
The exhaustion hit him not as simple fatigue, but as a violent, dizzying wave, leaving him trembling from the physical and emotional residue of that brief, terrifying kinetic rage. He felt the residual hum of the power, alien and intoxicating, a force that felt simultaneously holy in its protective action and deeply unsettling in its magnitude. He had been strong before; now he was something else entirely.
His father, witnessing the destruction, didn't utter a word about the ruined equipment or the staggering repair bill. He knelt, placed a hand, surprisingly gentle yet firm, on Thomas's shoulder, and looked at the ravaged, impossible sight of the broken chain. His face held a mixture of awe and profound, certain fear, the fear of holding something too large for your hands, and the certainty that this was a test.
"The Lord protects the little ones, Thomas," his father whispered, his voice thick with a certainty that erased all scientific or rational question. He didn't see an anomaly; he saw an assignment. "That strength, son. That wasn't yours. That was a tool. A mighty tool given to you for a mighty purpose. When it comes, it is because He wills it. But remember, the Devil himself was mighty." The implication was clear: the power itself was neutral, but its use was a moral reckoning.
Thomas, still reeling from the sudden, metallic violence he had unleashed, accepted the interpretation instantly.
There was no scientific method or Vought commercial to offer an alternative. He accepted the fear, the confusion, and the sheer destructive force as A Gift From the Lord. It was the only frame he had, the only meaning his isolated life had prepared him for.
That night, the family performed its first cover-up, the beginning of a lifetime of deception fueled by faith. Under the moonlight, Thomas and his father labored in silence. They hauled the bent metal and the splintered post far out into the back forty, burying the evidence of the miracle beneath freshly turned earth.
His mother, silent and pale, stood vigil, watching the windows of the nearest neighbor's house, her face etched with a burden heavier than any physical task, the burden of lying to her devout community. Clara, now bandaged and quiet, was told she fell, and the incident was never to be mentioned again, not out of shame, but out of custody.
They feared not the government, but the corrupting curiosity of men who might try to exploit or, worse, market God's gift. The strength was a sacred secret, a responsibility passed down from God, which required protection from the secular world.
The secret imposed a profound discipline. From that day on, Thomas's life was divided. Publicly, he was the dutiful farm boy. Privately, his father began training him, transforming his daily toil into a spiritualized physical regimen. The morning prayer was now followed by pushing the heavy, immobile tractor in neutral across the field, just to feel the power strain without breaking, testing the tensile strength of his control.
This was The Discipline of the Stillness, where he practiced breathing exercises lifted from obscure Biblical texts about meditation. He would chant verses from the Psalms, using the words not as comfort, but as barriers, trying to contain the 'unholy current' within a holy vessel.
He was taught to seek invulnerability in prayer, to focus his spirit when the power came, lest the rage take control. The power was no longer a random burst; it was a vast, heavy, and terrifying expectation, a religious mandate, a burden of divine expectation that would eventually demand blood.
The path to the Crusader began right there, in the dry, unforgiving soil of the American Midwest, where the lines between miracle and massacre were already blurring. He was a weapon, created and concealed by faith, waiting for the righteous war he was being prepared for.