That year, he was twelve.
His adoptive father, Jonathan Kent, was not a simple farmer from Kansas. He was a disgraced noble scholar, stripped of his family name and exiled to the Underhive for clandestinely researching "Forbidden Technologies of the Golden Age."
His adoptive mother, Martha, had once been an Imperial Medicae. Her hands, which held the scalpel, had saved countless paupers of the Underhive, yet they could not save herself.
In this hellish Underhive, they gave Clark a sanctuary called "home."
In his memories, Jonathan always wore a monocle, teaching him to read and control his strength under the dim light of an oil lamp.
"Clark, look at me. Your hands can easily crush a skull, but you must learn to use them to hold another's hand. In this dark galaxy, if power is left unchecked, you will become the next Horus—a tyrant. Do not be a tyrant, my boy. Be... Hope."
And Martha—when Clark would roll on the floor in agony from his super-hearing overloading, hearing the countless screams echoing from the depths of the Hive—she would gently pull him into her arms and cover his ears with her warm hands.
"Focus, Clark. Focus on my heartbeat. Thump-thump, thump-thump... Do you hear it? The world is noisy, but your heart must be still. You cannot save everyone, but you can choose to be a good man."
But in this gods-forsaken Warhammer universe, "good men" are often the ones who die the fastest and most brutally.
It was a routine purge by the Inquisition on the outer fringes of the Underhive. The reason? Perhaps a tip-off from a few Chaos cultists, or perhaps the Inquisitor was simply in a foul mood and wanted to see fireworks.
Fire.
The deafening roar of Bolters.
And the teeth-grinding buzz of chainswords tearing through flesh.
Twelve-year-old Clark watched helplessly as Jonathan, trying to buy him time to activate a cloaking field, was struck by a Bolter shell fired by an Inquisitorial henchman. The oversized round bored into Jonathan's chest and detonated inside—the man who taught him about "Hope" instantly became a spray of shattered gore.
Martha screamed and lunged toward him, trying to shield him with her body from the following rounds, only to be brutally cut down in a pool of blood by a frenzied "Redemptionist" thug wielding a power axe.
In that moment, the world inside Clark collapsed.
Extreme grief transformed instantly into a rage hot enough to incinerate reason. His eyes, originally azure, turned a molten, lava-like crimson. The terrifying emotional surge even tore at the veil of reality, drawing the gaze of unutterable entities from the depths of the Warp.
"Kill! For the Blood God!"
Khorne roared in his ear, tempting him to offer the heads of everyone before him.
"Reverse time? I have a way..."
Tzeentch whispered in his mind, promising him magic to change the past.
"Aren't those dead bodies delectable?"
Slaneesh purred.
At the very moment he killed his enemies and was about to lose control, falling as a Champion of Chaos—
Something deep within his genes, an ancient dormant program, awakened.
It was a consciousness backup from Krypton's greatest scientist, Jor-El, and the central system of the ship.
[WARNING: IRREVERSIBLE MENTAL POLLUTION (CHAOS CORRUPTION) DETECTED.]
[KRYPTONIAN CODEX FORCED ACTIVATION.]
[IDEALISTIC GUIDANCE INTELLIGENCE: SOL, ONLINE.]
[EXECUTING PROTOCOL: ABSOLUTE RATIONAL OVERRIDE. INITIATING DEEP LOGIC LOCKS. SCREENING WARP GAZE.]
[CORE DIRECTIVE UPDATED: SURVIVE. BECOME... HOPE.]
A cold stream of blue data forcibly took over his brain like an absolute-zero iron curtain, locking away his madness. In this universe filled with psychic powers and sorcery, it constructed for him an absolute "Idealistic Firewall."
From that day on, the smiling boy of the Underhive died.
The one who survived was a silent ghost in the shadows, a wanderer with the power of a god who had to crawl through life like a mortal.
Pale blue Kryptonian script cascaded across his retina like a waterfall, pulling Clark back to reality.
[Host: Kal-El (Clark Kent)]
[Current Status: Man of Steel]
[Growth Potential Template: Silver Age Superman (Progress: 0.1%)]
[Solar Reserves: 100% (Saturated)]
[Bio-field (Idealistic Resistance): Full Power (Exempt from Nurgle's Plagues, Tzeentch's Temptations, Slaanesh's Whispers, Khorne's Rage)]
[WARNING: SUPER-SENSES DETECT HIGH-INTENSITY HOSTILITY OUTSIDE THE BASE.]
[TARGET IDENTIFICATION: HUMAN (ILLEGALLY AUGMENTED).
THREAT LEVEL: EXTREMELY LOW (VERMIN).]
Clark's hand, buttoning his shirt, stopped mid-air.
His ears twitched slightly.
Without even trying to concentrate, his super-hearing instantly penetrated the ten-ton blast door, the hundreds of meters of rock, and the concrete like radar. A chaotic influx of sounds rushed in: the heartbeats of rats, the dripping of water pipes, the buzzing of electrical currents...
The system quickly filtered out the noise, locking onto a sound two hundred meters away in a scrap yard.
"Old man! Why is this week's 'protection fee' thirty percent short?"
The voice carried the peculiar excitement of a sadist.
Then came the sound of pleading.
"Ah! My leg... Please, my lords, there really isn't any more... There are too many mutant rats in the lower levels lately, the workers are too afraid to start their shifts..."
Clark's pupils contracted sharply.
That was Old Jack's voice.
The crippled veteran who, after his adoptive parents died, had given him a job as a porter even though he knew Clark was a "freak" with terrifying strength. The man who, despite his harsh words, would soft-heartedly share half a synthetic starch bar with him.
Then came the dull thuds of a beating, the crisp snap of breaking bones, and the unrestrained laughter of a gang.
"No money? Then offer your flesh as a sacrifice to the Master of the Eight-Fold Star! Brothers, hang him up! I want to hear him squeal like a stuck pig!"
Clark's gaze turned cold instantly.
That blue shifted from the serenity of the ocean to the absolute zero of deep space. That chill was not killing intent, but the judgment of a god upon vermin that had overstepped their bounds.
He reached down and pulled a piece of red cloth from the ruins on the floor.
It was the swaddling cloth he was wrapped in as an infant—an unknown high-tech Kryptonian fabric, impervious to fire, water, and blades.
He loosely wrapped the red cloth around his neck, covering the lower half of his face, leaving only a pair of emotionless eyes visible.
This red cloth would later become a legend across the galaxy, a banner that countless Space Marines would look up to.
But for now, it was merely the shroud of the Reaper.
"SOL."
Clark whispered in his mind, his voice terrifyingly calm.
[PRESENT. SYSTEM RECOMMENDATION: PERSONNEL IN THIS AREA EXHIBIT SIGNS OF CHAOS HERESY. COMPLETE PURGE ADVISED.]
"It seems today's morning exercise will require some extra reps."