After retaking the village together, the two found that they worked well together, and before long they developed a unique chemistry, and the result was the conception of little Franz Wolfenstein. In the summer of 1914, Yana's cover was blown by Russian Templars whilst attempting to gather intel on an occupied village when a cavalry troop came to the rescue, led by Helmut Wolfenstein. When the Great War broke out and Germany invaded the territory while fighting the Russians, Yana worked as an attaché to the German military and served as a spy, aiding in the gathering of intelligence as well as sabotage, with the hopes that through the Germans she could liberate her people from the czar's cruelty. Yana began to operate as an initiate as early as eleven years old, fueling the Belarussian desires to rise up and revolt as she used her social skills and beautiful countenance to get close to her targets before eliminating them. This woman then raised Yana and taught her the ways of the Brotherhood, and showed her just how corrupt their Russian occupiers were and which ones were running the operation from behind closed doors.
The orphan was taken in by a neighbor, the very Assassin that the Templars were attempting to lure out. Her life was marred further when her family's farm was raized and her relatives murdered by Templars posing as Russian nobility, and were given a lead to a potential Brotherhood cell in the area. Born in what is now Belarus in the year 1894, Yana was raised in a peasant family of farmers who had to endure the cruelty of the Imperial Russian occupation of her homeland.