When David awoke from death, he found himself flying high above a vast, verdant valley. Below him stretched a valley, its tall grasses rippling like waves under an unseen current. He flew above it, each movement a graceful arc that brought him closer to the earth, where the blades whispered secrets to the wind, then carried him aloft again.

In the distance, a dark ocean loomed—a boundary without an edge, its reach unyielding yet eternally distant. A river danced through the valley, leaping over rocks and cascading into shadowy caverns, its rhythm both wild and deliberate. The sun’s rays touched the water, transforming it into a mosaic of shimmering light. Every breath he took was steeped in the fragrance of the earth, sweet and intoxicating as if the valley itself exhaled its life into him.

He felt neither hunger nor pain, only the pure, boundless awe of existence. Time had no presence here. It was as though he had stepped into eternity, where the soul is cradled by the beauty of a world untouched by thought.

For a time, David might have lingered in that tranquil flight, content in his communion with the valley’s breath, if not for the intrusion of a thought—unexpected, abrupt. He had flown, free from thought, free from the tyranny of consciousness. But now, as his wings cut through the air, a single thought bloomed in the silence: is this death?

So it begins - with a thought!

The shift came in a flash—instant, irrevocable. No sooner had the question formed in his mind than he was bound, immobile, on a cold, stone table. The room around him was an immense, oppressive space, its walls hewn from the very heart of the mountain. The marks left by the carver’s chisel—deep, purposeful grooves—streaked the stone in all directions, tracing the breath of ancient craftsmanship. The lighting, faint and blue, bathed the chamber in a ghostly hue. It was as if the room were constructed not for habitation, but for entrapment, its lack of corners and edges mocking any escape attempt. Here, there was no past, no future—only the brutal weight of the present.

His skin prickled with the chill of the stone, and the cold straps tightened around his chest. He was no longer suspended in the warm, endless sky, a creature of light and air. Now, his body was a thing of flesh and bone, tethered to the unforgiving earth. The world around him was dark, and suffocating—a place that felt like the antithesis of all he had known. Here, there was no freedom. Only stillness. Only the heavy throb of his heartbeat.

So it begins…

Chapter 1: The Model’s Heart

David had always known he was destined to be more than just a statue, more than just an image cast in marble. His body, lean and sculpted, was the canvas upon which two of the greatest artists of his time would leave their marks. But beneath his sculpted exterior, beneath the smooth skin that Michelangelo and Da Vinci adored, there was a man—a man in love.

He had met Felysia during his early years in Florence, a woman whose beauty rivaled that of the masterpieces that surrounded him. Her eyes, dark as the Tuscan earth, had captivated him from the moment their gazes locked. She was his muse in every way that mattered, the flame that stirred his soul. Together, they spoke of escape, of life beyond the shadows of the studio, of love unchained by the demands of the masters.

But as much as David longed to be free with her, to walk beside her under the Italian sun, he was bound by a different calling—a calling that tied him to the figures of Michelangelo and Da Vinci. They had seen something in him that neither of them could resist, something that demanded he remain. He was not merely a model to them; he was their obsession, their living sculpture, the breath behind their works. His body was their greatest creation, and so he belonged to them, just as surely as he belonged to Felysia.

Yet, every evening, when the light dimmed and the studio emptied, he would slip away into the shadows to meet her. There, in the quiet spaces between the marble and the paint, they shared moments of fleeting freedom—moments that left his heart racing, even as he knew he could not remain there forever.