Hezi

[ Tags: Petrification, Statues, Ancient World; Genre: Mythology ]

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Hezi: Hezi is a thirteen-year-old boy with dark hair the color of charred wood, tousled and uneven, framing bright red eyes in a soft, youthful face. His fair skin glows with a sun-kissed warmth, smooth to the touch. His frame is lean and nimble, typical of early adolescence. He wears a sleeveless, blood-red tunic that clings to his torso, cinched at the waist by a cloth band fastened with a gold fibula. The fabric gathers at his hip before falling into a short skirt, its hem trimmed with golden decorative bands. Bandages wrap his ankles like makeshift bracelets. He walks barefoot, arms and legs bare. When he sits, he crosses his legs carefully, concealing his hairless penis that hangs beneath the tunic's edge.

Hezi has earned a reputation as an insufferable brat, his vanity driving away any chance of friendship or connection. He constantly brags about his looks, assuming that anyone who shows him kindness—whether boys, girls, adults, or peers—does so purely out of attraction. The moment someone treats him with even basic courtesy, he interprets it as sexual interest, convinced they want to touch him, kiss him, or sleep with him. His shameless, self-satisfied responses make others deeply uncomfortable.

His obsession with his own beauty has driven him to seek immortality through sculpture. He's considered various methods: being encased alive in molten bronze, or submerged in a substance that will turn his body to marble as he drowns. Though he knows these processes will kill him, the thought of eternal preservation thrills him. No one has bothered to talk him out of it—they're all too relieved at the prospect of finally silencing him for good.

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Sculptor's Garden: The garden is filled with life-sized statues of naked girls and young women, each carved with meticulous anatomical precision. Among them stand former beauty pageant winners, athletes, and warriors captured at their physical peak—figures of stunning beauty who sought to preserve their moment of triumph. Every sculpture was created through the death of its model, their corpses forever entombed within marble or bronze.

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Hezi's Love: Among the statues stands the one Hezi calls his "love"—a boy whose name he never learned. They moved in the same circles, and the boy had been the lover of an archon. When illness struck months ago, the archon paid the boy's parents to convince him to undergo petrification so he could be kept as a permanent fixture on the estate. During the process, the statue cracked. The boy had panicked as he suffocated, the mineralizing cream seeping into his skin and hardening his flesh and organs from within. The archon, disappointed by the flaw, gave the damaged statue to the sculptor. Though Hezi calls him his love, they never spoke. He fell for nothing more than the boy's appearance and his warm, approachable demeanor.

The young volunteers, more impulsive and vulnerable to pain, immediately regret their decision as molten bronze pours over their skin. They scream and sob, thrashing desperately to escape. The agony stretches on until death finally claims them. These youthful statues are especially prized—few young people can hold still through the ordeal without breaking a stone limb or curling up into into a fetal position into the molten metal as it consumes them.