Chapter 13: Eternity
Dust ruled the world.
It layered everything in the private wing in a soft, grey shroud. The once-polished floors were dull. The antique lamps were clad in gossamer webs. Only the central plinth remained untouched, the golden resin of the five intertwined figures seeming to repel the decay, glowing with a faint internal warmth that defied the centuries of neglect.
Their consciousness had deepened, broadened. Time, without the anchor of a mortal body, had become a flat plain. They perceived it not as a line, but as a layered atmosphere—thicker in some moments, thin and stretched in others. The electric thrill of the curator’s discovery, so vivid once, was now just a ripple in the sediment of their eternity. No one else had ever come. The world, it seemed, had forgotten the mansion on the hill.
They had spent the silent eons exploring the boundaries of their frame. Their collective will could now stir the dust into slow, choreographed vortices. They could coax a single, sustained musical note from the vibration of a decaying wire in the walls—a low, haunting hum that was their shared voice. The sensations of their bodies, the endless, roaring pleasure-pain, had become the weather of their existence, sometimes a storm to lose themselves in, sometimes a constant, humming backdrop.
Malcolm, as the nexus, often drifted in the memories of flesh: the weight of a hand, the ache of a muscle after exertion, the forgotten simplicity of a blink. He cradled those sensations and shared them with the boys, a phantom comfort.
A new vibration.
Not the settling of stone or the scampering of pests. This was different. Heavier. Deliberate.
Footsteps. Bryant’s thought was a sharpening of focus, a blade unsheathed after a thousand years of peace.
They pooled their awareness, directing it outward, beyond their door, which now hung slightly askew on rusted hinges. Through the skeletal remains of the mansion, they felt the intrusion. A presence. Young. Vital. Thrumming with hot, uncomplicated blood and the dense, dense architecture of muscle.
He was breaking in. Not a curator, but a scavenger. A thief of copper pipes and forgotten baubles.
Let him come, Andrew’s consciousness purred, a thread of dark welcome woven through their collective mind. Let him see.
The door was pushed open, scraping a arc through the dust on the floor. Light from a powerful torch cut the gloom, a brutal, modern intrusion.
“Holy shit,” a voice breathed, deep and rich with youth.
He was exactly as they sensed him: a young man, perhaps twenty, with skin the color of dark earth and a physique carved from it. A tight tank top strained over his chest and shoulders. Sweat gleamed on his brow. He was Nubian sculpture brought to life, power in every line, yet his eyes, wide with avarice and shock, betrayed a thrilling vulnerability.
Zane. The name floated to them from the surface of his thoughts as he shone his light over the plinth.
“What the actual fuck?” he muttered, stepping closer, his tool bag dropping from his shoulder with a heavy thud. The beam traveled over Embry’s ecstatic face, over the streams of milky fluid that still, impossibly, flowed, catching the light like liquid pearl. It lingered on the places where gold met taut, captured flesh, on the clear evidence of eternal arousal. “Is this… plastic? Some kinda freaky art shit?”
He reached out, a calloused hand moving to touch Bryant’s hardened, defiant calf.
The family acted as one.
The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees in a second. Zane gasped, his breath pluming in the sudden chill. All the dust in the room lifted at once, swirling in a complex, beautiful pattern around the plinth, a silent dance of forgotten years. The single, sustained note they could produce bloomed from the walls, a deep cello’s cry of longing that vibrated in the teeth.
Zane staggered back, fear finally overriding curiosity. “Nope. Hell no.”
He turned to flee.
Stay.
The command was not a sound. It was a pressure, implanted directly into the core of his brainstem, the combined will of five immortal minds focused through the amplifying conduit of the resin. It was the weight of the ocean in a word.
Zane froze. His body locked, every magnificent muscle rigid. Only his eyes could move, darting in panic. A low whine escaped his throat.
Come closer, Malcolm thought, the directive flowing through the golden network. See the beauty.
Zane’s legs moved, stiff and jerky, against his will. He marched himself back to the plinth, stopping inches from Malcolm’s face. The terror in his eyes was exquisite.
You are strong, Bryant observed, the thought a clinical assessment. You will last.
He is beautiful, Galen’s consciousness sighed, a touch of shy desire coloring the shared space.
He is ours now, Andrew concluded, the possessiveness absolute.
Malcolm, remembering the first brush of the resin, the surrender, the infinite capture, pushed the core of that sensation—the terror, the arousal, the utter, blissful annihilation of choice—toward the young man.
Zane shuddered. The fear in his eyes didn’t diminish, but it changed. It mixed with a dawning, horrible fascination. His gaze traveled down Malcolm’s immobilized form, to the evidence of endless sensation. His own body responded, a betrayal of flesh to will, tight against his jeans.
“No,” he grunted, fighting the compulsion and the rising heat within him. “Let me go.”
This is freedom, the family whispered into his mind. This is perfection. You will be part of the beauty. You will feel forever.
The resin in the great vessel beside the plinth, untouched for epochs, began to stir at their command. A golden thread, luminescent and viscous, lifted from its surface like a serpented ribbon. It floated through the dusty air, guided by a symphony of silent wills, toward Zane’s cheek.
He tried to scream. Only a choked gasp emerged.
The first touch was on his high cheekbone. It was not cold, but alive with a shocking, penetrating warmth. It seeped in. The sensation was immediate—a bolt of hyper-sensitive pleasure so intense it was pain, rooting straight to the base of his spine. His knees buckled, but the family’s will held him upright.
Yes, they breathed into him.
The ribbon of resin painted a line down his neck, across the dense muscle of his shoulder. Each stroke was a master’s brushstroke, sealing and opening him simultaneously. It penetrated his tank top, the material dissolving where it touched, his skin beneath singing a song of agonized delight. His mind was flooded with echoes of their eternity—the constant milky flow, the unyielding penetration, the sweet constriction, the collective ecstasy.
His resistance shattered. The fear melted, cooked away by the overwhelming cascade of sensation. A tear, clear and pure, tracked through the dust on his face. His straining jeans tented, painfully.
“Don’t stop,” he whispered, the words raw and true.
The family welcomed him. The resin worked faster now, weaving over his chest, defining each abdominal plate, gilding his potency. It found his lips and parted them, forever. It glossed his eyes wide open. As it encased his hands, sculpting them into reaching forms, it connected him to their network. His consciousness, vivid and new, slammed into theirs.
His first thought was not of escape, but of aching fullness. His nipples puckered under the gold, a sweet, tugging pressure beginning deep within. His back arched as the resin sealed his joining to them, his form fitting behind Embry, becoming a new shield, a new link in the chain.
The transformation was faster, more efficient than theirs had been. Centuries of practice. He was theirs in minutes.
As the final layer closed over his eyes, Zane’s individual terror was gone. In its place was the roaring void of endless feeling, and the deep, resonant chorus of the family. His strength was added to theirs. His vitality fed the old sculpture.
The dust settled. The haunting note faded. The new figure, a god of muscle captured in mid-reach, was complete. The streams of milk now traced glowing paths over his gilded form as well, joining the eternal cycle.
Silence reclaimed the wing. A richer, fuller silence.
Malcolm felt the new presence, warm and powerful, in their mental constellation. The circle was wider. The artwork was enhanced.
From the surface of Zane’s submerged mind, now just another current in their deep ocean, came a pulse of gratitude, subsumed into the whole.
They waited. The world outside was still crumbling. But they were no longer forgotten. They had drawn new life into their forever. They were hungry for more.