The Messenger of Death

"She tried to do that? Is that why you said a mother's love?" Jamila didn't expect that something like that happened in the past.

"Yes."

"But that's more like greed and selfishness." Jamila retorted.

"To the majority, yes, but let me ask you this. If it was your child, would you attempt what Hussein's mother did, or would you wait till he was pressured again and attempts suicide?" Jamila's companion asked her.

'She does have a point, to kill the weed, you need to remove it from its roots. Hassan was the root of Hussein's suicide attempt.' Alex concurred with Jamila's companion.

"I don't know, but I do know that I would do anything to protect my child," Jamila answered.

"That's why I called it the love of a mother, she was willing to do that for her son's happiness."

'Huh, why is Hussein feeling sad?' Alex wondered. He could tell what emotion Hussein was feeling.

'Although I was the cause of the problems in this family, you did all you could to make sure that I was happy, mother.' Hussein thought.

"After she attempted taking Hassan's life, everything in their family went downhill from that day. Hassan forgave his stepmother even before she came to apologize to him. He tried to cover up for her, saying that it was a mistake and how it wasn't her intention to do so, but his father and grandfather weren't going to fall for his lies. They insisted on giving her punishments, but Hassan swore to take his life if they did that."

"He truly forgave her?" Jamila asked. She couldn't believe that he would forgive someone for attempting to take his life. "Isn't he too nice, or naïve?"

"Yeah, he forgave her. But I have a feeling that it was because she was Hussein's mother, he wouldn't do anything to sadden his brother."

"Their brotherly love is… I have no words at the moment for that." Jamila uttered.

'Their brotherly love is something that anyone would be jealous of.' Alex commented.

"Moving on, after that whole situation, things didn't go back to normal. Hussein's mother fell back into depression, not because of her son, but because of what she tried to do and how Hassan easily forgave her. She tried to take his life and in the end, he forgave her because he didn't want her son to be sad.

It was then that she realized that she almost took the life of the person that loved her son as much as she did, and it was eating at her conscience, to the extent that whenever she saw Hassan or heard his voice she burst into tears.

Hassan visited her a lot when she was depressed, he spent a lot of time with her trying to help her mental health."

"If I was Hussein's mother, even I would be depressed. After all that, he still cared for her health." Jamila's eyes started to water. She was on the verge of tears.

"If one looked at Hassan's behavior from a different perspective, you can say that he was the perfect son and a principled man. When Hussein's mother started getting better, she visited Hassan a lot, more than Hassan's mother did.

After she tried to take her son's life, Hassan's mother stopped talking to Hussein's mom. She vowed to never speak to her again, while her son forgave her she couldn't do the same.

Hassan's mother started getting jealous of the attention that Hassan gave to Hussein's mother to the extent that she faked sickness just so her son can give all his attention to her. And Hassan did just that, even when he knew that his mother was pretending he didn't complain, he kept on taking good care of her."

Hearing this, tears started to fall off Jamila's eyes.

"Jamila, don't cry, you're going to make me feel like crying too." Her companion pouted as her eyes started to water too.

"Don't mind me, my heart just broke for Hassan, how is he so lovable but hated and despised by many in the whole village?" Jamila shook her head and stopped her tears from gushing out. "Don't mind me continue, I need to know why he is being treated this way."

"After Hassan's mother tried all that she could, indirectly, to keep Hassan away from Hussein's mother, it still didn't happen. She got angry and forbade Hassan from meeting Hussein or his mother and Hassan said in reply;

Mother, Hussein is my brother, and his mother is also my mother. Why will you forbid me from seeing my mother?

He directly refused to listen to her wish. His mother got so angry that she started taking it out on Hussein whenever Hassan wasn't there to intervene."

"But Hussein is also a victim." Jamila started to sob.

"According to the rumors, Hussein always smiled whenever he was being punished by Hassan's mother. He never complained about it.

Everything kept on going this way for years until Hassan's mom couldn't take it anymore, she decided to kill Hussein's mother.

She invited Hussein's mother to dinner, for the first time in years they were going to dine together. Hussein's mother was overjoyed by that and immediately accepted the invitation without thinking twice. If only she knew that Hassan's mother had poisoned the dishes that were going to be served to her.

In the process of dying in Hassan's mother's tent, Hassan came unannounced to visit his mother, when he stepped in, he saw Hussein's mother laying on the ground, withering in pain. While his mother was looking down upon her as she suffered. Hassan ran to Hussein's mothers' side and started to transfer his life force to her."

"Noo, his life force? That means..." Jamila sobbed harder now, and so did her companion, the story of Hassan and Hussein was one filled with tragedy.

"Hassan's mother was devastated to see that her son was willing to die for another woman, the woman that tried to take his life. It was like he didn't recognize her efforts for him.

Hassan did all he could but he wasn't able to save Hussein's mother, the poison had already made its way to her heart. Hassan lost a huge part of his cultivation after that, he fell to the late-stages of the origin cultivation realm and was in a coma for a month. It was said that his mother kept on mumbling that her son looked at her with hate in his eyes before he passed out.

When he woke up, the first thing that Hassan did was..." She paused.

"What did he do?" Jamila impatiently asked.

"The first thing he did was to kill his mother, and when his father confronted him, he killed him too." Her companion paused, she had stopped sobbing now.

-Gasp!

"What a monster!?" Jamila exclaimed, she too had stopped shedding tears after hearing that. "How? I thought you said that his cultivation dropped to the origin realm, how was he able to kill the previous chief?"

"That's where his sword nonpareil and darkness elemental ability comes in. You know that at a stage, cultivation doesn't matter to nonpareils, they are able to manipulate rule-bending laws, and with his elemental ability, his father wasn't an obstacle to him." Her companion explained.

'What the, he did that? Humans are really unpredictable. I wasn't expecting anything like that.' Alex was stunned after hearing that.

'No one but the elders and us, the immediate family knows what actually happened.

Stepmother couldn't take the fact that Hassan was willing to give his life to my mother in exchange for her health, she ran mad and then took her own life, just hours before Hassan woke up and went to visit her.

When he got there, father was already holding stepmother in his arms with tears running down his face. It was clear that his mother committed suicide, and then father did something very irrational. He took his own life, right in front of Hassan's eyes.

By the time grandfather arrived there, stepmother and father were already dead, and Hassan was the only one there. Luckily, father left a memory fragment of his last moments, and that was how we found out that they committed suicide.' Hussein recalled.

His emotion now was rage, not at his brother, but his father. He knew the kind of son Hassan was and yet, he still killed himself.

'What is with this family and taking their lives? Is it a noble thing to do?' Alex uttered as he listened to Hussein talking to himself.

'They had planned to announce their deaths the next day, but Hassan beat them to it. He brought their corpse to a public place and announced that he was the one that killed them. He falsified a confession and narration of how it happened.

Hassan wasn't going to let the world know that his parents committed suicide, which would have been a disgrace on their names, they wouldn't have been buried in the ancestral tomb. Instead, they would have been thrown into the never-ending sea.

So he decided to take the fall and save his parents from such shame. Now he has been labelled as a monster and unworthy of the chieftaincy by the majority in the village. Since his mother killed my mother, he is trying to compensate for her sins by pushing the chieftaincy position to me. Even after I have told him that I don't need any compensation.

There is no one more worthy of that position than my brother. That is why I will not tolerate anyone that looks at my brother with disdain or disrespects him, when they do not know the truth of the matter.' A tear slide down Hussein's face.