Morgan was completely absorbed in the story he was being told, but he still did not understand what it had to do with his own situation. When he tried to ask Xol another question, barely opening his mouth, Xol shot him such a threatening look that his spectral blue eyes began to glow.
That alone was enough for Morgan to lower his head and remain silent.
Those humans resisted for as long as they could, but in the end they were overwhelmed by the visitors from distant lands. Once the massacre was over and the rain had extinguished the flames that had consumed their kingdom, the jaguar descended into what little remained of the realm of men. He walked among buildings reduced to ash and among the corpses of those who had perished.
He walked and walked, searching for something, any sign that not everything that place had once been was truly lost.
But there was only death and destruction.
Just as he was about to give up, he heard a faint voice among the rubble, small and weak, pleading for help.
Instinctively, he rushed toward the sound, pushing aside everything that stood in his way with all his strength. When he finally cleared away the debris and straw covering the speaker, he saw who it was: a woman with a swollen belly, expecting a child.
A deep wound pierced her chest. Blood continuously spilled from her mouth, yet she held her stomach firmly, trying to protect it with the little strength she had left.
The jaguar supported her, lifting her head. He did not know whether to seek human aid or use his divine powers, but at that moment the woman grabbed his arm with surprising strength. Their eyes met, and what the jaguar saw in hers was something he would never be able to erase from his memory: pain, anguish, despair... but above all, fear.
And what ultimately marked the jaguar's existence forever was that the woman, with her remaining strength and choking on her own blood, asked him a simple yet crushing question.
"Wh... why?"
The moment those words left her lips, her body went limp. She had died from her wounds. The jaguar shook her, trying to wake her, to make her respond, to hear her say something, anything, but she had already left the world of the living.
The god let out a heart-wrenching howl of pain, filled with frustration and despair. He thought that if he had failed to save her, perhaps he could still save the child she carried within her. But his anguish deepened when he noticed that the hand covering her belly—the one that had protected it so fiercely—now revealed a small hole beneath it.
When he realized that there was nothing he could do for that child either, he went numb. He simply held the woman's body in his arms for a long while, until he finally fell to his knees.
And, like his brother the serpent, he began to cry and scream, pouring out all of his pain.
Cursing himself.
The jaguar buried the woman's body with his own hands beneath a tree.
A tree that, in time, bore fruit.
He remained beside her grave for days and nights on end, doing nothing but staring silently at the earth.
The god came to understand that all of this was the result of his own actions, and that he had to pay for them. His envy had led him to that moment.
But shame prevented him from revealing what he had caused, so he chose to punish himself instead. He decided to subject his entire being to a complete reconstruction.
The pain, the fear, the despair—every feeling he had inflicted upon others, he too would experience.
With all his power, he bound his existence to the fate of every living being in that world and to those yet to be born in future generations. He would witness their lives through his own eyes, as though they were mirrors.
Day after day, without rest. It did not matter whether that person was destined for a cruel fate or a horrifically tragic one—he would share it until the very end.
Furthermore, he placed himself in a realm between the world of the living and the dead, where only darkness existed, and there he nurtured a great tree that would bear a fruit. A fruit he would offer to the souls of those who were never born or who lived only for a brief time, promising to care for and protect them until the day came for them to return to the earth.
Thus, the one who had envied so deeply, and who had witnessed what that feeling was capable of and the devastation it could bring, chose to transform that envy into something new.
Into something better.
End of Chapter.
Next Chapter: I guess I'll give it a try.