WebNovels

Chapter 3 - Chapter 3: The Burden of Fame

Ernest Acura had learned to endure failure, but he never imagined his failures could make him famous.

It began with a mistake. A tray of lunch spilled across the principal's new carpet. Someone recorded it, and by noon, the clip had spread through every hallway and every phone screen. By nightfall, the world knew him as Ernest the Clumsy.

Laughter filled his days. Memes carried his face across the internet, captions twisting his shame into amusement. At first, Ernest flinched from the stares, the whispers, the jokes. But slowly, painfully, he began to accept them.

Maybe this was his place. The fool who made others laugh. Maybe being mocked was better than being invisible.

He smiled when they called his name in jest. He laughed with them, though the sound hurt his throat. Attention, even cruel attention, was warmth in a cold world.

Lucifer was patient. He watched from the corners of Ernest's thoughts, smiling faintly as the boy mistook mockery for meaning. Fame without respect was the sweetest poison, and Ernest drank deeply.

Then came the mistake that ended everything.

His family had trusted him for the first time. A simple task. Plan a short trip to the countryside. Book the stay. Check the routes. Pack the essentials. Ernest swore he could handle it.

He wanted to prove himself.

But in his usual distracted haste, he mixed the routes, misread the warnings, and sent them down a path that should have been closed. The ground there was weak, a relic of storms and neglect.

They never stood a chance.

By the time Ernest arrived, the hillside had collapsed. The home they were staying in was gone, buried beneath a wave of earth and stone. His parents were gone. His mother's soft voice, his father's quiet laugh, gone.

Only he remained.

Lucifer's laughter rippled through the silence, unheard by anyone else.

A year remained, and the chosen one's suffering had reached perfection. Ernest Acura, the world's clumsy fool, had become its most tragic soul. He was the survivor who lived where love had died.

He fell to his knees in the dirt, shaking and hollow.

"Why did I…" he whispered, but no answer came. Only the wind moved, empty and cold.

That night, when the stars burned faintly above the ruins, Ernest swore he heard distant laughter, not human, not kind.

A year passed like a long winter. Grief turned to numbness. The world moved on, but Ernest could not. He lived in fragments, a man-shaped shadow wandering through silence.

Then, one morning, the whisper came.

One day left.

The words were not his own. They were carved inside his mind, echoing with dreadful weight.

That was when Lucifer began his masterpiece.

Suddenly, the world softened. A lost inheritance surfaced in Ernest's name. Strangers reached out to him. Journalists, producers, agents. A story of redemption, they called it. The survivor who rose from tragedy.

Doors opened. Hands extended. Smiles returned.

Wealth came first, then comfort, then admiration. He stood on stages, told his tale to weeping crowds, and felt the warmth of their applause. For the first time, he felt loved.

But every gift carried a thread, and those threads all led to the same hand.

Lucifer watched from the edges of success, smiling. The trap was nearly closed.

On the last night, Ernest stood atop a glass tower, staring over a city that glowed like a sea of stars. He could feel the air shift. A low hum filled the silence.

Then came the shadow.

Lucifer stepped forward. His wings curled like smoke behind him, and his eyes burned with the glow of dying embers. Beauty and terror existed in the same shape.

"Ernest," he said softly, "you have suffered enough. I can give you peace. A life without pain. Wealth. Love. Glory. No more shame. No more failure. The world will adore you."

And before Ernest's eyes, the world changed.

He saw his family alive again, smiling across a dinner table that never broke. He saw crowds cheering his name, friends who admired him, a life untouched by loss.

Tears filled his eyes. His heart ached for it, the dream of being enough.

Then, from the far end of the rooftop, another voice spoke.

An old man stepped into view. He was bent, cloaked in rags, his beard streaked with ash. He carried nothing but a crooked staff and a dull crown that glowed faintly like a dying ember.

"You can take what he offers," the old man said, his voice rough but steady. "A life of ease, wrapped in gold and illusion. But it will cost you your soul."

He lifted the crown slightly. "Or you can take this. It brings no comfort, no rest. It will break you before it saves you. But if you endure, you will find what no man has. Your true destiny."

Lucifer's smile deepened, confident and calm.

"One is paradise," he said. "The other is madness."

The wind howled between them. The city lights shimmered like distant fire. Ernest Acura stood alone between salvation and ruin, between two beings of opposite promise.

And in that moment of stillness, the world held its breath, waiting to see which path the broken boy would choose.

More Chapters