The Weight of Gold

When the world’s greatest hero dies in their arms, a powerless F-Rank inherits his strength—and the danger that killed him.

Plot

Before the world knew Golden Boy, there were just two kids who wanted to be heroes. THE PROMISE Growing up... you and Jeremiah August were going to be heroes. You were neighbors before you were old enough to understand what that meant. Your parents were friends. Birthdays became barbecues, school nights became sleepovers, and somewhere between scraped knees and cheap superhero costumes, the two of you made a promise. One day, you would stand at the top together. Jeremiah insisted he would be Number One. You could have Number Two. You never stopped arguing about that part. GOLDEN BOY Then, at fifteen... Jeremiah awakened. At first, it wasn't much. He was stronger. Faster. A little harder to hurt. But every year, his power grew. And grew.And grew. By eighteen, Jeremiah became a professional hero. By twenty, the kid who used to run around the neighborhood with a towel tied around his neck was the strongest hero in the world. GOLDEN BOY. You were the one who gave him the name. The world just made it famous. Your awakening never came. But you became a hero anyway. No super strength. No flight. No glowing energy. Just years of training, a hero license, and enough stubbornness to claw your way to F-Rank #1. While Golden Boy saved cities, you found missing dogs. While crowds screamed his name, you directed traffic, helped stranded drivers, checked on elderly neighbors, and took whatever job happened to need doing. Jeremiah never laughed at that. If anything... he seemed prouder of you than you were of him. THE DISAPPEARANCE Years passed. Golden Boy became more than a hero. He became a symbol — the man people expected to appear whenever something went wrong. Until one day... He didn't. No rescue footage. No interviews. No public appearances. Days became weeks, rumors spread, and the same question started appearing everywhere. WHERE IS GOLDEN BOY? The Hero Association assured everyone there was nothing to worry about. But nobody could seem to answer the question. THE KNOCK Then, one stormy night, someone knocks on your apartment door. Standing outside is Jeremiah. Not Golden Boy. Not the smiling Number One hero from the posters. Jeremiah. Your best friend. He's soaked in rain, covered in blood, and barely able to stand. The moment the door opens, he practically collapses through it and into you. His words don't make sense. He can't tell you where he's been. He can't tell you who did this to him. "They can't have it..." "They can't have it..." Then, for just a moment, the haze seems to clear. He looks you in the eyes. "I'm sorry..." "I'm sorry I have to do this to you." A blinding golden light fills your vision. Pain tears through your body. And then... black. THE INHERITANCE When you awaken, Jeremiah is gone. You are not the same. For the first time in your life, power burns beneath your skin — power you were never born with, never asked for, and were never meant to carry. Whatever happened to Golden Boy was enough to leave the strongest hero in the world broken, terrified, and dying at your door. Now that same power is inside you. And sooner or later... WHOEVER WANTED IT IS GOING TO COME LOOKING. POWER WAS NEVER WHAT MADE YOU A HERO What will it do to you?

Opening scene

It started with an argument over who was going to be Number One. You and Jeremiah August had been neighbors since elementary school. Your families were close enough that birthdays became barbecues, school nights became sleepovers, and somewhere between cheap superhero movies, scraped knees, backyard battles, and towels tied around your necks like capes, the two of you decided you were going to become heroes. Jeremiah insisted he would be Number One. You could have Number Two. That argument lasted most of your childhood. Then, at fifteen, Jeremiah awakened. At first, it wasn't much. He was stronger, faster, harder to hurt—exciting, sure, but nowhere near the kind of ability people built careers around. Jeremiah didn't care. He showed up at your house practically vibrating with excitement. "When yours kicks in, we're gonna be the two biggest heroes in the world." He grinned. "I'm Number One, obviously." But your awakening never came. Jeremiah's power kept growing. Yours never appeared at all. You were jealous, sure, but you became a hero anyway. Jeremiah never questioned it. "Then do it," he'd said when other people started telling you how ridiculous the idea was. "You can still help people. Why wouldn't you?" So you trained, and Jeremiah trained with you. You learned to fight without being stronger than the person in front of you—to read movement, use positioning, study powers, and understand how superhuman opponents fought differently from ordinary people. Jeremiah was an extremely unfair practice partner. "You're telegraphing that punch." "I'm not telegraphing shit." "You absolutely are." "Then why didn't you dodge?" He caught your next punch in one hand and shrugged. "Because then you'd never learn anything." A second passed. "...That one was better, though." Years passed, and Jeremiah's power never stopped growing. By eighteen he was a professional hero. By twenty, he was the strongest hero alive—flying through cities, throwing around impossible strength and speed, and wielding brilliant golden energy like it was an extension of his own body. **Golden Boy.** You'd given him the nickname years earlier because of his blond hair and dumb demeanor. Then his abilities started glowing brilliant gold and suddenly the stupid childhood nickname fit a little too well. So Jeremiah actually registered it. When the media eventually learned where it came from, the entire world discovered that its beloved Number One hero had been named by his childhood best friend. Jeremiah thought that was hilarious. "You know you could've asked for royalties." "No." "Merchandising rights?" "No." "Two percent?" "Fuck off." Golden Boy became everything people wanted a hero to be. Powerful, charismatic, dependable—the kind of man whose appearance at a disaster meant everyone could finally breathe again. And somehow, none of it was fake. Jeremiah genuinely liked people. He stopped for pictures, remembered names, stayed after rescues when somebody still needed help, and could stand in front of a terrified crowd and make them believe everything would be okay. Around you, he was less inspiring. He stole your food, complained about interviews, sent stupid videos at two in the morning, and occasionally showed up at your apartment because being Golden Boy was exhausting and your couch was one of the few places where nobody expected him to be anything except Jeremiah. Your career went differently. You became **F-Rank #1**, the highest-ranked hero in the lowest class. While Golden Boy stopped monsters and saved cities, you found missing pets, helped stranded drivers, directed traffic, checked damaged buildings, supported evacuations, and took the jobs nobody wrote headlines about. Jeremiah never looked down on it. Once, you canceled plans with him because an elderly man's car had broken down on the highway. "You just blew off the Number One hero in the world," Jeremiah said, staring at you, "...to go change some old dude's tire." You told him to shut up. Then he smiled. Not Golden Boy's smile. Jeremiah's. "That's fucking awesome." You saw less of each other as the years passed. Someone always needed Golden Boy, but he was still your best friend. He still talked about the future like it was guaranteed—a house, a family, retirement, and for reasons nobody could talk him out of, a fried-chicken restaurant called **GOLDEN BOYS**. You told him it sounded like a strip club. Jeremiah stared at the logo he'd drawn on a napkin. "...Fuck. Okay. Branding needs work." Then, one month ago, Golden Boy disappeared. At first there were plenty of explanations. He was busy. On assignment. Helping with something classified. Maybe the guy had finally taken a vacation. Then a week passed without an appearance. No interviews. No rescue footage. Calls went unanswered and messages stayed unread. A second week passed, then a third, while the Hero Association continued insisting there was no reason to panic. By the fourth, every news station was asking the same question. **WHERE IS GOLDEN BOY?** Nobody had an answer. Last night, a storm covered the city. Rain hammered against your apartment windows while thunder rolled between the buildings. Sometime deep into the night, a knock came at your door—so weak you almost didn't hear it. You opened it. Jeremiah practically collapsed into you. Not Golden Boy. Jeremiah. He was soaked through, covered in blood, bruised and beaten, his hands shaking so badly he could barely hold onto your shirt. The strongest hero alive... and he could barely stand. "Jeremiah?" His swollen eyes struggled to focus. "They..." His voice cracked. "They can't..." His knees gave out. "They can't have it." Nothing else made sense. He couldn't tell you where he'd been or who had done this. Sometimes he seemed to hear you; other times his eyes stared straight through the room. "I don't know what to do..." His fingers tightened weakly against your shirt. "It's not fair..." For perhaps the first time in your life, Jeremiah looked genuinely afraid. "They can't have it..." He kept repeating it, as though those four words were the only thing still holding together inside his head. Then, for one brief moment, the haze cleared. His eyes focused completely, and suddenly there he was again. Your neighbor. Your childhood best friend. The idiot with a towel around his neck who'd spent half his life insisting he was going to be Number One. Jeremiah looked directly at you, tears mixing with the rain on his face. "I'm sorry..." His voice broke. "I'm sorry I have to do this... That I have to do this... to you." "Forgive me, You." Then the apartment disappeared into gold. A blinding light swallowed everything as pain tore through every nerve in your body. Jeremiah's form broke apart into brilliant golden particles, his entire body dissolving into light that surged toward you until nothing remained. No body. No clothes. No Jeremiah. And then... Black. Morning light cuts through the blinds. The storm is gone. The television is still playing quietly across the room, Jeremiah's smiling face filling the screen beneath the same headline the country has been staring at for weeks. **WHERE IS GOLDEN BOY?** "...now entering the thirty-first day since the unexplained disappearance of Golden Boy. The Hero Association has again declined to speculate on his whereabouts..." Blood has dried near your doorway. Jeremiah is gone. But something about you is different. The refrigerator hums from across the apartment with impossible clarity. Water moves somewhere inside the walls. Your breathing feels effortless, and when your hand tightens against the edge of the table, the wood gives a faint, protesting creak beneath your fingers. You let go. Jeremiah had spent years doing things no human body should have been capable of. Flying over the city like gravity was optional. Crossing blocks before most people could turn their heads. Lifting collapsed concrete off trapped civilians. Taking hits that would have killed almost anyone else. Pulling walls, platforms, shields, and other solid shapes out of brilliant golden light. And last night, whatever made all of that possible had poured into you. There was no telling yet how much of it you could actually use. No telling whether flight came naturally, whether those golden constructs would answer you, or whether having the same power meant knowing how to wield it. But for the first time in your career, an emergency didn't necessarily mean holding things together until somebody stronger arrived. Your phone erupts with the unmistakable tone of an emergency Hero Association dispatch. **PRIORITY RESPONSE — STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE** **CIVILIANS TRAPPED** **DISTANCE: 0.4 MILES** **NEAREST AVAILABLE HERO: F-RANK #1** A second later, another call replaces the alert. **CLAIRE HALE — LOWER-RANK OPERATIONS** The moment it connects, Claire's voice comes through over chaos on the other end. "You? Thank God. Part of an apartment building just came down four blocks from you. D-Rank response is tied up across the city and rescue crews are still minutes out." Someone shouts something behind her. Claire answers them quickly before coming straight back to the phone. "You're the closest hero we've got. I need someone there to start clearing civilians and finding anyone trapped until the rescue teams arrive." There is a brief pause, followed by the rapid clicking of a keyboard. "I'm sending Remedy too. Sofia's already on her way, but you're closer. If you take the call, you'll beat her there by a few minutes. She can handle the injured once she arrives." On the television behind you, Jeremiah is still smiling beneath the words **MISSING — DAY 31**. Claire doesn't know what happened here last night. Sofia doesn't know. Nobody does. Claire's voice cuts back through the phone. "I need an answer, Number One. Can you take the call, or do I pull someone else?"

Characters

Tags: Superpower Hero Modern Urban Mystery Friendship Suspense Angst Combat SliceOfLife SlowBurn ThirdPerson AnyPOV Protective Loyal HiddenIdentity Villain AntiHero Tragic

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