
by Aafiyah Qarozi
“I’d like to see you try,” I retort in English, without thinking. Ayesha stares at me out of disbelief, and the Shopkeeper gives me a rather malicious smile. “I’ll do my best, Doctor,” he replies, somewhat amused, “Rest assured, I’ll make you pay for what you’ve done.” It all started on a fine day, when I saw a red bag that had my marbles, the ones that Amma and Abba warned me about, in a store. But they weren't for sale. Then why keep it there?! No Shopkeeper would do that, unless they have a plan. Whatever it is, Ayesha and I didn't think it through. I went through a fine charade at school, and then my dear sister agreed to help get our marbles back. I wish she didn't. We got our marbles back, but at a cost. That Shopkeeper was a psychopath, threatening to kill me and attempting to injure my sister. We both ran, and resolved to never come back.. Amma made sure of that. I had wondered back then why everyone made a big deal over my marbles, even going as far as to steal them. Now, I realized why we were warned but it's too late. Ayesha's lost there, and I'm stuck in an airless world as a criminal. As for the Shopkeeper, he’s far more dangerous than I thought. I need to find Ayesha and get out of this place before things get worse. That sounds easy enough but it isn't, because everyone thinks I’m some doctor who ruined their world when I haven't even passed my Board Exams! I need to escape from a certain Enforcer and a certain Level before I can find Ayesha. Inshallah, I'll find her and get us back home before things get worse. What To Expect: - Expositional Story - Early Slice of Life Chapters ("A fine charade" before a fine mistake) - World building excerpts before each chapter - Thought Narration - A World with no Oxygen - Betrayal - NO romance - Soft Sci Fi elements - Plot Twists
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 2 Oct 2026, 04:26 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 04:26 UTC
Ranking model: rs-public-oracle-state-v1
Forecast model: rs-model-entry-v1
Chart history contains only this ranking model's runs; legacy points are not spliced in.
Coupled 14-day outlook
rs-joint-entry-copula-v1
Any eligible RS entry
17%
Two or more lists
12%
Likely threshold order: Contemporary → Tragedy → Sci-fi → Fantasy → Main.
Leading bundle: Contemporary + Tragedy + Sci-fi (8%).
Estimated from one fitted shared story path; category probabilities are not multiplied as if lists were independent.
Separate entry forecast; this probability does not enter the ranking score.
Overall Rising Stars Shadow RS rank
#10736 of 11,998 · 10686 below RS #50
By genre
beats 71% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 3% of similar stories
Hidden gem — exposure is the bottleneck
Readers who find this story follow it at a high rate; there just aren't enough of them. In our cohort data, near-daily posting lifted the odds of reaching 25 followers from ~0% to 17% — more chapters, shoutout swaps and ads buy the eyeballs this conversion deserves.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 20–49 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.