by EldritchMaoMao
Chicago, 2005.The city hums with static, sirens, and things better left unseen. Leon Miller-Castillo has a temper, a sharp tongue, and a talent for pretending he isn't falling apart. When the one holding him together dies, grief doesn't just haunt him-it gives him a gift he never asked for. Leon can see the dead, and they see him too. As ghosts gather and the city's hidden world cracks open, Leon is pulled into a nightmare of witches, psychics, and eldritch horrors hiding behind human faces. His class partner Vad-quiet, strange, and unsettlingly familiar-is one of them. He's not human. He's ancient. And from the moment Leon looks at him, Vad can't look away. Vad watches Leon like prey and like prayer.Like something sacred he was never meant to touch. Love, obsession, and horror bleed together as Leon realizes the most dangerous thing in Chicago isn't the dead following him-it's the monster who would burn the world down just to keep him safe.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 10 Oct 2026, 05:38 UTC
Entry forecast updated 10 Oct 2026, 05:38 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.
Not enough recent follower history to estimate a shadow rank yet.
beats 13% of similar stories
not enough data yet
needs about a week of observations
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 10–19 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.
