
by A.W. Taylor
Marcus Aurelius Venn knows everything about the founding of Aeterna Lux. He's spent years studying the legendary Cassius — the mage who built a civilization from nothing, who designed the tithe system that still powers the city two thousand years later, who turned thirty starving refugees into an empire. Then his thesis experiment goes wrong, and Marcus wakes up in that empty valley, 2,347 years before he was born. They think he's Cassius. He doesn't correct them. Turns out, the historical problems he spent five years studying are a lot harder than they looked in the textbooks. Come follow along as Marcus finds his way from history student to pioneer. Updates weekly. Book 1 of a planned trilogy.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 27 Oct 2026, 22:08 UTC
Entry forecast updated 27 Oct 2026, 22:08 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 66% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 10% 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 10–19 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.