
by J.N. Kade
I count things. Steps, seconds, bruises, exits. You count what you can’t afford to lose track of. Marshall X is seventeen, angry, and one fight away from expulsion. He lives with his mother in a building held together by lead paint and optimism. He’s never met his father. He’s never fit in anywhere. And something in his blood has just woken up. When a burst of impossible energy erupts from his hands, Marshall discovers a truth his mother has been hiding for seventeen years: his father wasn’t human. Marshall carries the fully intact genome of an ancient alien species—a pure blood, the first born in four centuries—and now every faction in a secret war wants him. One side wants to use him. The other wants to drain him. Hunted by an ancient overlord who has survived for three thousand years by consuming pure bloods, Marshall must master abilities that activate through pain, protect the people he loves from a war they don’t know exists, and decide whether the blood in his veins makes him a weapon—or a person. Blood remembers. Everything. Book One of the Marshall X trilogy. New Adult Sci-Fi. Updates weekly. If you like I Am Number Four, Ender’s Game, and Chronicle, this is for you.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 19 Oct 2026, 19:48 UTC
Entry forecast updated 19 Oct 2026, 19:48 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 58% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 1% of similar stories
Mid-pack, room on both levers
Traffic and conversion both sit mid-field for a story this size. Growth here compounds from consistency: steady cadence feeds traffic, and a sharper hook lifts what each view is worth.
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 lifetime.