
by Arad Sarkis
Arvalas has learned to live with its past. But there are things the city would rather not revisit. When an ancient tower on the Square of Silence catches fire — sealed for nearly two centuries — it reads, at first, as another tragedy. Then it becomes clear the fire was no accident. Torgom is the only one who notices something is off, but the closer he looks, the faster the city starts giving up its stories. Ordinary conversations turn into scraps of someone else's history. Forgotten names surface where they have no business being. Events begin to repeat with a precision that makes coincidence hard to argue. At some point it becomes obvious: this isn't about one fire or one tower. Something has been bound to this place for a long time — and it hasn't gone anywhere. The further Torgom goes, the less certain he is that he understands what he's dealing with at all. And something else becomes clearer: some things don't disappear just because someone tried to wipe them out. They wait. Until someone looks again.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 24 Oct 2026, 08:38 UTC
Entry forecast updated 24 Oct 2026, 08:38 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 63% 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.