
by The Vorhandener
Ryan Forger, a man who's house crumbled with him in it during a violent hurricane, finds himself being crushed under rubble. Desperately begging for escape, his chest being crushed, his lungs unable to expand, with no air to scream, pleads in his mind for a way out. Suddenly, as if something answered his prayers, he finds himself in a mundane seemingly infinite office buildings with mono-yellow wallpaper, and maddening fluorescent lights. Appearing in a strange realm known as The Backrooms, with the clothes on his back, and a book with infinite pages and pen with infinite ink. Ryan while trying to keep his sanity, and writing to keep his memories, must escape this place. Just as it seems he made progress, suddenly his account ends, and a new person picks up his pen with the same name and seemingly the same memory of the agony of that hurricane rubble.
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, 20:28 UTC
Entry forecast updated 19 Oct 2026, 20:28 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 68% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 19% 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.