by MaxMaze
The world's Heart is dying. Only five shards of it remain. When a wooden thief is cornered in a library tower, she hides one of those shards inside the most disposable thing she can find — a blank-faced puppet apprentice named Goody. He has no voice. No memory. No name. He has only just begun to suspect that he exists. Now a usurper hunts the shard from the back of a black dragon. Rebels in a hidden city sharpen weapons for an impossible war. And a small wooden creature in a clockmaker's bag is carrying the last pulse of a god — learning, far too quickly, what love, shame, and grief mean. A dark steampunk fairytale. Daily updates. --- ★ "Sweeping, elegant prose without turning purple, immersive descriptions without getting boring, unique character voices, subdued but endearing humour." — Dormouse Pie★ "A masterclass in convergence" — Weaver of Tales★ 4.81/5 from early readers · 110 chapters · Daily updates Complete. 138 chapters. Heart's Tale comes to Amazon (ebook + paperback) in October. Leave your email and I'll remind you when it's out: https://maxmaze.substack.com/subscribe
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 2 Oct 2026, 02:29 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 02:29 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.
Coupled 14-day outlook
rs-joint-entry-copula-v1
Any eligible RS entry
1%
Two or more lists
0%
Likely threshold order: Action → Adventure → Fantasy → Main.
Leading bundle: Action (0%).
Estimated from one fitted shared story path; category probabilities are not multiplied as if lists were independent.
Separate entry forecast; this probability does not enter the ranking score.
Overall Rising Stars Shadow RS rank
#9851 of 12,432 · 9801 below RS #50
By genre
beats 59% of similar stories
beats 64% of similar stories
beats 32% 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 50–149 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.
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