
by Uchiha zoro
Five innocent children. A thirty-year-old photograph. A raging fire that left no survivors. Arthur Vance is a brilliant but disgraced private detective. When the city's most prominent billionaire jumps off a roof, Arthur is handed the only clue: a decades-old school photograph with a fresh, blood-red 'X' drawn over the victim's face. The mystery deepens when Arthur discovers the billionaire has no childhood records, and the remaining four boys in the photo never officially existed. They were ghosts, orphans from a tragic fire thirty years ago. Now, a watcher with a featureless white mask has returned to settle an old ledger, hunting down the surviving "ghosts" one by one. In a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, Arthur must unravel a terrifying conspiracy of an erased past before the faceless killer strikes 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 26% of similar stories
not enough data yet
needs about a week of observations
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 2–4 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.