
by Romanceenjoyer.
Stones are life. Stones are power. Stones are a curse. Every human is born with three Foundation Stones: Health, Mentality, and Ego that govern their body, mind, and will. A rare few possess additional Divine Shards, making them "Children of Onibaba," blessed or cursed depending on who you ask. Akari doesn't know which he is. He only knows to survive. For years, the red-haired thief has stolen from criminals to feed the sixteen abandoned kids who call him brother. He prays to Onibaba out of gratitude, not faith, because she's the only one who ever told him he could be more than something disposable. Then the police recruit him to Hoshino High, the second-most prestigious Stone Hunter academy in Japan. Akari accepts only to protect his family. He has no intention of becoming a hunter. As Akari bonds with friends who see him for the first time, he loses people he can't save and falls into a relationship that feels more like a cage, but beneath that, one question haunts him. Who is Onibaba really? And why does everyone, including Akari himself, seem to be hiding a fire that could burn the world down?
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 10 Oct 2026, 05:28 UTC
Entry forecast updated 10 Oct 2026, 05:28 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 18% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 4% of similar stories
Both levers trail the field
Traffic and conversion are both below comparable stories. Cadence is the first lever — stories posting near-daily reached 25 followers 17% of the time; stories posting every few days almost never did. Get the flow going, then re-check conversion.
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.