
by AuthorOfHope
Twenty years ago the world ended. Hope was the first child born after the apocalypse, and the first human from Earth able to sense and perform magic. Which would be great if she could stop accidentally setting herself on fire. She's only known her small community of survivors in what was once northern England. Earth is no longer whole – it's been mixed together with shards of another world. Most people that venture into the New Lands don’t return, but the few that do are forever changed, granted power by a strange system. When a mysterious elf appears and and warns of an approaching horror that will destroy Hope's home, he also proposes a solution. He promises to take her, and her annoyingly talented best friend Liv, to train under a famous master that can help them control their magic in time to come back and save their settlement. As long as they don't end up abandoned, having to fend for themselves in an unfamiliar world where everyone hates people from Earth, it's a solid plan. And what are the chances of that?
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, 07:58 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 07:58 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 72% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 7% 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.