
by ajkelley
EVERYTHING GETS WORSE FROM HERE follows Jeremy, a well-meaning disaster determined to prove he deserves to marry his fiancée, Rose, by finally winning over her younger brothers. Instead, he accidentally launches nine-year-old Mateo across the universe with an alien travel device hidden inside a roadside motel that secretly serves as an intergalactic transit hub. Desperate to bring Mateo home before Rose discovers what happened, Jeremy and skeptical fourteen-year-old Alex plunge into a galaxy of bizarre worlds, black markets, eccentric aliens, and cosmic bureaucracy. Their search leads them to the Widow, a legendary pirate building a weapon capable of creating black holes powerful enough to erase entire civilizations—including Earth. As Jeremy races to rescue Mateo, he discovers that becoming family isn't about earning approval through grand gestures, but showing up when everything falls apart. To save the people he loves, he'll have to become the brother—and man—they already need him to be.
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, 05:19 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 05:19 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
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beats 1% 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 10–19 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.
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