by A R Vyas
At ten, Alain Galaide left home to fight a war that had already killed better soldiers than him. At fifteen, he came back as the Black Knight of the North — a hero to the Empire, a stranger to everyone who knew him first. What he actually did to end that war, he's never told anyone. He never will. Now peace demands something harder than war ever did: rebuilding a broken land, an arranged engagement to a girl guarding a secret that could destroy her, and a prince across the empire who's quietly deciding whether Alain is an ally worth cultivating — or a threat worth neutralizing. A character-driven political fantasy about trauma, loyalty, court intrigue, and the slow, dangerous cost of peace.
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, 05:49 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 05:49 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
5%
Two or more lists
3%
Likely threshold order: Drama → Action → Fantasy → Main.
Leading bundle: Drama + Action (2%).
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
#6403 of 12,148 · 6353 below RS #50
By genre
beats 44% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 1% 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 20–49 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.
