
by Yimshmy
EXTRINARIES He was born unable to hold his own shape. He died a hero. He came back as something else entirely. Pereteanu spent his childhood as the boy nobody wanted — his body warping and sliding out of true every time the summer heat rose, a "mistake that breathed" in the eyes of everyone but the one woman who saw something worth saving. Years of discipline in a mountain exile taught him to hold his own form. The army taught him to fight. And a painter who sees the future showed him the only path where the people he loves survive what's coming — a path that requires the world to believe he's dead. So he became Folly: a masked terrorist, hunted by his own former unit, mourned by the woman who loved him. A ghost pulling strings from the shadows while he quietly dismantles the criminal networks and institutional rot that will matter far more than anyone realizes once the sky opens. Because something is coming. Not soon — but not far off either. And when a Council from beyond Earth reaches out with a warning and the tools to answer it, Pereteanu has to build something new: a team of outcasts, criminals, and quietly extraordinary people willing to stand between humanity and a war it doesn't know it's already losing. All while the woman who once loved him hunts the man she thinks killed him — never suspecting the truth is standing right in front of her. A story about masks, sacrifice, and what it costs to protect people who can never know you saved them. Updates 2x/week - Wednesdays & Saturdays. Slow-burn character work, found-family team dynamics, and a superhero framework built on real consequences — betrayal, grief, institutional politics, and the price of secrecy.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 5 Oct 2026, 17:58 UTC
Entry forecast updated 5 Oct 2026, 17:58 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.
Coupled 14-day outlook
rs-joint-entry-copula-v1
Any eligible RS entry
4%
Two or more lists
1%
Likely threshold order: Sci-fi → Action → Adventure → Fantasy → Main.
Leading bundle: Sci-fi (3%).
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
#579 of 4,277 · 529 below RS #50
By genre
beats 13% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 12% 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 10–19 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.