
by firecat not fat
Jack Sterling has always trusted machines more than mysteries. Machines fail for a reason. The dull grey ring tied to two dead women, an impossible wartime archive and the missing seconds in his own memory refuses to be so cooperative. When a disaster in orbit forces Jack to use a power he cannot explain, Sparks Industries gives him the chance to investigate the impossible on his own terms. The trail leads from a ruined clinic beneath the Caribbean to an ancient salt cave and a city drowned under the Atlantic. It also brings two dangerous women into his life. Seraphina is a sharp-tongued dragon who would rather break a problem than discuss it. Nerissa is an ocean witch who notices every secret people hope she will overlook. They distrust each other immediately. Unfortunately, Jack needs them both. Each discovery makes his machines stranger, his enemies harder to identify and his apartment considerably less peaceful. Every clue points to Stonehenge, where a doorway has waited thousands of years for the grey ring to return. Opening it may be the only way to learn what Jack is becoming. It may also tell something on the other side exactly where to find him.
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, 08:28 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 08:28 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.
Coupled 14-day outlook
rs-joint-entry-copula-v1
Any eligible RS entry
2%
Two or more lists
1%
Likely threshold order: Sci-fi → Mystery → Adventure → Fantasy → Main.
Leading bundle: Sci-fi + Mystery (1%).
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
#10201 of 12,180 · 10151 below RS #50
By genre
beats 75% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 23% 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 50–149 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.