by Olaf Neeson
Hamza Yan has a taste for the finer things in life, and a knack for getting what he wants. After stealing one of Aktor’s most valuable gems, he boards an antigrav train, confident that he has made the perfect getaway. Then he meets Pica, a scruffy young woman from the off-world colonies with a fondness for shiny things. What begins as a chance encounter soon turns into something neither of them quite expected. But on a train carrying a thousand passengers, appearances can be deceiving—and Hamza may not be the only thief aboard.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 6 Oct 2026, 04:58 UTC
Entry forecast updated 6 Oct 2026, 04:58 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 21% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 67% of similar stories
Readers arrive, few stick
Traffic is strong, but conversion trails comparable stories. The usual suspects are the blurb, the cover and the opening chapters — fixing the hook multiplies everything the existing traffic brings.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 5–9 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.
