
by Tarynne Bourret
It was five years ago when a meteor fell from the sky, landing right in Hudson Bay, and with it, causing an influx of gravity to become lighter, where even cars began to float. Shortly after, a large facility was built named The A.R.C to study it, along with the meteor that caused it. It was a year ago when the sky went completely dark. Known as The Time of Darkness. Ophelia wasn’t sure what to make of any of it. The day the sky went dark was the day she learned her father was dead… And after a year had gone by, people who had been reported to have disappeared, only to reemerge again, were only seen from a distance with a faint blue glow before disappearing again. Ophelia hoped things would eventually go back to normal, or at least some answers would be given, when her mother, who was also a scientist who worked at the A.R.C, vanished. With nothing else to go on, Ophelia chooses to head to the last place her mother would go, only to find something that should have been left alone…
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 19 Oct 2026, 19:08 UTC
Entry forecast updated 19 Oct 2026, 19:08 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 26% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 73% 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 2–4 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views lifetime.