
by SageofSpirits
A routine Salvage job becomes a fight for survival - and a battle for Identity. When Jack is left for dead on a 4000 year old section of floating space debris, he thinks that is it - his short life comes to an end before he could even live a life as his - her - true self. the Root doesn't take prisoners, it just consumes and spreads. But a fortuitous meeting with an ancient, trapped, and highly illegal AI gives Jack a new chance at life, at escape, and at becoming the person they were always meant to be. Join Jack/Jax and Faust as they fight the Root, and fight to get home, to the River, and the Skully Gull. This story contains Adult themes, including references to sexual acts (no graphic scenes, or fades to black before things leave a PG-13 rating) and sometimes extreme violence. I use an AI assistant for editing and proofreading help, but all scenes are human written and mostly human edited. Release schedule will be 3 times a week, mon-wed-fri
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, 10:48 UTC
Entry forecast updated 5 Oct 2026, 10:48 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 95% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 95% of similar stories
Firing on all cylinders
Traffic and conversion are both strong for a story this size. Readers are finding it and sticking — if Rising Stars is the goal, this is the moment to push.
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.