
by flourish3
The nobles gave him their curses. They should have read the fine print. Every great miracle leaves someone paying the price. In Greybridge, it’s never the heroes. Their wounds, their madness, their divine punishments—all passed down to people locked beneath the city. Rook Venn keeps the records. He knows how long each victim lasts. Now his name is on the list. Chosen to bear a dragonslayer’s curse, Rook is supposed to bleed quietly while the saint upstairs accepts his applause. Instead, he awakens a forbidden craft. He can see how curses work. And he can change the rules that make them hurt. A wound that won’t close. A bell that calls the dead. Silver that burns his skin. Each curse is dangerous on its own. With the right tools, the right preparation, and a little imagination, they might be exactly what he needs. But surviving one curse won’t make him free. His contract still belongs to the men who put him on that table—and they have an entire city built to keep it that way. Rook intends to take it back. He’ll start with his own. Then he’ll see how many others he can steal. What to expect: Earned progression through curse crafting, experimentation, and dangerous combinations.Tactical fights against enemies who learn and adapt.A resourceful protagonist with a sharp tongue and a long memory.A growing crew, a workshop, and eventually a home worth defending.A dark fantasy world with hard-won victories and room for humor.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 9 Oct 2026, 02:18 UTC
Entry forecast updated 9 Oct 2026, 02:18 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: Fantasy → Action → Adventure → Main.
Leading bundle: Action + Adventure + Fantasy (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
#2141 of 4,776 · 2091 below RS #50
By genre
beats 65% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 59% of similar stories
Mid-pack, room on both levers
Traffic and conversion both sit mid-field for a story this size. Growth here compounds from consistency: steady cadence feeds traffic, and a sharper hook lifts what each view is worth.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 20–49 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.