On the Nature of Chance

  (And 55,206 Stories Trying to Explain It)

  Change, according to the sages, is inevitable. According to the less sage and more slightly-drunk, it’s also inconvenient, unpredictable, and usually arrives five minutes before you were ready.

  At this very moment, on a website suspiciously named RoyalRoad—which contains no visible royalty and rather more dungeons than roads—there are exactly 55,206 books.

  That number is important.

  It’s the kind of number that makes statistics professors twitch with joy, and chaos gods lean in slightly. It’s the numerical equivalent of a smug cat sitting precisely on the one spot of clean laundry you just folded.

  Now, you might be the sort of reader who thinks, “Surely, adding one more book doesn’t change anything.” Ah. But that’s what people always say before Something Happens. You know: before the weather changes, before the cheese goes sentient, or before the unassuming fantasy web serial turns into a cult with matching robes and theories about interdimensional spreadsheets.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Book number 55,207 will be different. Not better, necessarily. But it will change you.

  Not in the way that noble tomes of yore change you—no shining sword of truth, no radiant insight. More like... a pebble in your shoe that makes you walk funny, so you take a different path home, meet a talking badger, and end up founding a religion based on pastry.

  Because that's how change works. It doesn't kick down the door in plate armor—it slips in through the back, wearing a cape made of plot twists and character development.

  So go on. Read it. Book 55,207. It's just one more.

  What could possibly change?

  ...

  Chance reader find it 1 in 55 207

  Being struck by lightning in a given year (USA)

  Odds: ~1 in 1,222,000 per year, but over an 80-year lifespan, it's about 1 in 15,000.

  -------

  On 9.4 2025

  The day of nice blue sky and shining sky. The lightning stuck for first time. We have your first commenter and the book get 1st Hero host.

  Welcome To fold : Tufold ??