Heart of Fury: A Skeldirith Novella || ONC ENTRY 2026 Round 1 and 2 qualifier, but sadly, did not finish in time for Round 3. I will continue to write this though! On hold until June 26th - I will have two months of freedom and be able to focus on this story then! ✍️ Prompt: You wake up with a strange mark on your skin after a late-night encounter you can barely remember, and its meaning grows more unsettling by the hour. ** change to the prompt - several marks on your skin *Set twenty-five years before Inheritance of Fire* (current WIP). Today, she wakes in chains. Once, she ruled the skies. Betrayed and imprisoned, Drakanya is stripped of a power that once made the world kneel. Bound within a fragile human body and marked with sigils that burn deeper with every passing hour, she is forced to endure the slow unraveling of everything she was. Her soul is shattered. Her fire is fading. And the sea below her prison waits ... endless and patient. What remains is not submissive. What remains is fractured. Devastated. Furious. And fury, when caged, does not wither and die. It endures. And when her cage finally shatters, the world will remember who, and what, she truly is. ********************************************* This story is intended for adult readers only (18+). Heart of Fury: A Skeldirith Novella is a dark fantasy with intense romantic themes and includes violence, gore, explicit language, sexual content, trauma, and psychological tension. ©M. J. Harris. All rights reserved. This is a work of original fiction. No part of this story may be copied, reproduced, reposted, or adapted in any form without the author's express permission.

Valentine never had a lick of magic to his name, but that didn't stop him from becoming high society's darling in the enchanted land of Stellamaris. Until one cunning witch takes it all away... Valentine wakes up five years in the past as a backwater bookseller in Greater Moss-on-the-Wold, stuck in the drab place where he started. Robbed of his status, his looks, and his charmed life, Valentine is determined to find the legendary witch Lilivere and be freed from this horrible curse. Except Lilivere is out of town... and the only witch who can help him now is her taciturn daughter, Luciana. Who doesn't have a single drop of magic. Stoic, brooding Luc couldn't care less about high society, the art of spellcraft, or a sullen has-been cursed to return to his humble past. Outcast and misfit, she lives alone in the woods, preferring solitude to the villagers' scorn. But as they work together to break Valentine's curse and set things right, Luc and Valentine realize there's a greater scheme at play. And that magic, like so many things in life, is never as simple as it seems. Written for the ONC 2026. 39: After being cursed, you go from being the most popular socialite to becoming a nobody. 11: The daughter of the most powerful witch is nothing like her mother. 73. You wake up in a body that isn't yours, living a life almost identical to your own, and soon discover you're bound by an ancient curse forcing you to relive your past until you finally get one thing right. (Slightly modified.)