LONDON, 1848. Apprentice to the elusive portrait artist Henry Glass, Saskia van Asch spends her days in the studio sketching studies of vain aristocrats. Dreadfully boring, she might complain, but the monotony suits her just fine. And then the mysterious Lady Helen Blackwood commissions a portrait. Saskia takes an immediate dislike to the new sitter, with her evasiveness and quirky mannerisms, not to mention the odd hours she forces Saskia to keep. But the more time she spends with Lady Blackwood, mapping out all the details of her portrait and her life, the more her misgivings transform into a fascination that she finds hard to resist. But giving in to its pull might mean that she has everything to lose. Because Saskia is hiding a secret of her own. -- Main prompt: 117. You're a portrait artist for high-profile clients, but one night a pale, uneasy stranger arrives, asking for a painting. They haven't seen their own face in a century. Secondary prompt: 78. You begin to realise that nothing is quite what it seems.

When Elora comes back home one afternoon, she discovers her mentor dead-just another in line of her recent nightmares that came true. With his final message telling her to find a reclusive researcher, as well as the traces of corrupted obsidian powers at the scene of the crime, she quickly realizes that there is something much larger behind her mentor's death. Something has been corrupting Obsidians, and Elora is one of the few people who are seeing that. And now that something has killed her mentor and forced her on a journey she never desired to go on. With the help of an enthusiastic alchemical apprentice-to-be, Elora will have to find Arcani and put an end to the corruption that is trying to catch up to her before it's too late.

|| ONC 2026 Round 1 Winner || Martin Marvingale lives by two rules: work hard and put others first. So when a baby dragon rips a hole in reality above his freshly planted petunias and the desperate fairytale land inside begs him to step in as their king, he says yes. Turns out, their old king got cursed with zombie-ism, and now a horde of undead nobility are ravaging the countryside. The castle is suffering from a bad bout of slime, the peasants are one more cancelled festival away from revolting, and none of the local lords (who aren't brain-eating monsters) seem to be interested in lifting a finger to help. His only hope at putting things back to rights is to make nice with a princess who hates his face -- and the fact that he might have accidentally just stolen her job. Undeterred, Martin plans to win her over by being the best king anyone could ask for. Which would be a little easier if he knew what a fairytale king was supposed to do exactly. Or how he was supposed to look. Or... anything about his kingdom, really. In retrospect, maybe he should have asked a few more questions before taking the job.

When Jane decides to follow a black cat into the woods, she does not expect it to lead to her meeting a Grim Reaper named Stormy who needs her help to stop a catastrophic event that may end the world. Unable to bring herself to turn down such an important mission, Jane soon finds that things may be harder than she anticipated. This is an ONC 2026 story! It is based on the following prompts: 98: You never imagined the end of the world would begin with a one-eared black cat showing up at your door. 65: On the way to collect a soul, the Grim Reaper is distracted by a stray puppy. Instead of completing the task, they decide to find the puppy's owner, much to the frustration of their assistant. 72: A real necromancer sits in on a fake seance. The cover art is by Anne Stokes.

Kennedy "Ken" Duvall thought being a vampire would change her life for the better. She certainly didn't have much going on before being turned by her maker, a timid gentleman by the name of Timothy. One night, however, when Timid Timothy goes missing after a hunt gone wrong, it's up to Ken to chase him down and set him straight. Because as much as she wants to deny it, life without him as a new fledgling has been harder than she thought. Without him, she actually sucks as a vampire-- pun intended. "81. Unalluring and bumbling, your character is the world's worst vampire."

In a world trapped in an unending darkness, Devin must fight exhaustion and time itself to find his sister as the shadows grow smarter and those who surrender to sleep become something that hunts the survivors. .. When the sun vanished, time stopped. Hunger, wounds, and exhaustion accumulate without relief. Sleep becomes dangerous. Surrender and you might not wake up human. Devin Pierce has been awake for days. Maybe weeks. It's hard to tell anymore. He's learned how to stay still, ration light, and ignore the voices that sound like people he once knew. Because the darkness is not empty. It watches. It learns. And the things moving inside it remember what they used to be and how to use that. As Devin's body begins to fail and the night presses closer, he must decide how much of himself he's willing to lose to see another hour - to find his little sister - before exhaustion makes the choice for him. If there's one thing he cannot do, it's fall asleep. Prompt 97 Rated Mature for descriptions of gore and psychological elements. Reader discretion is advised. Cover by TrashyM

(Nocturnal Law Series) One fatal night changes everything. Vampire detective Percy Ashmidia hunts down the worst supernatural criminals in all of Sanguine City, but he's chasing ghosts trying to figure out the identity of their latest killer. A fresh lead has him eager to uncover their identity, only to find himself fallen for a sinister trap that nearly costs his own sorry fangs. Injured, he stumbles into a witch-run clinic just before the sun rises and encounters a very exhausted, handsome witch doctor who doesn't have the heart to turn him away.

River Kinsella is a fine art student struggling to keep her head above the water. On a rather eventful journey home, she crosses paths with Beatrice Ashcroft, a witch of the Umbral Coven who is destined to change her life forever. River isn't quite ready to accept that, but little does she know that events have already been set in motion. A powerful archdemon vies for a power she doesn't know she possesses yet, and will stop at nothing to attain it. It's Beatrice's job to make sure River accepts her new reality and rises to fulfill her potential, following in her mother's footsteps before things can turn awry. Beatrice's task is this: bring River into the Umbral Coven and, together, avert the archdemon Kain's plans to bring about the end of the world as we know it. Prompt: 11) The daughter of the most powerful witch is not like her mother. Content warnings: Language (swearing), explicit violence and gore, sexual themes, kidnapping.

One job. One heist. One shattering connection. Lyra is a changeling- a human adopted by the wildlands themselves, abandoned as a child to die in the forests outside the frigid Moon Court and raised by magic instead. Accepted neither as a fae citizen nor a human one, changelings are often driven to thievery to survive, and Lyra is no exception. With her small family in turmoil and her brother wasting away from a strange sickness causing his veins to turn dark, she's desperate for solutions... and money to pay for her brother's care. However, when she tries to rob the vaults at the Moon Court castle for a mysterious employer offering a paycheck big enough to change her whole world, Lyra finds herself in significantly more trouble than she asked for-- hearing whispers from an ancient Oracle, averting prophecies at every turn, and wrapped in a messy fate bond with a king as cold and merciless as the frozen landscape of the Moon Court itself. ONC 2026 PRIMARY: 93. Beneath the ruins lies an artifact that whispers memories of an ancient being. The first memory it reveals is a warning and it's meant for you. "Ruins" changed to "castle" as per ONC accepted guidelines on prompt details. SECONDARY: 101. You have a vision of your soul mate but it's of the moment where they end your life.