After overthrowing her family to wed their sworn enemy, an ambitious princess swears to restore them to their rightful place. But to do so, she must overcome the two greatest opponents she's ever faced: her new husband and her own powerful magic. ____ ~*~ ____ Based on the ONC prompt 11: The daughter of the most powerful witch is nothing like her mother.

Ki Centauri is a man with many faces. The life of a military peacekeeper is not a kind one, and the people he's lost are nearly as numerous as the ones he knows. Time and time again, lives slip through his fingers, and all he is left with is the black skies of people now gone. Yet human beings cannot live without connections. Somehow, there must be a way to find friends beyond the limitations of Crest and Clan and forge connections that last and truly matter. But is the pain of finding love in an often bleak and broken world worth the cost of of threading a family across the stars? An ONC 2026 story based on prompts 29 and 69: "You will meet many people in your life. Many will come and go, but some will leave footprints on your heart." "The stars are disappearing one by one, and only you can hear their whispers."

Jeremy has three problems: he sunburns way too easily, his glasses keep falling off, and, according to his mother's prophetic vision, he should have died today. Instead, his best friend, Silas, dies in his place. Sacrificed to an infamous cult. Jeremy soon receives a post-mortem voicemail from Silas with a single instruction: make a wish. His desperate request glitches the universe, summoning Silas to be his ghostly godfairy. But the cult demands its proper sacrifice, forcing the duo to travel between different stories for a safe haven between the pages. One problem: each story they go into forces them into dangerous roles. Jeremy's time and the number of pages are running out. Can he rewrite his fate? Or is his story doomed to end a tragedy? ******** PROMPT USED: 90

Born to the immortal, fickle aes sídhe, Lorcán Ó Miach pays little heed to the turning world around him. His only concern is a strange, nagging boredom that follows him like a second shadow. So when a mortal child stumbles upon the home he and his two brothers share, he delights in the chance to learn about the odd girl. But humans are fearful, delicate creatures, and they are not the same. Careless, selfish, and perhaps broken, Lorcán must confront his very nature. The line between good and evil is a blurred one; if he cannot decide which path to walk, he will lose the only thing he holds dear-his family. ☽❇☾ ~ Standalone prequel to The Sun Sídhe (same world, different characters!) ~ ONC 2026 entry | prompt 46

An entry-level cartographer, Liadan is the least interesting, least important member of the Nautical Guild. Well, that's what she needs everyone to believe. When a warning at sea forces Liadan to flee the Island of Tirisea, she must choose if she returns to safety or trusts a stranger who promises her the impossible: a life where she is free from a duty that was inflicted on her at birth. No matter what, she must not let the mist find her, nor allow the key to fall into malevolent hands. One wrong move, and the world will crumble. Cover by @raizelrose3 ONC 2026 Prompts: 7. One morning, the ocean washes up a message. One you've been waiting your entire life to hear. 62. They say every door has its own key. Except for one, a key said to open them all. 79. A letter arrives addressed to you, written by someone who shouldn't exist.

*Note: This is based off an old and discontinued story that had its outline scrapped and reworked to fit the prompts for the ONC. Essentially, a new book for this competition. Only the core concept, title and the protagonist's name are kept the same.* ----- A ribbon, a hair-clip, a pen, a notebook and a radio, held in the arms of a sixteen year old girl... ... It's been four hundred of years since The Rot ravaged the world and sent people downward with its decaying touch, four hundred years since humanity has inhaled even a breath of fresh air and twenty years since the first fifth-generation child was born in the shelters deep underground. And now, beneath the poisoned earth at the edge of the world, only six of them remain living in the last surviving shelter, the last surviving Lifelight illuminating a darkened board. For the rest were claimed by The Rot. Protected at all costs, older generations shields the worst of the consequences, the worst of the panic, but truth cannot be hidden forever. With increasing tensions and increasing crime, it becomes clear that there are only two outcomes: to die in strife or to die in silence. That is, until an inexplicable hope presents itself in the form of a radio transmission originating from the single most uninhabitable place on Earth, the surface. But it's too late, too late for most, other than the most protected, the youngest, the fifth generation. The waiting game is over and now it's a race against time. Before The Rot reaches them, before they run out of supplies, the handful of survivors must reach out and find the source of the transmission. From this, there are only two possible results: death or a secured future. *Cover done by the amazing @caralogues*

With betrayal comes great responsibility and Mercy Evans knows all about responsibility. ⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅ Blackmail is a sinister thing. As Mercy Evans knows all too well, it can ruin your life. When an ominous letter is placed in her hands seconds before she takes the stand to exonerate her partner and best friend, Isaac Cunningham, from a life imprisoned, she does the only thing she knows how. She lies. For the sake of her withering mother, for the lives of everyone connected to the trial, and for Isaac himself, Mercy recants her witness testimony and leaves him without an alibi. But the truth has a way of surfacing even in the darkest of times and Mercy is brought into the station when new evidence unearths a twisted web of deceit so sinister, only she can make sense of it. Her, and of course, Isaac who's year in a cell has only birthed resentment. Together, they are forced into a parallel dimension where they must relive the chain of events creating a chasm between them, and only together can they return. Will they make a breakthrough... or break each other? | An Open Novella Contest Entry |

When a cautious Formula One engineer crosses paths with a damaged comeback driver, she discovers that the most dangerous variable she should assess in the sport isn't speed-but attachment. ✦✦✦ Adriana Santos has always known her place on a championship-winning Formula One team is contingent. Excellence, she learned early, is not the same as security. She works in a role the paddock barely understands-simulating failures before they happen, answering 'what ifs' before they become 'what went wrong', and treating the car like a living thing whose future rests in her hands. Her work is quiet, precise, and easily erased the moment she becomes inconvenient. She is careful because she has to be. She knows Joshua Thomas long before she meets him: the driver who changed his name to fit in, the anomaly on a rival team forever tipped for titles. To Adriana, he's a reaction curve that never quite returned to baseline after last season's crash. His comeback is framed as resilience. Many are simply waiting to see him fail. They meet by accident, in a moment stripped of his usual extravagance and pretence. Adriana notices what she always notices-the face behind the mask, the way he laughs through failure like it doesn't frighten him. Adriana doesn't forget him, though. She keeps her distance but Joshua doesn't, and their reluctant friendship begins to bend into something riskier. And they both know exactly what it could cost them. ✦✦✦ ✦ Open Novella Contest 2026 | Prompts 24, 29, 30, 44 ᴄᴏᴘʏʀɪɢʜᴛ © 2026 ʙʏ ᴀᴜᴅʀᴇʏ ᴀʟʟ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ ʀᴇꜱᴇʀᴠᴇᴅ.