The Open Novella Contest is back for 2026! Join fellow storytellers and plant the seed of a tale that will blossom into a 20,000+ word novella within 12 weeks! Your epic quest begins February 1st, 2026, so mark your calendars with this date!

Every year on her birthday, Kaelyra visits the midnight library - a place that appears without warning and vanishes by morning, offering one glimpse of a life she never lived. She knows the rules. One book. One hour. No consequences. Until the night she stumbles over a book that should not exist. The moment she touches it, Kaelyra is pulled into a realm built around an ancient magic buried so deeply it was never meant to be found - a power that does not rule, but waits. A power guarded by a being older than gods, bound to protect it at the cost of his own existence. As war ignites across worlds and forces beyond reality seek to reclaim what Kaelyra has awakened, she must decide whether destiny is something to obey... or defy. Because the prophecy etched into the library's door was never a warning. The magic that should not breathe will find flesh and rewrite the dawn. And once the magic chooses her, nothing - not love, not sacrifice, not the universe itself - will ever be the same.