My feet go down to death. © taryn OPEN NOVELLA CONTEST 2026 prompts 45 & 78. ACCIPITRES #0 ╱ THE DEIFORM CHRONICLES.

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!

🎏 Author Comment: This tale has been designed and written for younger readers but it can be enjoyed by all. ─ᛰ─ In the elder days before mortal kings etched their borders into stone, before time was measured by crowns and conquests, when Elven Folk shared the world with mortals under treaties older than memory, there came upon our people an age of quiet sundering. It was a time when the Elven folk still walked the high places, after the Dragons that passed like storms along the horizons, and when Elven Folk shared the world with mortals under treaties older than memory. Yet even then, doubt found root. In those days there arose among mortals a whispering hunger, seeded by those who wore borrowed faces. The Changeling Wizards, who fed fear as if it were wisdom. Convincing mortal kings, the magic of the elves no longer served them. What had once been shared truth became superstition. What had once been kinship became a war of wills. From that hour, the old goodwill ended. Thus the space between our peoples widened, until the old paths closed and we were pressed back into the frost-bitten heights of our ancestral lands. And what would happen next would leave the old world in the silent throes of an uneasy realization that all was not as it seemed... A time when love and acceptance became fear and those fears bred greed. Greed bred forgetting. And forgetting became blame. But in that age arose two souls. One born of mortal blood, one of mortal grace. Who chose to stand where others turned away. Alvaro, and Daniela of the western shores, whose names the stone itself remembers. ─ᛰ─ Originally written for ONC26 Prompt 78: You begin to realize that things are not as they seem.

All that once glittered was gold, until it turned to bitter ash and ruin. Juliette Laurant has always dreamed of a simple life, painting to her heart's content while being unbothered by men and women alike. She gains her wish, to paint in a way that is envied by all who see it, but at the cost of her life's work, and the sudden arrival of a stranger whose only desire is to be seen once more. Now, trapped by the hands of fate, she must find a way to put an end to the stranger's cycle of despair or discover what awaits her at the end of life's final portrait ~*~*~*~*~*~*~

HE JUST DOESN'T KNOW WHEN TO STOP After falling asleep to a video of the "nihilist penguin", Lian Min wakes at 3 a.m. to wet footprints and melting snow in his studio apartment in a country of perennial summer. On tracing the footprints to the corridor, he discovers a world in stasis where he is the only one who can still move. That's the least of his worries, however. Various flowers begin sprouting in his living room and the footprints change trails without warning, leading him to discover things about his neighbourhood that he never knew and perhaps should not know. Then the trail goes cold.

25-year old Lee still hasn't figured out why they could not form any long-lasting relationships, even friendships for that matter. Aside from family members, which they are obligated to talk to, there is no one else Lee had even come close to calling a friend. Well, maybe except for one. -------- Submitted for ONC 2026 @OpenNovellaContest Using the following prompts : 29. You will meet many people in your life. Many will come and go, but some will leave footprints in your heart. 104. While wandering in the woods, you dismiss the rustling behind you as nothing more than wind through the trees until you turn around and realize it isn't the wind at all. 106. After waking at 3AM to a freezing room and a door you're certain you closed, you find wet footprints and melting snow leading from your bedroom into the hall. Realizing someone or something is inside your home, you follow the trail to uncover the truth. ------------- © 2026 J. Lee Kennedy. All rights reserved. Cover design © 2026 J. Lee Kennedy. Images used in this work belong to their respective copyright holders and are used under license or in accordance with applicable Creative Commons terms. Edited or altered images are copyrighted by the author in their final form.

For Centuries Grim has been collecting souls. It's what he does, it's his purpose. One day, while collecting a soul in the park, he comes across a lost puppy. For reasons he can't explain, the urge to return the small dog to his owner is overwhelming. He soon finds the animal's owner, a woman in her mid-twenties named Maria. He is struck down by her beauty and realizes that he had once claimed the soul of someone she loved. He becomes even more conflicted when he realizes he has just one year to claim her soul.

Dead men tell no tales. Or so they say... Having survived a series of catastrophes, disgraced detective Penny Dubois is thinking of retirement. After all, she sees no reason to come back. However, everything changes when her best friend, Irma Hale, is framed for the murder of renowned heiress Charity Payne, and all the clues point towards her. The victim's ghost is summoned from the dead and says she's guilty. As a necromancer, Penny instantly recognises that the seance had been rehearsed, but she must keep it a secret, because if she gets found out, it could be her awaiting the final sentence. As the clock ticks, Penny must start a new investigation and find out who the real killer is before it's too late. *** Based on Prompt 72.

Santa Claus is an old man in a tattered red coat, limping through a world whose failure to believe in him has caused him to vanish limb by limb. But before he disappears entirely, he has one last round to make - not with gifts, but with letters of apology, delivered to the people whose lives were derailed by a single, cold lump of coal. The greatest burden he ever carried was never the toys. It was his memories of the coal. This is one of my entries in the 2026 Wattpad Open Novella Contest. It is in response to Prompt 79: "A letter arrives addressed to you, written by someone who shouldn't exist."