//ONC entry 2026// .*★🌷 •♪ ⚔️ ★.• 🌼° ♪ In the middle of the city a temple stood proud in the shape of a cube no one thought it loud Time made it fall asleep until a robot came to plant a SEED another was one step behind both hoping that the weapon was theirs to find .*★🌷 •♪ ⚔️ ★.• 🌼° ♪ Main prompt: 32. Two assassins/bounty hunters from rival organisations are sent on the same secret mission, only to realise the assignment hides a much bigger truth.

𝟏𝟔𝟗𝟐 A woman engulfed in flames screams from the pyre that she will make the town weave its destruction. Disregarding her promise, the townsfolk throw her ashes into the waves. As the tide swirls in, sailors drown, and women begin to hear whispers of what the sea could offer were they to betray their town. 𝟓𝟎 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 The young inquisitor Rowan patrols the beach as he stumbles upon a bottle near the cliffs. There is a message inside, asking the dead witch for help. Rowan realizes he needs to act before the curse destroys what little remains of their once blossoming village.

It's on a boring Monday morning that Nina receives a rather strange letter. It's dated five years in the future and written in her own handwriting. It makes no sense at first, but quickly the coincidences are piling up. She starts to realise there is a big danger looming over her and her family and she might be the only one able to stop it. But can she change what's meant to happen, or has the future already been set?

Waking up in a new world is shocking, even for a robot. Silver, on the other hand, has known nothing else than this. She has been an outsider her entire life. Zer0 was created as a promise for the future. Silver is surplus, trying to stay unnoticed. Both struggle with expectations that don't fit who they are. But is what they've been told true, or must they discover their own truth? Together, they explore what they want and what the world truly needs. Because more of the same is what created their current situation. It is time to rewrite the system. Together. According to prompt 28. Self-love often starts small, like planting a single seed. With time, patience, and a bit of light, it will blossom.

If monsters need humans, and humans don't need monsters... which species is truly powerful? And what happens when humanity finally realizes that? The strategist Hugo meets Merille. She is not human, and so they stand in direct opposition. But Merille is unlike any monster he knows. She doesn't need him. Control is the answer. But how can he wield power when the rules have changed? It's time to control the system before it masters him. According to prompt 80. Monsters don't live under our beds. They live in the recesses of our minds.

Life isn't fair, and some have accepted that. I haven't. Some seem to be in charge, while others can never stand up for themselves. That can also be done differently. The hierarchy is cracking, more and more with each passing day. Vaméa and Roche live in the same world, yet their position couldn't be further apart. One is a predator, the other prey. Both carry a hidden agenda when fate forces them together. It is time to break the system before it breaks them. According to prompt 45. Kings have honor, soldiers are brave, poets have hearts, and all I have is rage!

25-year-old Melody Marsh doesn't believe in magic. She might call herself a witch, but her witchcraft is just knowlegde of plants and a skill for healing people. Magic is just a thing of fairytales and legends, she believes. Until one day a massive black dragon appears in her garden, with his dirty, heavy feet right on her precious plants. He's a messenger of the gods and Melody was chosen for a quest. So after recovering from the trauma caused by the mass murder on her plants, Melody follows the dragon on a journey over the seven seas to the world's edge. It's there where she gets the chance to change one regret from her past, but everything has a catch. What's the right decision in the eyes of fate, when fate herself has been looking over Meldoy all her life? ______________ Written for the English edition of the Open Novella Contest (ONC) 2026. Based on prompt 74: You are offered the chance to rewrite one regret from your past, but doing so requires giving up a memory you treasure. The living library awaits your decision.

Before Yun was banished to the underground city, she was an energy researcher in the Above. Now she has to work in the sun-deprived Cogs as a measly locksmith under criminal supervision, applying her skills on numerous requests until her sentence is fulfilled and she can reclaim her status as a good citizen. However, keeping up with work proves to be difficult when a criminal group calling themselves 'the Serpents', manages to pick lock after lock. Challenged by an annoying lockpicker and increasingly unreasonable requests from her clients, Yun's routinely life begins te crack. And when a corpse refuses to stay dead, something big is coming. Something that will drag Yun in, whether she wants to stay locked out of it or not.

The world has been blooming for a long time, now. A Blooming is the slowest death a planet can be subjected to, after all - as proven by the husks of once thriving worlds still turning around the Last Sun. Each planet had slowly peeled its layers off, bending outward in a mockery of a flower. Corpses, forever frozen in their most beautiful yet broken form. Their faces, the innermost cores, were turned towards one of the dead suns. Broken little cracked balls, the light having seeped out of them like liquid gold, lost forever. Now, the Last Sun was dying, and the last planet in this system was about to start the final stage of its Blooming. Its last hurrah. And the stars were dying with it. Darkness has been swallowing the universe, the monsters within it eating the stars. Now, the only question that remained wasn't whether it would survive - it was how it would go down. Will Burgeon, last living planet of the Solquin system, slip into endless night first, or will it be able to finish its last dance? And so, with a murder that heralds the beginning of the end, everything gets set in motion. Burgeon holds its breath. Soon, the Final Blooming will reach its last act.