Onc2026 Stories

When Teia Cloto travels to Naples, Italy, hoping to steady a life already quietly unravelling, the last thing she needs is a blind date that turns into an easy, unexpected friendship. Alden instantly makes the city feel strangely familiar in ways Teia didn't know she needed. Drawn deeper into Naples' ancient past and her own unsettling sense of déjà vu, the line between coincidence and destiny begin to blur. Staying friends is simpler. But Teia must confront whether destiny is a story we inherit, or one we choose to rewrite, no matter the cost. Water and Sand is a contemporary love story that reimagines the myth of Theseus and Ariadne, where love is a labyrinth and friendship feels like the safest way out. #ONC2026 contest. Story is complete. Prompt 24: Staying as friends is meant to be safe, but that doesn't mean it's the path you're meant to take; Prompt 28: Self-love often starts small, like planting a seed. With time, patience, and a bit of light, it will grow; and Prompt 29: You meet many people in your life. Many will come and go, but some will leave footprints on your heart.

*ONC '26 Long List* 🏆 Park Jimin had grown up living a rather normal life. He had loving parents, great friends, and enjoyed fun school activities. Now he's living life as a well loved member of the band BTS. On his 21st birthday, he receives a letter. A letter that begins to shatter everything he thought he knew about himself. The more secrets that are revealed, the harder it is to answer the question... Who really 𝘪𝘴 Park Jimin? -- A Jimin Mystery/Thriller TW: Strong Language Angst Open ending

After a year spent healing at St. Francis Mental Hospital, Neillah must piece together the life she was forced to leave behind without getting caught. ⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ When Neillah Thomas is released back into society she expects her family and friends to have moved on--not believe she's dead. Convinced it was for the best, her mother assures her temporary grief was better than long drawn hardship that could only end in pain, keeping her wellbeing a secret from everyone, but also single-handedly cutting off Neillah's entire support system. Sworn to secrecy, she attends college at her dream school only to find her former friend group in shambles. Between the cold stares, scathing retorts, and literal evasion, Neillah is shocked to find her first crush is a loner and that hot-headed best friend of hers? He seems to be staring in her direction a little too long. Clinging to her promise to remain out of sight, Neillah stubbornly fights for the closure they all deserve and answers she never got, no matter the cost. | An Open Novella Contest Entry | | Cover by the Amazing @Caralogues |

I can finally say that I've had my first kiss! Not that I expected him to kiss me or anything. He's still a little annoying. Just a little bit. ❝Don't dwell on it. I can do it again, if you really liked it that much!❞ he chuckled darkly, then pulled me closer, again. His mouth was on mine, but this time it felt different. It's as if he were trying to say more through the kiss. I savoured the feel of his lips gently gliding over mine. My skin tingled, especially the piercing on my bottom lip which pressed against his lips as he kissed me. ❝See,❞he pulled away and smirked, watching me intently. ❝That was- ❞ ❝Shhh... ❞ || Completed || ──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──── A university romance || An ONC 2026 Round 2 qualifier || This story is now over the 40k mark! ──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──── 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐦 © February 2026 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 book 1 ✨ A BTS TaeKook fanfiction ✨ Disclaimer: This story DOES NOT resemble the real Kim Taehyung or Jeon Jungkook in any way except for their beautiful aesthetics used for the story! Highest Ranking: #1 TopTaeBottomKook - 14 June 2026 #1 adult-romance - 18 April 2026 #2 First Kiss! - 4 March 2026 #3 TopTaeBottomKook - 4 March 2026 © Alexa Grove ...

Kayla, anti-romantic creator of a 26th-century matchmaking system, has to confront Analyst Mathew's theories on love and soulmates in order to defend her life's work from becoming a business disaster. ｡ ✴︎ ⋆⚛ 🤖 ⚛⋆ ✴︎ ｡ Kayla Lacson is the brilliant mind behind Dorothea, the most advanced AI dating application of the 26th century, designed to calculate compatibility with extraordinary precision. She trusts data, logic, and predictable outcomes, believing that love is a biological equation that can be solved. Mathew Matel is a Behavioral Analyst as brilliant as Kayla is. He joins her team, and his theories on love and soulmates challenge her belief systems. And when Dorothea's latest revision loses public trust and corporate pressure mounts, he becomes the catalyst that pushes Kayla to uncover the flaws in her creation and fracture her carefully structured world. Despite Dorothea's calculation of their incompatibility, Kayla is drawn to Mathew. Flashes of his face begin to haunt her as she tries to untangle his unexplainable familiarity. And soon she must decide whether love is something to manipulate or something she must surrender to. ｡ ✴︎ ⋆⚛ 🤖 ⚛⋆ ✴︎ ｡ ONC 2026 Round 1 Winner and Ambassador Pick Round 2 Winner and Ambassador Pick Round 3 Qualifier and Longlister ｡ ✴︎ ⋆⚛ 🤖 ⚛⋆ ✴︎ ｡ Genres: Romance SciFi Speculative Fiction Unconventional SciFi Hard SciFi Slow Burn Romance

ONC 2026 Round 1 Winner ONC 2026 Ambassador Pick In 1897, Charlotte Moreau has been in an abusive marriage for years and the only solace she has is in the quiet moments when her husband and children are asleep. She often spends time by the lake and usually finds it a place of solace until one day when she receives a message in a bottle from her former best friend Marie who passed away. She encounters a friend of her acquaintance, Julien Deroche, a man she despises. She begins to argue with him, telling him to leave her alone. She begins to argue with him, telling him vicious things and to turn the other way when they cross paths. When she goes to the woods to find a new place to escape from her daily hell, she encounters Julien and must come to terms with what happened to Marie because Julien knows the truth. And because of their connection to Marie, she begins to soften toward him until she begins seeing him every day in this isolated place. But then Charlotte realizes that she has fallen desperately in love with him. And her husband begins to suspect something when she has dirt on her dress nearly every day. She must choose between her heart and her duty to her husband and children.

⭐️ ONC 2026 Round 1 Winner ⭐️|| Once, he was the Morning Star. Now, he is the Abyss. Betrayed by his own clan and cast into a lightless void, Riven survived by becoming the very darkness that tried to crush him. Transformed into a living Singularity-a creature of dense dark matter and eternal hunger-he is convinced he is a hideous monster beyond redemption. Lyra fell from the sky with no memories and a volatile star, the Regulus Core, burning inside her chest. Protected by Asterion, the flawless and cold Silver High Fae she has grown to love, she lives a life of borrowed safety. But when she stumbles upon a broken, dying creature in a crystal cave, Lyra doesn't see a monster. She offers him her light, saving his life and unknowingly waking the heart of the Abyss. Riven would devour the world to protect her. Yet, believing himself too ugly and broken to stand beside her light-especially when she belongs to Asterion, the very man who once executed him-Riven makes a heartbreaking choice. Unaware that his abyssal metamorphosis has actually forged him into a breathtakingly lethal Prince of Darkness, Riven hides his face behind a silver mask and walks away to claim the throne of the Night Court. In a universe where light and gravity violently collide, can a fallen star ever reclaim the sun that saved him? Or will the shadows consume them both?

This novel is metaphysical. Read and comment. I used the main prompt: 7.One morning, the ocean washes up a message. One you've been waiting your entire life to hear. 94. At the seashore, you discover a message in a bottle foretelling a catastrophe that will strike in one week. The note gives you specific instructions to prevent it and warns that you must tell no one. Twist is : 115. A prophecy claims you will love two people. One destined to save your life and the other destined to destroy it. The trouble is, you have no idea which is which.

Every season bleeds into the next in some way. As winter magic melts away, spring magic blooms. As spring magic withers, summer magic begins to glow. As summer magic dims, autumn magic soars. And as autumn magic falls, winter magic starts to freeze. It's the way it's always been. Until autumn doesn't arrive. Even as October dawns, summer magic is just as strong as ever, yet the autumn magicians see no increase in their powers. The answer seems obvious. Something is very wrong in the spirits' realm, and summer is desperately trying to prevent something cataclysmic. It must be. But when Alexander Kristiansen starts seeing a winter spirit that nobody else can, he realises that things may not be quite as they seem anywhere. Not when the spirit is clearly an older version of Denmark's most famous missing child. Not when the summer magicians are losing control of their own powers. Not when the fate of the entire world seems to rest in the hands of a practically mortal boy who already failed the spirit once. Alex knows that he can't risk failing Rune again. But does he have any chance of thwarting the spirits' plans, or will he be the only person to blame when the world inevitably falls apart?

Ian Deavor thinks he's having a usual blind date, but instead he has a strange encounter with a woman who does not seem all quite normal. And she never speaks once during the whole meeting. Instead she gives him a mysterious message that just might change his whole life, and it all starts by being given a key and an address. Playlist for story is on Youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkn3Qm_wfzKHEhzX3dVdaCrbSobXqpPpm&si=TqgKO5yu8H_1U-We

{ ROUND 3 ONC2026 QUALIFIER } 🏅 { ONE OF THE NANO WATT 2026 LONGLISTER }🎖 ~~~~~~~~~~~ -•-•-•-•-•-•-•-• -•-•-•-• Five years. Five failures. One broken promise. When Hari leaves Samastipur for the jagged skyline of Mumbai, he thinks he has already lost everything. He is wrong. To survive the "city of illusions," he must lose his ego, his past, and his privacy. In the dark belly of a warehouse, amidst the smoke and the steel, he encounters the people the world forgot and the one man who leaves footprints on his heart that change the path of his life forever. A tale of sacrifice, struggle, and the search for a foothold in a world that never stops moving. ******* One request I did like to make- please do not copy, repost, or plagiarize this work in any form. This story is personal, and it took time, effort, and heart to write. Copyright © February 2026- Prosperion X. ❣️Happy Reading ❣️

One morning, the ocean sends a message one she can't ignore. Once a radiant daughter of the sea, Naia now lives in exile, her once-majestic tail destroyed by a merciless human ship. Rescued through a forbidden alliance between a human and a shaman of her kind, she survives with a formidable bionic prosthetic, forever torn between the world that cast her aside and the one that nearly claimed her life. But when a mysterious trench threatens to tear apart the very fabric of the ocean, Naia is thrust back into a perilous political game as a reluctant pawn. Teaming up with Luan, the formidable King of the Hadal Deep, she must don the guise of his fiancée, knowing their journey into the abyss will reveal truths buried beneath greed and ancient power. As the ocean begins to fracture and treachery looms on the horizon, Naia and Luan find strength in their defiance against exile. In these shadowy depths, survival hinges not just on might, but on trust-and the sacrifices they're willing to make to save their beloved sea. #1 in exile

Ryazan, one of the grandest cities in all Rus', lays along the war path of thousands of Tatar warriors eager to seize the spoils of a short-fought campaign: the women of the city and gold from its treasury. Having set up camp just beyond the city, they await a reply from the envoys of Grand Prince Yuriy. As the Grand Prince deliberates, his boyars both caution and counsel him. If Ryazan falls, the rest of Rus' may be next ─ an outcome his people grow ever more wary of, turning to priests and old rituals alike as rumor and fear run rampant inside the city walls. Finally left untended, the Polovtsian princess Yanay, conquered once before, now betrothed to one of the Grand Prince's brothers, quietly observes these developments. She prays to her old gods when she can and aligns herself with a young Tatar captive and quick-thinking kinsman, all the while secretly seeking her freedom and revenge. ──────── ☽ ◯ ☾ ──────── A retelling of the Siege of Ryazan complete with rageful women and warrior princes; spirits both kind and cunning; and tragedy aplenty. Copyright © 2026 Elle Chaika

The town of Dogwood in Cross County, North Carolina is a picturesque seaside community with a sordid past swimming in piracy. Smoking Beard, aka Edward Hollingsworth, was the terror of the colonial coast in the 1600's, and one of Dogwood's founding members, before his descent into illegal privateering and eventual decline into madness. Four hundred years later, Bertha Rodriguez, romance novelist, resides in Dogwood along with her best friend Camilla Goldstien, Dogwood's chief of police. Every year the town capitalizes on its founders' past with a week long festival in June. The Founders' Festival brings much needed tourism and a break from the monotony of living in a small town. This year will be different, a huge storm hits the coast two weeks before the festival begins and someone uses it as an opportunity for murder. With their town cut off from the rest of civilization, it falls to Bertha and Camilla to solve the murder before the weather clears and the villain is able to make an escape. Written for the Open Novella Contest 2026 The prompt which inspired this story was number 22: Your book never found much success, but on a train ride you spot a stranger reading it with the biggest smile you've ever seen. Longlister in the Open Novella Contest 2026 No part of this story may be used to program AI. If you see this story anywhere besides Wattpad please make me aware. This is the only place I post stories. I don't have multiple accounts on this site, so this is the only profile this story should be posted on. Thank you, readers.

When you think of vampires, you probably think of Dracula or--shudder--Edward Cullens. You know what I mean: the romanticized, sexy version of a vampire. The one with sparkly skin and a charismatic compulsion. Hot. Sexy. Let's be real here, Gary Oldman really set the bar, right? But what fiction doesn't tell you is that being a vampire is messy and, quite frankly, HARD. It's ugly and lonely, and don't even get me started about tracking down blood. I'm wanted in every province (ever hear of the Bloody Killer? Yeah, that's me. Totally lame serial killer moniker, by the way, RCMP). I didn't have the choice to turn into a vampire, but, boy, did my creator pick the wrong person. Out of control, clumsy, drunk, messy, blah, blah, blah. You get the idea. I know, I should probably see a therapist, huh? Well, my trail of bloodless bodies soon catches up to me when a chance encounter with a hottie in a cafe leaves me with his phone by mistake, and I realize just how f***ed I am. And as I do my best to keep him away (while trying to survive as a vampire), I can't help but fall for the cafe hottie, putting a stake on my life. *** ONC '26 prompts: #56 and #81

Far away, in a foreign country, Sonda is bitten by a dark vampire on a day that was meant to be a celebration. Too young to be allowed to exist, she is destined to be destroyed when a long-lost relative who, was also changed, intervenes to protect her until she matures, and to keep her from succumbing to the darkness that wants to take over her soul. Editing is NOT complete. Feel free to let me know what I did wrong

One moment, Avery was the author. The next... she woke up inside her own novel. Her characters are alive. Her plot is wrong. And Aiden-the man she wrote to break hearts- is looking at her like she's his. The scariest part? She's no longer the one holding the pen. Every page pulls her deeper, every twist makes her question who's really writing the story-her, or something else entirely. And somewhere between fiction and reality, she'll have to decide... does she want to escape this world? Or rewrite it forever? [New chapter: Every week on Monday.]

Two rivals. One legendary blade. A bond that will save them or destroy everything. Kael Ashford has spent eighteen years preparing to be chosen; Kira Carver never thought the blade would pick someone like her. But when the Obsidian Blade chooses them both, they're forced into a partnership neither of them wanted. Their emotions bleed through whether they like it or not, every feeling, every fear, and every truth they're desperate to keep buried. And they only have twelve weeks to figure out how to work together before a catastrophic Fracture tears their world apart. Fire and Ice don't mix. But they're about to find out what happens when they try.

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After the War of the Fractured Crowns, the kingdoms built Aurevane Academy; a gilded institution where royal heirs are trained in warfare, diplomacy, and control. No ruler would ever rise uncontested again. Athelia Payton Verdanor was never meant to attend. Hidden from the world as the secret daughter of a forgotten throne, she arrives as the first female heir in five decades, determined to reclaim what was stolen from her kingdom. Standing in her path are two princes: Lionel Lysander, the golden Light Prince beloved by all. And Mythias Vindex, the feared Dark Prince sworn as her enemy. Beneath Aurevane Academy lies a forbidden relic, when Athelia and Mythias destroy it, an ancient curse binds them. Their wounds mirror. Their fates entwine. The only way to break it? A true love's kiss. A cruel joke considering their souls are carved with the same vow: Better dead than yours. With kingdoms preparing for ascension and betrayal brewing in every corridor, Athelia must decide... End the curse. Or take the crown. Because in Aurevane, power is forged in gold. And love? Love might be the most dangerous weapon of all...