Onc2026 Stories

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.

He hates her. She never stopped loving him. Twelve years ago, Liza Wilson's mother destroyed Christopher McKinley's family. Since then, he's blamed Liza for every shattered piece. Now his father is dead. And the will demands one thing: Marriage. To the girl he swore he'd never forgive. Living together was never part of the plan. Falling in love again? Even less.

Ember Callahan never meant to kidnap anyone-least of all Esia Even, the most feared crime lord on the eastern seaboard. She was only supposed to be searching for her missing friend. Following a trail of whispered rumors and bloodstained lies leads her straight into the lion's den... and somehow, through a dangerous twist of fate, she walks out with the lion himself bound and in the trunk of her car. But Esia Even is no ordinary captive. Cold, calculating, and devastatingly handsome with his long black hair and tailored dark suits, Esia rules the criminal underworld with quiet brutality. Men fear him. Women don't survive crossing him. Yet when the fiery red-haired, blue-eyed woman storms into his life with reckless courage and a gun she barely knows how to use, he does something no one expects. He lets her take him. Because Ember is not just a mistake. She is a disruption. A temptation. A spark in a world he's carefully kept controlled. As Ember digs deeper into her friend's disappearance, she realizes the truth is far more dangerous than she imagined-and the man tied to her chair may be the only one powerful enough to save her... or destroy everything she loves. In a game of control, obsession, and shifting power, one question remains: Who really kidnapped whom? #ONC2026 Prompt#51: While in search of a missing friend, you accidentally kidnap the most feared crime lord.

Prompt 78 - You begin to realize nothing is quite what it seems.

Evelyn Stone lives inside a life that looks complete from the outside-married, settled, raising a healthy son in a house filled with routine and expectations. But beneath the checked boxes and Sunday smiles, her marriage has become a place where love is measured in logistics rather than attention, and worth is defined by usefulness instead of connection. Lucas is not unkind; he is simply finished-content with a version of Evie that no longer includes her dreams, her hunger, or her becoming. As Evie navigates motherhood in a body marked by survival and a spirit quietly starving to be seen, she begins to question what it means to matter in a life that has already decided she should be satisfied.

Santiago thought visiting Greece for his 30th birthday would be harmless. A little sun, a little flirting, maybe a date with a beautiful man named Apollo. The date doesn't go as planned. All Santiago wants afterward is something sweet before heading back to his hostel-except the apple he takes was never meant for human guests. At The Lily Spa, a luxury retreat catering to gods who desperately need rest, one accidental bite turns Santiago into a problem. An immortal one. Ganymede, the spa's unshakable manager, and his staff have very little time to hide their human guest before the other residents notice. And the gods staying there are already difficult enough: Hera and Zeus hover on the edge of disaster, Dionysus treats the pool like a permanent party, and no one reacts well to surprises involving eternity. As tempers rise and old rules begin to crack, Santiago learns the truth about the spa, its staff, and the quiet systems keeping gods from tearing the world apart. Some mistakes change everything. Some places exist to contain them. And some encounters happen exactly where they shouldn't- above the ocean, below the sky.

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.

|ONC 2026 · NOVELLA #1| #SupportIndigenousVoices A gifted teen embarks on a journey to join two tribes during the Last Age, as they search for the mystical Bering Land Bridge. *** Fifteen-year-old Khochu, the only surviving child of Vika and Sasha, wants only one thing: to find a place where humans and animals can live in peace from the bitter Ice Age--a place he has dreamed about for years--and prove his sickly family's strength. However, his life changes when he's chosen to begin his rite of passage early and meets Nikita, a cannibal girl from a neighboring tribe, who is also struggling to find food in the icy world. As the two begin to bond and explore Khochu's unique gift of animal whispering, Khochu learns he is the key to everything: a door that forces the rival tribes together across the icy steppes. As they search for a new life, Khochu and his animal friends must use their gifts to protect the tribes from predators. Still, the connection between Khochu and Nikita begins to interfere with Khochu's test, which is not good for a boy trying to prove that the Bering Land Bridge isn't a myth. Is growing up really this difficult? *** *ONC 2026 Prompt used: Number 61 - "They say every door has its own key. Except for one, a key said to open them all." *Note: My writing style resembles screenwriting, so please judge it accordingly.* *Word Count: 20,000-25,000.*

Clara Vale fled one unwanted marriage only to run straight into another. It's just her bad luck to fall into the clutches of a Dark witch whose watery-eyed son collects "pretty things." Knowing it's only a matter of time before he returns and claims his unwilling bride, Clara finds her only solace in the witch's garden. It's poisonous and shows no mercy, but at least she can feel the sun and see the sky and dream of flying away. Then one day, hidden in a tulip, she finds something impossible: A man. With wings. Wounded, furious, and no bigger than her thumb. Intercepting a traitor's curse meant for his father, Prince Elion Rosegrave wakes in a hostile world where predators prowl, magic twists, and the flowers have teeth. He's growing increasingly desperate to return to his realm, where his parents still trust the very hand that betrayed them. He alone knows the truth, but he's bound to a fate he cannot break alone. She needs him to escape a cage. He needs her to save a kingdom. Both are trapped, but only she can decide if love is enough to give them wings.

🏆 ONC 2026 Rounds 1 & 2 Qualifier 🏆 ONC 2026 Round 2 Winner 🏆 🏆 ONC 2026 Round 2 Ambassadors Pick 🏆 Where magic intersects with life, Ren is an unwilling planter whose magnificent garden is full of his failures. When his attempt at confessing to his crush leads to the sight of an unexpected guest hidden in the flowers he was going to give, Ren is tugged along on a fantastical quest to an odd little village that only exists on rainy days to not just break the curse of the finger-sized prince who's deemed Ren his friend, but to also break free from Ren's own wretched connection to mistakes. Along the way, he may just come to realize the power of not just unbridled love, but also love for oneself and just how beautifully it can blossom into something worth saving. Amidst secrets, ticking time, tall tales with hints of truth, and a forest worth dying in, perhaps this time around, Ren won't add to his flowers of failures. Not if he can help it. Love can bloom, too, after all, right?

A fallen star, a crime lord, and the hunt for a heart. When Keira, a star, falls to earth with her sisters, it is with only one goal: find a human heart to save her sisters. It is pure coincidence that she falls straight into the infinity pool of formidable crime lord Captain Demir Erdogan. They strike a deal, and so their fate is sealed. But there is a reason stars are forbidden to fall. Soon it will become clear that stars are not the untouchable beings as the myths say. And a heart does not make a human. And so the greatest question of all will be: What makes a heart worth more than another?

Cassidy Marlow is a senior who likes to keep her life simple and fun. School, music, friends, and books are all she needs to stay sane. Between scrolling through posts and daydreaming, she doesn't expect much to shake up her carefully balanced world. That is, until, the new kid appears and Cass just so happens to be interested. Asher Park, a senior as well, likes to keep to himself. He struggles with isolation, hiding behind his careful smiles and guitar. And beneath everything...lies a secret that's captivated millions. Starting at a new school feels impossible, until he notices the one girl who actually tries to see him. As Cassidy's and Asher's worlds collide, identities and growing feelings start to develop. Shadowy online threats, comments, and bullying starts to hit at them relentlessly and puts them both at risk. Cass must navigate her own heart while helping the boy she's coming to know, bit by bit. Maybe some connections are worth risking everything for. ----------- Open Novella Contest (ONC 2026) - Prompt 23: You discover the quiet transfer student in your class is actually a world-famous pop star hiding in plain sight, and their secret begins to reshape both your lives. - Prompt 78: You begin to realize that nothing is quite what it seems. Highest rankings: [04.18.26] #1 - songwriter [05.25.26] #3 - opennovellacontest2026 [05.25.26] #3 - theatre

Life's a mess. She's a mess. Claire gets fired from her coffee shop job, has her designs called 'trash' by the rude prick who was supposed to sponsor her first fashion collection... And then, her best friend, the love of her life, announces his sudden engagement and wedding next month in Hawaii. And guess who gets to be maid of honor? This is the last fucking straw. This book contains: Cussing & an absolute disaster of a protagonist. You have been warned.

The creator of a 26th century matchmaker is anti-romantic, but when an analyst challenges her views, she relives painful memories, exposing her technology's flaws and threatening her identity. ｡ ✴︎ ⋆⚛ 🤖 ⚛⋆ ✴︎ ｡ Kayla Lacson believes that love is a biological equation that can be solved. She is the brilliant mind behind Dorothea, the most advanced AI dating application of the 26th-century, designed to calculate compatibility with extraordinary precision. Kayla's world is crafted in data, logic, and predictable outcomes. That is, until Mathew Matel, a Behavioral Analyst whose brilliance matches hers, joins her team and challenges her views. When Dorothea's latest revision loses public trust and corporate pressure mounts, he becomes the catalyst that forces Kayla to confront buried trauma, uncovering the flaws of her creation and fracturing her carefully structured reality. Despite Dorothea's calculation of their incompatibility, Kayla finds herself drawn to Mathew. Flashes of his face begin to haunt her as she tries to unravel his unexplainable familiarity. And when her very identity is threatened by tangled feelings, she must decide whether love is something to manipulate or something to surrender to. ｡ ✴︎ ⋆⚛ 🤖 ⚛⋆ ✴︎ ｡ ONC 2026 Round 1 Winner and Ambassador Pick Round 2 Winner and Ambassador Pick ｡ ✴︎ ⋆⚛ 🤖 ⚛⋆ ✴︎ ｡ Genres: Romance SciFi Speculative Fiction Unconventional SciFi Hard SciFi Slow Burn Romance

‎ ‎Paris finds herself in a strange shop after learning of her sister's illness, and she makes a hasty purchase due to uncontrollable circumstances. ‎ ‎Once she leaves the shop, she gets ambushed by a mysterious figure. ‎ ‎When she learns the object in her hand is more important than she'd thought and she might have just landed in the middle of a battle of forces she never knew existed, she has no choice but to return the object back to its rightful place herself... And she has less than two days. ‎ ‎But what happens when she learns that her purchase could be the one thing that saves her sister? ‎ ‎ ‎ONC 2026 ‎Prompt 41 - You never thought an impulse purchase from a magic shop would catapult you into the middle of an intergalactic war.

In a city floating among the clouds, life is spent fighting gravity. To end up on the surface of the Earth amongst enormous, roving clouds of carbon dioxide would be certain death. Yet no city can exist as an island in the sky; steel rusts and motors fail. Someone needs to be supplying the city with resources to repair or replace. The Retrieval Corp is the best of the best. The best windsurfers, most resourceful engineers, the most creative salvagers. Together, these courageous few brave the surface and retrieve whatever the city needs. Allisios Soliros has spent his life working towards joining the Retrieval Team. Now, with a coveted spot open, only one thing stands between him and his dream. His father. ONC Prompt 78: You begin to realize nothing is quite what it seems. ONC Prompt 16: And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul. Cover by @TrashyM

Noah Reyes wrote a book that never went anywhere. Every weekday morning, he rides the same train for five stops, carrying the quiet disappointment of a story that slipped through the cracks of the algorithm. His attempts to promote it on TikTok feel more like confessions than marketing. Until one morning, Noah notices a stranger across the aisle. Leather jacket. Work boots. A biker. And in his hands, Noah's book, worn and dog-eared, being read with the biggest smile Noah has ever seen. Julian Cross did not pick up the book by accident. He found it online, recognized the author from the train, and started reading it not just to understand the story, but to understand himself. Five stops is not much time. But sometimes, it is enough to change everything. ♥️ Entry for the Open Novella Contest 2026 Main Prompt ↦ 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. © 2026 ↦ onechapteraway on Wattpad

Als monsters mensen nodig hebben, maar mensen monsters niet... welke soort is dan werkelijk krachtig? En wat gebeurt er als de mensheid dat eindelijk realiseert? De strateeg Hugo ontmoet Merille. Zij is niet menselijk, dus staan ze recht tegenover elkaar. Maar Merille is anders dan elk monster dat hij kent. Zij heeft zijn soort niet nodig. Het antwoord is controle. Maar hoe kan hij dat krijgen, terwijl de regels zijn veranderd? Het is tijd om het systeem te controleren, voordat hij wordt gecontroleerd. * Volgens prompt 80. Monsters leven niet onder onze bedden. Ze leven in de krochten van onze gedachten.

Roman Kerr thought he knew everything about the woman he married. He was wrong. - An entry for Open Novella Contest | Prompt: 28 & 29.

That year, the winter in Xuecheng was bone-chillingly cold. In an ordinary apartment building, a grotesque dismemberment case unfolded that even the battle-hardened Chief Detective Peng Zhaolin found deeply disturbing. What he could not forgive himself for was that he had passed by the suspect, Deng Ligang, in the hallway, a mere brush with fate that turned into a ten-year delay.🥺 Deng Ligang and his accomplices roamed across various regions, committing heinous crimes. The major crimes team pursued them across several provinces but ultimately failed to capture them. 💙 The criminal gang suddenly vanished, having cleaned their identities through illegal means and settled into peaceful lives. However, Peng Zhaolin was frequently haunted by nightmares. Young girls, like lambs awaiting slaughter, with their anguished cries echoing in his ears, refused to leave him.❤️💜🙈