Onc 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.

This space is created especially for writers participating in the Open Novella Contest 2026 Writing a novella is exciting... but also confusing, lonely, and full of self-doubt. ❤️ Is my story good enough? ❤️Is my opening strong? ❤️Will readers understand my characters? ❤️Am I even on the right track? You don't have to figure this out alone. This book club is a place where contestants can: ✔ Share their entries ✔ Get genuine reads ✔ Receive honest and helpful feedback ✔ Improve their chapters ✔ Support fellow writers Here, we don't compete. We grow together. If you are writing for the Open Novella Contest and want readers, reviews, and real feedback - this circle is for you. Let's help each other write better stories.

She wakes with missing hours, a burning imprint carved into her shoulder, and no memory of who put it there. Nyxara Blackvein is an assassin who survives by control. Control over her body. Her blades. Her choices. But the mark beneath her skin has a will of its own, pulling her toward Stillreach-a city protected by an impossible shield and a power no one dares to name. Torin Cross was never part of the plan. A half-elf bard with a charming smile and secrets of his own, he's headed in the same direction for reasons that don't quite add up. When violence forces them to fight side by side, trust forms before either of them is ready for it. Whatever waits in Stillreach is already watching. ONC 2026 Prompts used. 32. Two assassins from rival organizations are sent on the same secret mission, only to realize the assignment holds a much bigger truth. 86. A wasteland hides pockets of thriving communities protected by mysterious shields. 99. You wake up with a strange mark on your skin after a late-night encounter you can barely remember, and its meaning grows more unsettling by the hour.

A slipstream in time. A cloak of eternal night. Something stirs in the dark. [ ✶ ] Upon returning from a weekend getaway to celebrate their last time together before college, a group of friends discover the residents of their hometown have vanished without a trace, leaving behind a shroud of mystery, sunless skies, and an unshakable horror. [ extended summary inside] original novel / all rights reserved olivia siobhan © 2026 onc prompts #97, #44 and #24 [ ✶ ] open novella contest 2026 round 1 winner

When Brie lands a spot on Cheese Whiz, a cheese-themed cooking competition, the last thing she expects is to run into Colby Jackson, the man who left her heart with more holes than Swiss cheese. ~~~ It was supposed to be simple. Enter the contest, win the prize money, open her own restaurant. Easy peasy, extra cheesy. So of course Colby freaking Jackson and his smug, entirely too sexy face just had to come back into Brie's life like an extra stinky wheel of limburger cheese. Surrounded by fierce competitors and legendary amounts of dairy, Brie and Colby exchange barbs sharper than any cheddar. Yet, as the competition heats up, Brie quickly discovers the mozzarella isn't the only thing melting. Against her better judgment, Colby is once again worming his way into her heart. Will Brie find a whey to make things work between them, or will he leave her feeling bleu? 🧀 Rivals to lovers 🧀 Second chance romance 🧀 All puns are fully intended Using prompts 29 and 89 for ONC 2026! Cover by @-DeeIsDead-

"Everyone loves Lingling, especially Orm. Why? Cause Lingling hates her." ------- The campus heartthrob of the college, Lingling had always been polite and charming to everyone. Her smile and gaze always had everyone around sway, even though she didn't really care much about it. Even while she was popular, she was a lovely person. Or at least that's what Orm had always known before. Until she met her herself. Their encounter left a bitter aftertaste in her heart, because why did the campus darling turn icy at her presence? And now, she's determined to find out the reason. Come on in the journey with Orm to sneak a peak at the Icy Campus Darling . Tropes: Strangers to lovers, Romcom, Grumpy x sunshine Secord couple trope: Best friends to lovers ONC 2026 entry with the tropes 49, 57 and 24 (P.s. this has nothing to do with LingOrm's series. This is an RPF.)

Beth Reynolds is running on three hours of sleep, a dying phone, and a very precarious subway coffee... until the train lurches and she dumps the whole thing on a ridiculously hot stranger. Then she shows up late to the biggest callback of her modeling career and realizes the "coffee guy" is Chris Martinez - her co-model for the shoot. The one she has to get half-naked with. Maybe kiss. For the camera. On set, the chemistry is real enough to make the photographer cry. Off set? Chris is sweet, steady, and somehow still sends mixed signals that make Beth feel like she's losing her mind and her oracle cards aren't helping. So Beth does what any anxious romantasy girl with catastrophic impulse control would do: she buys a love spell on Etsy. And after that... everything she's been dreaming about starts happening. Except now she can't stop wondering: did he choose her... or did she pay for him?

Tristram Wald likes to spend his days daydreaming about all of the magical things that he wishes would transpire in his lowly, humble and mundane existence. As an orphan, he was taken in by his Uncle Giacomo and forced to endure hardship and cruelty, and is eventually put to work in his Uncle's celebrated shoemakers shop. But now Tristram Wald is eighteen years and he has big ideas of his own Tristram wants his own success and fortune. A chance encounter with the beautiful Princess Oriana Aureum cements the idea of escape from his humble beginnings in Tristram's mind. Desperate for riches, so that he will be eligible to marry the princess, Tristram allows himself to be coerced by a mysterious Goblin named Grimalkin who claims he can weave straw into gold. But Tristram will soon find out that putting his trust in a renowned trickster can have sinister consequences. The Gold Weaver of Goblin Wood is a dark fairy-tale, horror.

Book Two Evie O'Doyle didn't come to Oxford to fall in love. She came to build a life that was hers, away from where she grew up and the parents who told her she wasn't worth much. She's done that. Against every odd, she's done that. Archie has spent his whole life stepping in front of his father's fists and taking it. It's the one thing he knows how to do. But this time his father is taking it too far, and messing with the one thing Archie won't back away from. For the first time in his life, he's going to have to fight back. Evie has survived harder things than a man in an expensive coat who doesn't think she's good enough. She knows how to hold herself together when everything is falling apart. She's been doing it since she was a kid. What she doesn't know how to survive is watching the people she loves most pay the price for who she is. Some storms you can outrun. Some you have to stand in.

She agreed to marry her enemy to end a war. Now she's trapped in a tower with him... and the only way out requires a kiss. The problem? They hate each other. And they might mean it. (Note: This novella is based on the prompt no. 40 of the Open Novella Contest)

Lights, camera, action. When an Alien gets curious, too curious, things go... south. Calliope is from the species Llanci, and when her fascination to mankind grows, so does her list of major crimes. Her thirst for knowledge never wavers, quickly snowballing to a dead corpse of a human in her space station. No one can find out the truth. She shifts into the humans appearance, completely replacing the human with herself and taking on its life on Earth. All she has to do is play the part, just like all those humans she sees on those pixel light boxes, and make sure no one finds out. Easy, right?

When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful. - Malala Yousafzai We share our emotions through art. Through writing, painting, and composing. In a world where no one shares their inner music anymore, some begin to lose themselves and become Muted. When Solveig's brother becomes one of them, she refuses to accept his silence. To save him, she must find not only his lost voice, but her own and discover that even in the quietest world, a single voice can awaken many. Prompt 36: You're told to choose a weapon before battle, but when you approach the table, the only options laid out are musical instruments.

ONC Prompt 5 My cat likes leaving the house every morning at the same time. When this little habit of his causes me to burn my breakfast, I use his tracking collar to follow him on a whim, while searching for a decent cafe. My mind and body start to warp, as I find him and some other neighborhood cats at the back of an alley, in a small patch of grass, meowing in symphony. When I wake up from what I thought was a massive hangover, I find I am actually in what turns out to be my cats secret home world. Filled with magic instead of milk bowls. Lances instead of litterboxes. Monsters rather than meow-mix. What I thought would be another day at work, turns out to be a fight against evil that our cat friends have secretly been waging for centuries. (This is a bit of a tribute story to my cat who went out one day and never came home)

The sirens scream but we don't move, With nothing left to fear or prove. In the hollow dark of a world undone, Your pulse is the only war I've won. Two young souls finding meaning and life and discovering their relationship admist the burning town and black clouds.

There's murder on the streets of Cresenth. Darcy is planning to add to it before skipping town. Still on the hunt for The Radiant Hand, she and Kasi have their first real clue within reach. Everything goes wrong when Darcy's biggest lead is killed by Farren and Cahir, a pair of assassins on their own not so divine mission. Enemies inevitably become unlikely allies when a kidnapping grinds everyone's plans to a stop. Without the cooperation of both sides, The Radiant Hand's discord will run unchecked across the continent.

Every ten thousand years, a celestial flower blooms. Though all beings in the nine realms fight to obtain it, only the most powerful one will have the right to pluck it. And even then, the flower may choose another. After two hundred years of quiet cultivation with her master, Yin Wan Ling suddenly finds herself competing for dominance amongst the other immortals. But her only interest in the flower is to help learn the identity of the mysterious figure who plagues her dreams. Every night, she runs toward a man swathed in mist and fog. Every night she yearns for him. But his face remains shrouded. Until one night, she finally sees his face...right before he stabs her in the heart.

(First draft - unedited) Evangeline Winterbourne thrives on the unknown. Driven by an unrelenting curiosity, she has spent her life chasing what history tried to erase. Unearthing ancient knowledge, deciphering forgotten languages, and dragging buried civilizations back into the light. Discovery is what she does best. It has never failed her. Until one expedition does more than leave its mark. Deep within a dense forest, Evangeline and her team uncover an ancient temple tied to a lost civilization. What they find inside refuses to stay buried. Whatever stirred there follows her home, settling beneath her skin, awakening something long dormant. Because Evangeline is not entirely human. Drakonian blood runs through her veins, a fractured legacy passed down through generations. Heightened strength. Accelerated healing. A heritage she never fully understood. Until now. As strange coincidences begin to stack and ancient artifacts whisper of memory and chaos, Evangeline realizes the past isn't finished with her. An ancient presence is stirring, one bound to her blood and to the choices her curiosity keeps leading her to. And it wants to be found.

A manipulator. A boy raised by one. What could go wrong? Nothing, unless there weren't knives and abilities and courts controlling their lives. And if they weren't assassins on the same mission. Mostly just an attempt at the ONC since I liked this prompt :) --- ......Ok this is the first original work I'm trying to write. I hope you like it! Please provide *constructive* feedback :)

After Travis McPherson dies, his fiancée receives a voicemail, recorded an hour after his passing. *** Candace and Travis have known each other their entire lives. First as best friends, and later, high school sweethearts. As far as anyone in their small town is concerned, these two were meant to walk down the aisle together. But when a flash flood takes all that away, Candace is left grieving and heartbroken. All she has left of him is a mysterious voicemail recorded an hour after his confirmed death. It's impossible, yet she plays it over and over again, desperate for the sound of his voice. And a sign. Something, anything to ease her aching heart. All as their lives flash before her eyes. Travis always told her he loved her to Heaven and back, and beyond the grave, sends a final, heartfelt message moments before his death. The only remaining mystery is how as death parts two halves of the same heart. *** (Prompt 90: You receive a voicemail from someone you love, recorded one hour after their confirmed death). Wired for the Open Novella Contest 2026

𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙝𝙪𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙪𝙨𝙪𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙚𝙩, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙛𝙖𝙧 𝙩𝙤𝙤 𝙡𝙤𝙪𝙙. ••• Arthur Pendergast is a man who walks with the weight of generations in his shadow. As a Black man navigating the sharp corners of London, he's used to being watched, but as a necromancer, he's the one doing the observing. To pass a rainy Tuesday, he decides to sit in on a fake séance hosted by a local "spiritualist" in a drafty Victorian parlour. He expects cheap parlour tricks, hidden magnets, and the predictable scent of stale incense. And Madame Valeska is pro at it all. But as the candles flicker and Valeska begins her practiced wail, the air in the room turns unnervingly cold. Arthur quickly begins to realize that nothing is quite what it seems. The fraud in the velvet shawl isn't the only one hiding a secret, and the knocking on the table isn't coming from her foot-it's coming from somewhere much deeper. In this dark corner of the city, Arthur is forced to remember a chilling truth: monsters don't live under our beds; they live in the recesses of our minds. And tonight, one of those monsters is finally finding its way out. WC: 20,000 + CC: Inky