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Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of fantasy short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

15290+ Fantasy Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Though fantasy is well known for its epically long sagas, fantasy short stories can deliver all the genre’s best attractions with one punch — or, shall we say, in one fiery dragon breath?

Fantasy Short Stories – Page 3 of 1020

My Escape

Submitted to Contest #307

It had been around three weeks since I had been trapped in this cave. Lanora Elder, one of the most powerful witches in the Northern continent, had locked me in a cage only about 6 by 6 feet wide. Barely large enough for me to lay down and sleep without having to curl my knees to my chest. The floor was but a slat of metal that riddled me with icy coolness every time I laid down. It always took me a few minutes to adjust to the temperature at the end of each night but I had slowly learned to get used to it.I had hardly understood why I was t...

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The Calibration

Submitted to Contest #307

The scraping of students’ chairs echoed across the gigantic hall as each name was called to receive their test results. Sunlight poured through the glass ceiling, glinting off the white marble desks of silent students wearing carefully blank faces, dressed in the magocratic academy’s formal robes. The sun shining off the desks illuminated their faces within little spotlights, as if this was their stage and tonight was the performance they had been practicing for all their lives. Stiff navy wool pressed into Evelyn’s neck where the silver cla...

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The Pillars of Divinity

Submitted to Contest #307

Vena Veritas—the vein of truth. One drop of that blood is to venture into the mind of God.I only know a couple of faces at the clubhouse, mostly other students from classes we share. The lights are low—flickering electric candles—and gold panels split the room like a heat sink. Bodies lean in close on cream upholstery, and fingertips play softly on skin.I smile my best “don’t mind me” smile and shuffle through the crowd, trying to act casual while the whole time pretending to check my phone. Cilicia slides her way across the room toward me.“...

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Through Time’s Lens

Submitted to Contest #307

It’s still the night before the body was found and the plush carpet muffles my steps as I edge towards the enormous wooden doors. For a beat, I question my motives for being here.The door is locked, of course, but the stolen key, slick with my sweat, sticks to my palm. How did Aida manage to lift the headmaster’s office key? She never said.The key clicks in the lock with an ear-splitting sound to my strained nerves, but no one appears to investigate. Without daring to breathe I enter the chamber.…“You’ll know it, it’ll be older and more tatt...

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The Blood Trial

Submitted to Contest #307

“I can’t give up. Not now. Not after all I’ve been through,” I whispered to myself. Damian was approaching me from a distance, extending his sharp blade directly at me. The blade was covered in red with blood dripping from the edge. It seemed apparent that I was his next target. “I’m going to enjoy every moment of this,” Damian announced. His usual four companions stood guard behind him, each with their own bloody blades, as they all slowly proceeded towards me. I lay there on the ground, cornered within the forest as its foliage wrapped ...

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The Antithesis of Paradise

Submitted to Contest #307

The fire burned in his empty heart, and we, the voices, remind him how alone he really is. Trapped with nothing but his own mind to keep him company, and the fire to keep him warm.The flames were scalding around Damien, but he didn’t feel the heat in the way that one would expect. The fire brought energy to him, he needed it. As he arose from his slumber, he brushed the rocks from his pelt and began his journey through the Firey wasteland. The terrain was uneven and rocky, with some pathway through the flames. The voices started to whisper t...

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The Red Room

Submitted to Contest #307

St. Cyprian’s College for the Arts stood on a hill, its sandstone walls streaked with pride and monsoon rot. Founded in 1893 for the daughters of East India Company officers, it had long since rebranded itself as a premier co-ed academy for the “arts and excellence.” Its drama programme was a crown jewel, full of jargon, imported light boards, and teachers who quoted Stanislavski between bites of quinoa salad. And yet, beneath its curated elegance, the place smelled of varnished wood, mothballs, and something older — like dust caught in colo...

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Selena and the Mirror of Dreams

Submitted to Contest #307

Selena woke with a chill like silver threading through her veins, the kind of cold that slipped through the bones of a house and whispered to the furniture. Morning had arrived, but it was a sickly, colorless thing—more of a memory than a light. It felt like the sun was trying to shine from somewhere too far away, perhaps another century. The silence was suspicious, the kind of quiet that holds its breath before the scream. She was fourteen, or so they had told her. Every night she dreamed herself into someone else. Once, she was a woman wit...

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The Cost of Knowledge

Submitted to Contest #307

The familiar, dusty smell of old books always seemed to cling to Elara, like a second skin. It was a comforting scent, following her from the university's Special Collections library back to her tiny, book-stuffed apartment. It promised quiet discoveries, the kind that gently expanded your world, not the ones that rocked it to its core.But today, something was off. A faint, metallic tang, like old pennies left out in the rain, was mixed with the usual comforting scent. It pulled her toward the deepest, most forgotten corner of the archives, ...

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The Paperweight Library

Winner of Contest #307 🏆

Mavis was now in her second year of retirement. Most days, she found things to do, but to be honest, she felt bored. Money was tight; it always had been. For decades, she’d worked for a large cleaning company that serviced offices, shopping malls, and municipal buildings. The staffroom was always full of women, but they weren’t exceptionally social. They exchanged greetings, asked after each other’s families, then hurried home to husbands and children who needed feeding and fussing. After Clive’s early death, Mavis simply got on with it — to...

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Medusa

Submitted to Contest #307

Disclaimer for Sensitive Content: This story contains references to sensitive themes, including words such as nude, naked, and miscarriage. Reader discretion is advised. .................................................................................................................................................................. Medusa Every night, for the past six nights, I’d been jolted awake by nightmares, nude and sweaty, my duvet crumpled on the floor, and my body trembling from the aftershock. Shaken out of slumber on the first night...

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The Great Library of Frisia

Submitted to Contest #307

That day started out as any other ordinary day as a librarian at the Great Library of Frisia. People came and went - never taking any books with them because you never take any of the rare tomes from the Great Library. Any reading of these books takes place in reading rooms located on each of the twenty floors of the library. As I was saying, the day began normally, up until a ragtag group of what appeared to be adventurers or warriors stepped through the imposing ten-foot-tall doors of the library. There were five of them: three men and two...

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The Truth in Ink

Submitted to Contest #307

Dedicated to all those who are still stuck in that cupboard under the stairs. 🌈✌ The quill was back. Same black feather with the same silver tip. Maura had never bought the quill, never borrowed it, and never asked it to return. She’d found it in the pocket of her robes the first day of classes, tucked away neatly beside a pocket watch her grandfather had given her. It was just a quill. No magical glow. No strange carvings. But it always came back. By now, she’d tried just about everything: giving it away, snapping it in half, tossing it in ...

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The Last Transmission

Submitted to Contest #307

Maya had always found the university library's basement level oddly comforting. While other graduate students complained about the musty smell and flickering fluorescent lights, she appreciated the silence that settled between the towering stacks like dust on forgotten books. It was here, in the archaeology section's most neglected corner, that she did her best thinking.She was researching trade routes in ancient Mesopotamia when her pen rolled off the cramped study table and disappeared into the gap between two metal shelving units. Sighing...

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The Painted Ones

Submitted to Contest #307

The land of Granby is seared. Scars of blood and ash paint its skin with the pain of forgotten offenses. Burn marks carve the landscape into a demented chessboard of oblong red and black rectangles so misshapen and haphazard that in one place they dissect a river on a jagged diagonal, like a ripped sheet of paper. And those old battle scars have ripped Yudi’s life apart too, disconnecting her from her old reality, just as suddenly, and just as violently.All Yudi had wanted was to win the science fair for the sprouting orchid she’d developed ...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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