Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ Urban fantasy Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. From vampires at the bar to werewolves around the corner, our collection of urban fantasy stories will bring the magical into everyday life.

Urban fantasy Short Stories – Page 5 of 10

I Will Dance

Submitted to Contest #308

You step into the sunshine as if you’ve been waiting all year for the very moment. It’s the twenty-first of June 1984, and the Jack in the Green festival spills across the heart of Bristol. The clatter of boots on cobbles, the smell of fried onions from the stalls by the Harbourside and the blare of Madness from a boombox propped on someone’s shoulder merges into an ancient drumbeat echoing in the chests of the crowd with every heartbeat. Red, white and blue bunting, the colors of the city, flirts against the soot-streaked Georgian facades. ...

8 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

[THE BONE OF CONTENTMENT]

Submitted to Contest #307

Peckham Industry had won a contract to redo the railroad by Ulster Avenue, following an explosion that had happened a week ago. In charge of this operation are Alfonso Jackson and Lorenzo Esposito. Alfonso was a 52-year-old Jamaican man with dreadlocks and a temper reminiscent of a rude boy. Spends a tremendous amount of his time with family, well, when he is not at work. Lorenzo, age 50, a dark skin Italian man with a low fade haircut, a down-to-earth attitude, and very loyal to Alfonso. Hence, the reason they are both on this job! Manageme...

15 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Ghost Ledger: The Rise and Fall of The Giant Finance Hub

Submitted to Contest #307

Prologue: The Bank That Wasn’tIn the winter of 1972, a man with elegant Urdu and impeccable English walked into a palatial office in London. He carried no weapon, no briefcase—only a vision. Within months, that vision would evolve into The Inst., a financial labyrinth that didn’t just hold money—it held influence, and more than that, secrets. It operated not from one headquarters, but from many shadows.From Panama to Karachi, London to Lagos, The Inst. embedded itself like a ghost into the arteries of global finance. It lent to rulers withou...

4 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

The Roots of Secrets Passed

Submitted to Contest #307

There was a singular root growing in Sadie Arria’s ear beneath the surface of her skin.When she’d discovered the bump under the touch of her cold fingers, she’d jumped out of bed and sprinted to the top of the tallest tower in the Academy to get a view of the cityline. It was the only thing that calmed her. The flickering orange streetlights in the distance on some days, were like thousands of swaying candle flames and on others, were dots of paint across the night sky. She often traced them in the air, following the curve of roads she could...

6 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Lantern Keepers

Submitted to Contest #307

In the heart of the city that never slept, beneath its clamour and steel, an ancient society thrived. Known only to a handful as The Lantern Keepers, this covert group had guarded knowledge long forgotten by the modern world--fragments of the truth too dangerous for daylight but too sacred to die. Every year, on the longest night of the year, the keepers would gather beneath the Tomeveil Archives, a seemingly abandoned building wrapped in ivy and rumours. To most the building was a condemned relic, but to the Keepers, it was a gateway to the...

4 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Aegis Institution

Submitted to Contest #307

Manshita lost her pinky last week, but it didn’t weigh on her. No, she didn’t care about her fragmented hand; her bandaged hand; her now three-fingered hand. Nor did she mind her slowly approaching exam slot. What loomed over her was a persistent tension — not from her injury or exam, but the slow erosion of her friendships.Over the past two months she felt her friends drifting away. One might assume it was a natural process; after all, graduation neared. They were entering the secular workforce, and she was claiming a spot as a fellow in he...

3 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

There Was Something About Far East Elite School

Submitted to Contest #307

They say Northpointberg only ever truly glowed before the world took notice—a secret hemmed between riotous green ridges and a restless, silver-dappled sea. Every map called it quaint, every travelogue called it forgotten, but the old vendors under the moss-blackened eaves knew truth glimmered in the creases of their market and the hush of fading constellations. Listen close, and you'd hear of dusk-lit deals—rough hands bartering river rubies for slow laughter, the scent of woodsmoke, tamarind rind, and brine making the town pulse like som...

1 like 0 comments 0
Read story

Notes On A Summer Day at The Lake

Submitted to Contest #307

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”Rumi June 11The boy waits, just this side of the goose shit. If not for the semi-sprung folding chair and tripod, I’m thinking one of the Lake’s more common species – black frayed cap, black logo tee, second-owner Nike cross-trainers. Cross-training on the art of the sociopath on the stray mallard or woodchuck by daylight and the way of the predator in the shadows of a degrading dusk. Anywhere between 16 and 25, stalking the weak to feed the beast.I slow. Zack trains a long lens into the thi...

37 likes 19 comments 19
Read story

Shelf Life

Submitted to Contest #307

Friday:Each step cracked the hush of the cold marble hall. Clara found herself late again for her Cognitive Arcanum course with Professor Aldwyn. Her failing grade was not from a lack of effort. She studied and reviewed obsessively, but nothing seemed to stick. It proved to be a demanding course for a third-year student. Most students had formed study groups weeks ago. No one invited Clara, as the groups weren't accepting new members. “You're late again,” Wren said as Clara sat down. Wren wasn’t a friend, not really, but it was the closest t...

2 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Autumn Blackwell

Submitted to Contest #307

They told us it was for the greater good. That we were regulating the world to give it balance and serenity. That the power they had given us was always within us, just hidden because letting it free would leave the mortal world in chaos. The Academia Arcanum Obscura sits somewhere between Oxford and oblivion. No map shows its true location. To get there, you don’t apply. You’re chosen, or rather, selected. When they came for me, I was halfway through an espresso during my shift at a dead-end cafe in East London, my apron smelling like burn...

8 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

“Wands and Egos: A Field Guide to the Continuum” By Someone Who Definitely Shouldn’t Be Telling You This

Submitted to Contest #307

Ever watch a group of self-righteous, egotistical grown man-babies argue over moon phases and quantum ether like it’s fantasy football season? No? Then let me introduce you to The Continuum—sorry, The Continuum of Wizards, if you ask them directly. They get twitchy about the full name. Branding, I suppose. I stumbled across them—if one can stumble across a hidden society everyone knows about that wears robes and mutters Latin like they’re auditioning for a Hogwarts prequel—about six months ago. Not that I wasn’t warned. The Circle told me an...

4 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

The Bell Beneath Caldera Street

Submitted to Contest #307

They say if you walk Caldera Street just past midnight, the air itself leans in to listen.A cracked bronze bell hangs from the archway of a long-abandoned church at the street's end. It hasn't run in decades--not since the fire--but those who know, say it never stopped sounding. You just have to hear it right. You have to listen with your bones.Lenn never believed in stories like that. Not until the night Emri slipped him the key. It started at a gallery. The kind where everyone pretends they know what paint is trying to say. Lenn was there ...

9 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Journal of Eteri Sibrdzne

Submitted to Contest #306

Journal of Eteri Sibrdzne 2024.11.15 Morning Preparation I dreamt last night that I was deep in a birch forest of the sort one finds in the North of Russia. Now this forest, being a dream forest, was also a library, and I was its caretaker. I moved freely through the forest, sometimes along foot paths and sometimes along canals, paddling a small canoe or kayak. But mostly I just flew. Each tree bore a multitude of texts in its bark, which it yielded when asked and then regrew. I was gathering texts for something, impelled by ... I am not sur...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Prologue (Draft Script 1)

Submitted to Contest #306

WIP TITLE: “THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED”Draft - script 1A 3D rendered narrative driven choice-based adventure game. ***FADE IN:EXT. AN NEAR-EMPTY MOTORWAY – DUSKGrey skies bruise the horizon. Wind dances through hedgerows and fields. The road is vast and grey, stretching onwards. The odd car speeds past. A STRANGER (a boy, late adolescence, dressed in worn layers) walks slowly by the roadside, silhouetted. He carries a large backpack.CLOSE ON:A BLACK DOG — still, lying half in a ditch.THE STRANGER, kneels beside it. His breath fogs the air. He s...

8 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Follow the Dream

Submitted to Contest #306

--- I just bought a journal from a newsagent, and I have a plan for it, but I thought I would get started with a quick entry. Today was not so bad. I feel like I really got into the zone at work, and I caught up on everything I was behind on. The boss even came past and told me what a great job I was doing. And it seemed like everyone was acting decently today. Even Jodie from marketing restrained her usual venomous tongue. On the train home I was watching video’s on Tik Tok when I saw a clip of a burning house, and I remember feeling a disc...

4 likes 0 comments 0
Read story
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. All for free.