A festival morning, cold river water on your hands, and a whole day's small resentments—right up until the moment the ordinary stops being safe.

This is the chapter where a mother counts her children with her eyes and refuses to let her voice shake. It asks what a person owes the neighbors who never quite trusted them, and whether a secret carried for fifteen years is a debt that can ever be paid. The dread here is quiet, domestic, and relentless: the fear of not being enough, and the colder fear of being turned away when you offer.

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.

There is a particular loneliness in standing among people who used to be your neighbors and feeling the warmth drain out of every glance.

A gray morning, a town on edge, and a woman who knows that being innocent is not the same as being safe. Watch how a friendship frays, how quickly a whisper travels, how the people closest to us can wound us most when they're afraid. How much can one heart carry before it breaks?

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.

A festival is taking shape in the square—lanterns, painted paths, the smell of apples—and beneath all of it runs a colder current.

Behind a closed door, a conversation turns careful, then pointed, then unbearable. When the people you trusted stop meeting your eye, how do you prove you are who you've always been? Some rooms are hardest to leave not because of the lock, but because of who stands silent on the other side.

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.

A grieving house fills with too many voices, and every one of them has a theory about the dead.

There is a particular exhaustion in tending someone else's sorrow — chopping onions, kneading dough, folding laundry while the living quarrel over the bones of the departed. Some come to mourn; others come to be seen mourning; one arrives certain the whole town should be afraid. How much of yourself do you owe the people who need you, and what's left when you've given it?

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.

Grief has a way of filling a kitchen faster than tea can cool.

This is an hour of over-sweetened cups and undone people, where every kind word arrives a half-beat too late and the heart keeps reaching for a question the mouth should never ask. What do you owe the people who need you to simply sit with them — and how much of yourself must you set down to do it?

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.

Some mornings the whole house feels like something you've already broken, and no amount of cold tea will warm it back.

A day of small failures — unwashed dishes, sulking children, a silence you can't apologize your way out of — grinds on under a sky that keeps spitting rain. But exhaustion has a way of dulling the senses right before the ground gives way. What do you owe the people who trusted you, and how far does the reckoning reach?

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.

Some dread you chase; some you carry home in your own two hands.

A rattling wagon, a throat pulled too tight to speak, a hand gripped like a lifeline against a fear too ugly to name aloud. But suspicion is a greedy thing, and while it holds you, the people who trusted you to simply be there are learning what your absence costs. What do we owe the ones who counted on us—and how late do we notice we've failed them?

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.

A bright, ordinary afternoon has no business feeling this much like a held breath.

Some errands are just errands—until the trust you'd stake your children's lives on starts to curdle into something you can't unthink. What do you owe the people who've always kept you safe? And how much of the terror waits out in the quiet fields, and how much is the shape your own mind keeps circling back to?

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.

A busy shop, a friend's baby, the easy warmth of a small town at work—and underneath it, a certainty quietly coming loose.

There is a particular comfort in believing that whatever went wrong was done by a stranger, someone already gone, someone you'll never have to pass on the street. This chapter lives in the moment that comfort thins—where ordinary errands and a mother's divided attention can't quite drown out the question of who, exactly, you've been standing beside all along. How well do you really know the people who trust you?

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.

A secret you thought was buried has a way of surfacing at the worst possible table, in the worst possible voice.

The afternoon light is already lowering, kitchen warmth pressing against old grief, and every careful word feels like a coin spent against someone who has decided not to forgive. What do you owe the people who love you when the truth you kept was meant to protect them? Some wounds don't want tending. They want blood.

—

Narrated by Rebecca Hasler.

Set in D.W. Sheppard’s vast interconnected world where protective Gates hold back deadly monsters and treacherous flora, where safety is never guaranteed.

Support the show:

• Grab the full novel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWNBQWZM
• Stream sats or boost on Fountain.fm to support more episodes
• Leave a rating or review to help new listeners find the series

New episodes every Tuesday.