"Probably an animal." That's what he tells them. It isn't true.Himzo's chapter. A servant has reported disturbed ground near the outer fields — flattened grass, one faint drag mark, running toward an old drainage grate nobody has thought about in years. Reports like that don't usually reach the heir. But Lord Edric has been jumpier than usual for weeks, and jumpy in him means eyes he personally trusts on anything unusual, however small. He sends his son to confirm it.What Himzo finds at the grate is small, recent, and wrong. A partial boot print pressed into the soft ground — a few days old at most, and plainly not garrison issue. Every boot inside these walls carries the stamped house mark in its sole, without exception. This print carries nothing: plain worn leather, the tread uneven, resoled more than once out of necessity rather than choice. Someone from outside the wall has been here. Recently. And whoever it was came in at an angle that avoided the one spot where a watchtower would have had a clear line of sight — patient, methodical, planned over considerable time, in a way nobody raised inside these walls has ever had to learn.He waves his escort back, studies it alone, and then rides home and reports the captain's conclusion instead of his own: an animal, most likely. He isn't sure why he lies. Maybe because the moment he reports it, it becomes his father's problem — and his father's way of handling problems rarely ends gently for whoever is standing on the other side of the decision. That night Selene finds him at his window, quiet since morning, and doesn't push. He stands looking out over the dark fields toward the grate, and two thoughts keep arriving together and refusing to separate: the courtyard story nobody will finish — and his sister, a person he holds almost no real memory of, only scraps and his father's careful retelling.In this chapter:• The drag mark and the grate: a border report that shouldn't have reached the heir• The boot print with no house mark — plain leather, resoled by hand• The lie he tells his own escort, and can't fully explain to himself• Recognition without a name: a feeling like a storm coming, long before the cloudsLeft for Bad — Season One. A post-apocalyptic audio drama by James Bell Jr, told in two first-person voices: Zaira, who grew up outside the wall in the Dead Expanse, and Himzo Vaucresse, the heir who grew up inside it. One wall, two worlds, and one family split by fifteen years of careful lies. New chapters Wednesdays and Fridays. Start from Episode 1.📖 Read the books: Left for Bad Book One: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMNC3GF4 · Book Two: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMNZ9YPD🎧 Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id6824138251 · Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/2hy1iurq · and iHeart.Follow Left for Bad so the next chapter finds you.