Podcastle, Episode 924 for Tuesday the 30th of December 2025.

Reverent by Lea Ning, read by Iber Armacus and produced by Eric Valdez.

Rated PG-13.

Good morning, good day, good afternoon and good evening.

And welcome to Podcastle, the flying castle of fantasy fiction.

I'm your host, Matt Dovey, and it is my privilege to present for your enjoyment, reverent by Leah Ning, narrated by Iber Armancas.

This story is a podcastle original, our third by Leah, who at this point is one of my favourites of

our authors, if I'm allowed to have such, so it feels a very perfect cap to the year.

Another perfect cap to our year is, of course, our end of year fundraiser, which could

hardly happen at any other time of year.

I'll not belabor the details too much, given that there's likely less than 36 hours left

in the year even if you've sat with bated breath, refreshing your podcatcher feed to listen

to this immediately, but this period of fundraising is often what sets us up for the year. Not only with

generous one-off donations, but with a bump in new Patreon subscriptions that then lets us plan

for the year with confidence, knowing how many original stories, like this one, we can afford

to pluck from the treasure pile, polish up and show off to the world.

The very special thing about the year-end fundraiser is that it once again has a matching fund

from some of our most generous and long-standing supporters, so that every donation and every new

Patreon subscription, even and especially the annual ones, currently available to

a 10% discount with code 2025 YEC, gets doubled for us, so that every gold coin coming our

way becomes two gold coins, which I am assured is not fairy magic and so we'll not turn into

autumn leaves at sunrise, but will remain a real and genuine gold piece we can spend on stories.

...