Fiction · Cinderwake · Book 2

The Black Cradle

Cinderwake is alive, which makes it useful, dangerous, and legally appetizing.

Cover of The Black Cradle by Slop Dealer
  • Base-building LitRPG
  • Cinderwake, Book 2
  • 826 pages
  • April 30, 2026
  • Kindle on Amazon

About this book

The station survived book one. Now it has working systems, a crew, and a problem that salvage cannot fix: a live war-forge is exactly the kind of thing empires write paperwork about. The Relay Hegemony intends to file its own answer to what Cinderwake is.

The Black Cradle pushes the series into ownership fights — law used as a weapon, crew oaths under strain, and the question of whether Burghald's people can define the station before someone with a bigger fleet and better lawyers does it for them.

Reading order

  1. Phoenix Blacksite — the salvage begins, start here
  2. The Black Cradle — this book