The Black Craft Saga Week 18 Dispatch
— From the War Mode Office. Two women, bound to powers that can unmake them, are forced to confront the truth of who they are—and the enemies waiting to claim what remains.
🪶 This Week’s Movements:
Each woman enters her ordeal believing she understands her place in the world. Only to realize that the powers surrounding her carry motives far more complex and perilous than ever imagined.
Marissa Bonifay and Dareya each stand at the edge of transformation, thrust into crises that reveal the dangerous weight of the forces entwined with their lives.
In Slices of Midnight, Marissa’s brush with death—twice over—exposes the depth of her connection to forbidden magic, forcing her to face the consequences not only in the bodies she inadvertently destroyed but in the eyes of the man whose faith anchored her.
In Ashborn, Dareya’s fall across hostile borders leaves her injured, powerless, and forced to rely on the humanity of strangers who cannot decide whether she is a threat or a victim.
As Marissa grapples with a prophecy that splits her future between salvation and ruin, Dareya becomes a captive of those who claim to be her own, their intentions darker than any human interrogation. Where Marissa must confront the truth of what she is becoming, Dareya is confronted with what others intend to make of her.
Both stories mirror each other in the collision between identity and expectation—two paths diverging toward either liberation or subjugation, both shaped by forces that demand choices neither woman is prepared to make.
🕯️🕷️👑 Infamy’s Daughters:
The Sixteenth Chapter of Slices of Midnight will drop on Tuesday Morning, December 2 at 10 am EST to Infamy’s Daughters for paid subscribers.
The Eleventh Chapter of Slices of Midnight will unlock on Tuesday Morning, December 2 after 10 am EST to Infamy’s Daughters for all readers.
Marissa Bonifay’s perilous connection to the realms beyond life reaches its breaking point when she tears two souls from their bodies under the intoxicating influence of the Lady of Hate. As the healers scramble around the lifeless forms of Delwort and High Priestess Nyomi, Marissa’s consciousness snaps back into the Mortal Plane, leaving her disoriented and exposed. Grobbins, ever the lurking demon, watches her with unsettling approval, but it’s Sir Isaac—her steadfast moral anchor—whose horrified gaze delivers the deepest wound. He has seen everything. The act she committed, the darkness she embraced, and the terrible truth she can no longer hide.
Desperate to salvage their bond, Marissa goes after him and forces him to confront the visions he has kept secret since childhood. Isaac, torn between devotion and fear, reveals the prophetic duality he sees in her future: one path of honor and glory, the other a venomous wasteland ruled by four serpents—Murder, Strife, Envy, and Loneliness. Though he insists the final choice is hers alone, Marissa confesses she was driven by Myceen’s corrupting magic, a truth Isaac refuses to accept without cost. When he asks whether she would have killed even him, her anguish confirms the danger she poses. Isaac walks away, praying for her as he leaves her with the Orb of Myceen and the terrifying question of who she is destined to become.
📖 Read Chapter 16 - Available December 2, 2025
🌞🜚✨The Shadow Lineage:
The Twentieth chapter of Ashborn arrives for paid readers on Thursday Morning, December 4, at 10 am EST in The Shadow Lineage.
The Nineteenth chapter of Ashborn unlocks for all readers on Thursday Morning, December 4, at 10 am EST in The Shadow Lineage.
Dareya’s reconnaissance flight ends in catastrophe when an energy blast forces her dragon companion out of the sky, crash-landing them across the border into human territory—airspace dragons are forbidden from entering without formal dispensation. Injured, unarmed, and dressed only in a sundress, she is swiftly surrounded by a human border unit that interprets her presence as a possible hostile alignment with the dragons. Detained and interrogated according to strict military protocol, Dareya must navigate a precarious balance of truth and deception while the soldiers debate her identity and intentions. Their suspicion wavers only when a transmission confirms she is not an enemy operative but an Arakita Rider missing since the Aerie collapse.
Once her identity is authenticated, the humans shift immediately to allied-soldier protocol, offering her a chair, tea, and food as they prepare to transfer her safely. But the relief is short-lived. The arrival of the Order extraction team shatters the fragile calm, their brusque aggression revealing an agenda very different from the humans’ professionalism. As Dareya is seized and shackled once more, the human soldiers watch in uneasy silence, sensing that whatever the Order wants from her, it is not rescue.
Read Ashborn Chapter 19 - Available December 4, 2025
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Stay Sharp. Stay Strange. Be Wise.
—The War Mode Office
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