Jonathan Wicked came to Fungara with no map, no way home, and a debt he did not choose. Eve the Old Vine Lady had taken him in when he fell from the sky into her field of swaying green plants. She was made of vine and leaf, an old woman shaped from a garden, and she asked one thing in return for a bed. Someone was stealing the buds from her rows. He would find them. In his old world, that was simple work. Here a plant had laughed in his face, and he had no idea why. Eve pressed her pipe to her lips and let smoke curl through her leaves. "Roots reach where feet cannot, child," she said. "My thieves came at night, quiet as frost. Ask at the pub. Rough soil grows the truest weeds." Jonathan walked to the pub she meant. Rusty axes covered its walls, blade and handle, welcoming and grim. Inside, the talk dropped when the door swung shut. Strangers drew eyes here. He set his knife on the bar and asked the barkeep about thieves in Eve's garden. A heavy shape rose from a corner booth. Half warthog, half machine, plates of armor bolted to his hide. A huge gun hung at his side. His feet ground the floor as rollers spun under them. This was Oil-Slick Orson, the arena fighter, and the room shrank around him. "Eve's buds." Orson's voice grated like a stripped gear. "You're a long way from smart, meat. Those buds move through the arena tunnels. Someone big pays for them." Jonathan kept his hand near the knife. "Who pays?" Orson's shaded eyes glinted. "Fighters need what dulls the pain. But the ones who take from Eve wear scaly robes. Cold-blooded. They don't drink here. They pray to a rotting mushroom and want the moon gone dark." He tapped his gun. "You're new. You dropped in strange, didn't you? So did the robes. Both of you, out of nowhere." That landed hard. Jonathan had told no one how he arrived. "How do you know how I came?" "Everyone lands the same way now," Orson said. "Falling. The mushroom cult opens doors that shouldn't open. Same magic that dumped you here. You want your thieves and your answers? They share one root." Jonathan understood then. His debt and his own question were the same trail. Whoever pulled him to Fungara stole from the woman who saved him. Find one, find both. "Where do the robes gather?" he asked. Orson shoved off the bar and rolled toward the door. "A charred hut under a black mushroom, off past the arena. They keep watch on that porch day and night." He paused. "Go there and you don't come back the same. Or at all." Jonathan lifted his knife and slid it home. He had a name for the enemy now, and a place. The quiet of this world was about to break.