The sky was humming.
Fortinah stood barefoot on the edge of a bioluminescent ridge, her vibrant mushroom cap catching stray wisps of wind. Above her, the sacred black hole—long regarded as a living deity by the Eldar Fungi—had shifted. It pulsed now, erratic and wild, swirling with strange new light. Something was wrong.
Without a word, she called for Sporelok—her ancient bull-mushroom companion. The creature’s massive mycelial wings burst open, shimmering with a thousand specks of living spore-dust. Fortinah leapt onto his back, guiding them upward, toward the trembling vortex in the sky. Whatever called to her from within that spiral… it needed watching.
Elsewhere on Fungido, deep in a living tower shaped of roots and resonant crystal, Methuselah the Wise frowned over his Mirror of Vision. He too had noticed the disturbance. But his attention was pulled away—something was missing from his sanctum.
An intruder. Small, nimble, and dangerously curious—a humanoid rabbit-like creature, trembling under the weight of stolen knowledge. In its arms: The Codex of Spore Binding, a sealed scroll never meant to leave Methuselah’s care.
The thief ran, but Fungido has a will of its own.
The spores in the air began to settle into him. Panic turned to awe. Then confusion. He laughed uncontrollably, then wept. His body slackened as the forest moved around him. Mushrooms blinked open. The ground pulsed. From the shadows, a long, sinuous stalk slithered forward—Mykilos the Maw, a sentient fungal serpent once bound to Methuselah’s tower, now corrupted by ancient instinct.
It opened slowly, gills expanding with a damp hiss.
The rabbit dropped the scroll.
Methuselah, watching from his tower, sighed. “Let this be a lesson,” he muttered, before shifting his gaze skyward.
There, cutting across the horizon, was Fortinah on Sporelok’s back, heading straight for the storming black hole.
She reached out to him across the spore-weave.