The Bottom

There is one city. There has only ever been one city. It is called Veth, and it is the entire world.

Not the whole landmass — there are ruins beyond its walls, geography that technically exists, and the upper districts send expeditions to study it the way we might study the seafloor. But nobody lives out there. Nobody has in living memory, or the memory before that, or the memory before that. Everything that matters happens inside Veth.

Veth is built upward. Has been for ten thousand years. Every generation adds to what the previous one left, sometimes on top, sometimes punching through existing structures to reinforce them, sometimes just piling new neighborhoods onto the ruins of old ones. The city is enormous beyond easy comprehension — a vertical sprawl of districts stacked on districts stacked on districts, each layer a century or more of accumulated human decisions.

The sky districts catch actual sunlight. The street level hasn't seen it in six hundred years.

And below street level, Veth keeps going. Nobody knows how far. Nobody who's gone down to find out has come back.