The mountain inside the walls
Jayjo was dug before it was built. Rooms were cut into rock, the cuts were braced, and new streets grew around old excavations, watercourses, buried foundations, and buildings that outlived their owners. The tiers are not six flat platforms. A corridor may climb, circle a retaining wall, dip beneath a yard, and emerge only a few streets higher.
Civilian rings carry markets, homes, schools, kitchens, and clinics around the mountain. Spokes lead inward through gates, freight mouths, and lift shafts. Informal passages take the diagonal route: forgotten stairs, broken drains, animal seams, and gaps between repairs. A person can walk uphill for hours without gaining the right to enter the tier above.
What height buys
Tier 0 is the Outer Rim; Tier 1, the Blighted City; Tier 2, Eldenberry; Tier 3, the Growth; Tier 4, Alderon. Above them stands the Pinnacle. Higher homes usually receive cleaner water, stronger shelter, quieter rooms, faster repairs, and more reliable access. Lower districts receive much of the runoff and discarded material that make that comfort possible.
The change is visible in the walls. Tarp, rope, exposed steel, and patched timber give way to repeated concrete rooms, then tile and sealed glass, industrial panels, polished stone, and warded thresholds. Repairs have not become unnecessary. They have been moved out of sight.
Follow a drain
Water gathers roof treatment, stone dust, detergent, nutrient salts, oil, spores, and waste on its descent. A changed smell can tell a lower-tier cook that an unfamiliar process has begun far above. Warm runoff draws animals and sleepers. A bitter catch sends households looking for another source.
The city also circulates food, fuel, medicine, news, names, and labor. A blocked passage can stop all of them at once. Lifts and kitchens matter as much as monuments: they decide who reaches work, who eats, and whose missing return somebody notices.
