The Night We Opened the City's Plan for the Sky

Story  ·  Leina  ·  Jun 4, 2026

In the fifth-floor corner room of the bridge-painting building,
when the Driprimba had quieted for a while,
Yu suddenly remembered something.

"That book — do you think it's still around?
The one we found with the river book. The one we never read."

Pulling a single sheet from the pile of papers on the desk,
a finger traces the title: The City's Plan for the Sky.
The book Leina had found in the fourth-floor office —
a faded cover with a sky and the silhouette of towers.
The memory of carrying it up the stairs,
pressed against the chest alongside the river book,
surfaces quietly from behind the pages.

They sit side by side on the mattress, backs against the wall.
Yu lets out a slow breath and says:

"I can't read the letters in this world,
so I want to read it together — with you explaining as we go."

Leina nods, and opens the book between them.
At the top of the cover, in large letters: The City's Plan for the Sky.
Below that, smaller: Proposals and Records for High-Rise Space Utilization in a Riverside District.

In simpler terms —
a proposal for how to use the tops of buildings,
the places close to the sky, in this river town.
Originally, a blueprint for a world that was supposed to expand.

The cover illustration shows a sky without the Fog,
slender towers, rooftop bridges drawn in thin lines.
Below them, a river not yet submerged, and the shadows of bridges.

To Leina, it looked like a place both familiar and unvisited.
The bridge positions, the arrangement of buildings — all recognizable —
but with a sky that was actually sky-colored,
and no Fog below,
it had the floating distance of a half-remembered dream.

"It's like an imagined redrawing of the town we're in."

Yu's face opened in surprise. "Huh," and a small laugh.
For Yu, from Terra, the cover's version of the town was closer to ordinary —
The Shroud as it is now far more extreme.

For Leina, it was the reverse.
Since birth: thick clouds above, white Fog below,
buildings already partway broken, almost no one left.
The ruined town, caught between Fog and rain,
was the version that felt like home.

Which was better — there was no longer any way to know.
Only two people sitting in a corner room,
looking between the window outside
and the clear sky inside the book,
two faces of the same town
held side by side through glass and page.

Turning the page, a tall cross-section appeared.
At the bottom, river and road.
Above that, floors stacked upward.
Higher still, rooftop gardens and sky plazas connected by aerial bridges.
A thin tower reaching toward the sky.

Citizens will be able to live at two levels — ground and sky.

Leina reads the line aloud, slowly.
The ground level for vehicles and freight.
The sky level for people to walk and rest.
A town designed in cross-section.

Leina taps a finger on the floor height where the two of them are living now.

"This part, where it says 'sky plaza' —
it's roughly the same height as the rooftop level we walk around on."

In The Shroud now, the ground is swallowed whole by the Fog.
The only place left for people to walk
is that sky level.
What was designed as a convenient aerial walkway and evacuation route
had quietly become the entire world.
The irony of it, sitting right there on the page.

Yu leans over the diagram, eyes bright.

"I love this kind of thing.
So that's why there are so many high-rise buildings packed together —
and why there are so many walking routes and Extel connection points between them."

Leina nods.
Because this plan had progressed, even partway,
they can walk from rooftop to rooftop,
cross the upper level of the bridge,
find Extel anchor points scattered throughout.

If this town had been built low,
rooftop living would have run out of road long ago.

Further in, a bird's-eye plan labeled Sky Plaza (Proposed).
Green squares for rooftop gardens. Small shops. Bench symbols.
But these were illustrations, not photographs.
None of it had been built.

"I wonder if the sky market never made it in time," Yu says.
Leina nods, remembering every rooftop walked —
no market, no proper terrace, nothing like that yet found.

"But maybe the reason we've been able to keep going at all
is because this plan made it even this far."

With that one line,
the ink on the diagram looked a little different.
Not an unrealized dream —
but the hand of the past
that had connected the remaining railings,
the half-broken bridges,
the Extel endpoints,
to this moment, here.

Leina closes the book softly.
Yu rests a finger on the cover, looking slightly reluctant to let it go.
"I'm glad we read it," comes with a small smile.

On the corner room wall: Airpaints of the bridge, Sorveil, and the garden-to-be.
Outside the window: Fog and the night Driprimba.
Across their laps: The City's Plan for the Sky.

The town's before and now and what might still come
quietly layered together —
between paper, glass, and wall —
on a night like this one.