The stairwell didn't end. It transformed.
One moment Lin Yue was descending stone steps slick with something that might have been condensation and might have been the city sweating; the next, without any seam he could identify, the steps had become a wide avenue of pale silver stone, and the ceiling above had become sky.
He stopped walking.
Shen Rui, three steps ahead, stopped too. "Lin Yue?"
"We're here."
"Here, where?" Shen Rui turned, and his question died somewhere in his throat the moment he saw it for himself.
The district unrolled in front of them like something that had been waiting, patiently, for a very long time.
