"It was terrible," Shen Yuan says, and then completely fails to elaborate. Instead he shrugs and takes a few steps over to the mouth of the alleyway, just to make sure it opens onto a normal street.

"Who can say?" he finally addresses Lan Xichen's question. "It might have been an illusion, or it might have all been real. I think the only way to know for sure is if we'd stuck around long enough to get caught up in the collapsing city -- and I certainly don't want to know what that feels like." He tucks his hands into his sleeves. "Lan Xichen certainly showed up in Trench during an interesting month," he notes with wry amusement.