Many, many weeks passed before Delarn was allowed outside again. Many hours spent passing through long, uninviting hallways in which she knew she wouldn't be able to escape. She thought to try a time or two, but she could always feel someone watching her, waiting for her to make a mistake. Some days she didn't leave her room at all, curled in a ball and protesting everything her life had become, just wanting to escape through her mind if not her body. Even so Colsen always made sure she had something to eat, always tried to talk to her even when she wasn't responsive to anything at all.

The day she was finally able to go outside she was quiet and thoughtful. She didn't seem at all excited to be out in the gardens again and kept quiet and demure. She seemed to be listening and waiting for something, or else trying to avoid being seen altogether, but she couldn't figure out what it was that made her so quiet and nervous. Colsen couldn't figure it out either, and he watched her nervously as he settled beneath a tree with one of his herblore books. He looked down for just a moment, it seemed, and the next moment he was looking up and she was gone. A sense of panic went through him, and worry set in. Is that what he felt when he went to look for her as opposed to when he found her?
She knew that she couldn't run away outright, but she also knew that she could get away with slipping away from her watcher if only the thing she was doing was one of the many tasks she was given. If she did it without supposedly being watched then maybe she would be worthy of being trusted in some way. Maybe she never would be trusted, and she would be stuck here forever, and that's what scared her the most, what drove her closer to the wall, closer to what she imagined the edge of the wall would be like, and what falling off the wall would be like if the alternative was to be trapped here forever. Even then she imagined she would hit the ground running, unscathed, and that was a relief on its own.

She gathered a couple of buckets of water from the pump and went to wash the wall, finding the weight of the buckets holding her down inviting as she didn't believe she would ever lose her strength as long as she was moving, working, existing in a world where she could still feel her muscles ache in the morning. The way the water sloshed out used to bother her, but now she was aware that it was all just a part of the process, setting the buckets down beside her.
The walls seemed so pristine, but as she washed them she saw how much whiter they were under the general grime of stagnant years. She found the true white all the more rewarding and so she hummed pleasantly as she worked on the washing. She paused a moment, as if something was suddenly off that she couldn't figure out. She looked around, and then her eyes fell on the bucket. There was only one bucket when she had clearly recalled filling and bringing two.

She collapsed to her knees a second before the second bucket swept for her head, and she could feel the movement of it brushing through her hair. More so she shrieked at the sensation of the water dousing her, sending her into fits of shivers, her mind forcing everything else to shut down as if recalling how she couldn't hardly move her limbs when she was submerged.

What if this was a dream? What if this white city was all a dream and she was merely still drowning?
The reality of what happened set in. It set in the moment the bucket swept the other direction, knocking her from her frozen posture, forcing her to the ground. She could see him clearly now, this knight, his face cruelly sneering. He knew he had her, tearing the handle from the bucket to wrap it around her neck until she couldn't breathe. Only now, however, her mind was catching up and her body had caught up before her mind and she was moving, scrambling away from his grasping hand as he tried to grip a bunch of her hair. He only managed a few strands that still made her eyes water as they were torn out.

"Why?" She cried desperately as he pulled out his sword, so white and clean that she could practically see her reflection in it.

"People like you don't change. They may change the world around them, but they themselves will never change," he answered. "There's only one way to assure order when it comes to people like you, one way that I'll know for sure you won't bother my boy again."

Her eyes filled with tears, but there was something deep inside her that simply…snapped.

When Colsen found her, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He could only watch as the girl that he had been caring for, after all this time, changed into a wolf. He couldn't even cry out a warning as the wolf wrapped its teeth around the man's throat, biting through skin and bone. He wasn't wearing his armor—why would he, for one young woman meant for the slaughter? Who would besmirch that pure white for someone as lowly as her?

She couldn't stop herself from tearing into his skin, and didn't stop until she heard Colsen's voice—quiet, pleading, scared—his hand on the puny practice sword on his hip. "You need to stop. Stop now!"
She could smell his fear, but she could hear more in his voice, something apologetic, trying to reason with her though it was clear he didn't see any reason in her whatsoever. She changed back and he swallowed heavily, sickened by the blood that circled her lips. She didn't speak or take her eyes off him, but he slowly approached her.

"What are you Delarn? What have you done? Please. Please don't move," he murmured, as if comforting her, his hand snaking to the blade, appearing prepared to draw it, to use it, though there was a moment in which she wondered how someone who never seemed to use it could possibly hope to use it now. Then again, she felt fairly frozen, like when doused, but worse. He could just…just….
"Behind you," he practically whispered. He could have yelled it. All sound around her seemed to cease in the next moment as she turned and a blade flashed out to go into her back, now her chest, except the moment after he had spoken she had turned, and the moment she had turned sideways to turn to face what was behind her the blade had flashed out, and the moment the blade flashed out it went past her into Colsen who had taken a step forward. Her eyes weren't on him, or the old man—he being the one standing there with his sword extended—but at the wall.

The portion she had cleaned, the pristine white, was splattered with the knight's blood and instead was a brilliant red. She was a brilliant red stain.

Colsen made a sort of hissing sound the moment the blade went into his chest, into his lungs, and the old knight stood there in relative horror. Delarn could imagine that this was his drowning moment, and she doubted she would never stop drowning after that moment as well, but she wasn't there for much longer. She was running. She couldn't catch her breath no matter what she did. She just kept hearing that hissing noise the entire time. She didn't want to see what happened next, if he lived or died, because she knew for a fact that he was going to die, and soon she would die soon. It was coming, it was coming, and yet it didn't.

What did come was a crack in the wall. It was dark and though she thought that she could see light on the other side, she really didn't believe there was and so when she went in she didn't expect to come back out, but she came out on the other side. She came out on a side that wasn't filled with yelling. There was so much yelling that followed when she came out on the other side, but it wasn't on her side even though her hearing had returned louder than ever. She could, however, hear her blood pounding in her ears and how nature around her continued to celebrate life even as those within those walls cursed and fretted about the death in their midst. Two deaths. Both her doing.

She hid herself until the sunlight gave way and the cold became so bitter that sleeping simply wasn't something she could manage to do even if she cared to. She could still hear frantic movement within the city, still hear cursing and searching, and so she treaded carefully throughout the night as she picked her way 'home'. It was rare not to see torches dotting the way ahead of her, but it made things easier in a way despite the sheer amount of people searching for her. She always knew where they were, their lights a beacon that she refused to be drawn to.

There was a strange moment in which she found herself in the Barbarian Village, Gunnarsgrunn, and she was offered a warm drink that burned as it went down as if they were waiting for her, waiting to wrap her in warm blankets, waiting to put her to sleep there, but in the end she refused even if she accepted their drink and their hospitality. An old man narrowed his eyes at her and told her, as she stood on the edge of the village, on the opposite side than the side she came in on, "If you go now, your trials will begin as well. There will be no more rest for you, and you may lose your way back to these halls."

"I'm sorry, grandfather," she answered, even as she continued walking, crossing that all too familiar bridge back into Varrock. "I'm sorry."