---

Most nights, he cannot sleep. Slumber eludes his desperate grasp, and instead a dreary awareness seeps into his bones. He is tired. Exhausted. His jaws ache from hours of snarling and growling, his claws itch to scratch at his scarred scales until he bleeds. Until he feels something, anything. He is impatient. He is weighed down by his fatigue, his numb mind unfocused and hazy.

There were voices in his head.

They keep him up well past the witching hour, well into the early morning light. The voices are damned, murmuring nonstop until the cries rise into shouts and demands. They cry for violence and bloodshed; for war and greed and fire.

He cannot give in. He cannot let the voices take over. He will not let his home be burned by his demons, by the voices in his head.

No matter how loud they get, no matter how deafening the insidious whispers are, Grimm stands firm - he is the only one standing between his home and the flames. He is a shield and a vessel for hell itself, and nothing more.

---

Grimm is a dragon who prefers to be alone. He rarely takes part in clan events and gatherings, usually slipping off into the shadows before anyone knows he's even there. For an imperial his size, he is terribly quiet; his light steps and cautious eyes were the results of years of stealth and experience, long hours of ambushes and sabotage.

The ones who know nothing whisper about him, about how Grimm is only here to disrupt the delicate peace, how he spins a fine web of lies and deceit to cloud the clan's judgement.

These rumors are nothing more than a peddler's cruel words, snarled while the pale dragon does his perfected dance of avoidance. Perhaps if they approached the right way, the gentle way, they would see Grimm in a better light.

He is a dragon fighting himself. There is madness steeped into every scale, staining every bough and branch. There is pain in his eyes, a gaze that once knew of genuine, unconditional love - a gaze that now only sees death and disease. He brings insanity with him, it breeds in the crevices of his broken mind and festers in the curl of green-lighted wings.

Perhaps once, Grimm was something more. Once, a long time ago, perhaps he didn't have to share his headspace, didn't hear the souls of the damned as they torment him from within. Perhaps he had been something worthy of a tender touch, a kind hand.

Now, though?

Grimm is nothing more than the husk carrying hell in the fragile folds of his wings, tucked inside his hollow chest and guarded fiercely with tooth and claw.

---

• Pansexual, prefers men
• Likes cats
• Likes espresso and dark chocolate
• Can be seen flying in the dead of night when he can't sleep - will go stargazing with anyone who asks.
• Kind of adopted a young Goaler that he, Ahuva and Kynigos named Delphinium (and they also all co-parent him, apparently?)