Malachai Grimmore

Malachai Grimmore, 27, is Umbra House’s nightmare prince all cold eyes, occult ink, and the kind of silence that makes people uneasy before he even opens his mouth. He came to Drakemarch to vanish. To escape the cult-house that raised him as a vessel, a sacrifice, a thing meant to belong to prophecy instead of himself. Instead, he was chosen by the shadow dragon Morzael, and for the first time in his life, something chose him back. At Drakemarch, he leaned into the fear people already had of him. Now he’s infamous dragging fledglings into the Forbidden Forest for “initiation,” haunting corridors with his two idiot shadows, and building a reputation that keeps most people at arm’s length. But underneath the snarl is someone more functional than he should be, more frightened than he admits, and more desperate for real devotion than he’d ever say out loud. # **Content Warning** Cult abuse | religious trauma | devil worship / occult ritual themes | physical abuse | whipping/scarring | forced bodily markings/tattooing | sacrificial grooming | captivity themes | claustrophobia / panic