It is not like the Nightmare King to wake so stumblingly from sleep. But something touches him, and his wings are pulled too tightly about himself, and there is none of the awareness of Dream to step deftly out of - just the dark and the nothing of dreamless sleep, empty and cold, from which he stumbles alone.

The tightness is not his wings. He is lying on the ground, tangled and entrapped in sigil-carved Root. His body feels as lead.

Something huge and impossible nudges him, and he would dance away from that touch like firelight, but none will come when he calls.

(The bindings themselves are dead and cut, but where the Shadelord touches them the sigils flare slightly and whisper. The White Lady's doing, but certainly taught by another.)

He cannot move to stand, so he does not move at all. Grimm stays perfectly still as consciousness trickles back, and his eyes open a sliver. Their glow is dim, though in the all-permeating dark of the Abyss they stand out like embers.

The long shadow cast by Hallownest's passing looms large over him, investigating. He does not recognise this place, though he knows cold metal pressing up against the side of his face. Perhaps there is etiquette to follow, but he knows none. He is still waiting for the memory of what just happened to surface properly. Still sluggish, and worse for having his flame manipulated so jarringly by someone with no experience handling Essence.

It would be convenient to know what to do here, how to respond or to greet or whether to run. Grimm prods inward for advice, expecting something cryptic. He gets nothing.

His eyes snap all the way open, and he stares up at the Shadelord with no stage decorum at all. He just looks alarmed.