They let them in. Razgut and Elazael, Iaoth and Dvira, Kleos and Arieth. They didn't mean to. It wasn't their fault.
Except that of course it was their fault. They cut the portal, one too far.
But how were they to have known?
He was home, and he remembered.
The beasts had come, and all was eclipsed. Meliz eternal was, simply, not. All was devoured.
Time had seemed slow as honey as the Twelve were taught the forbidden secrets of the universes. Not so, now: the seconds flew upon them, birds of prey. Beasts are coming! Flee! Beasts are coming!
It wasn't their fault. How were they to have known?
The Stelians, fire-eyed and proud: they had been the first to castigate the remaining four of the Six, who had slipped through the portal first with not a care for the rest. And this time, no one shunned the seraph tribe as they had during the Choosing, but turned against the Faerers with astonishing vengeance. They should have died. They would have.
It had been the magi, eluding their own share of the blame, who had intervened in time, stolen the glorious memories of Meliz as well the Cataclysm. No one would remember the damnation of the Faerers.
No one would remember the glory that had been theirs.
All the seraphim were to start a new life in the world which the magi called Eretz. All but them: Razgut, Elazael, Kleos, Arieth. They had no right to this place. Not anymore.
It was the Stelians, too, who had mandated that the Four be stripped of their wings, cast out of the portals they had made. Four portals, four traitors. Call it fate, call it spite.
They tortured him long into the night. Penitence for a million deaths, they said. He wanted to scream at the injustice, but kept it in, festering. Those seraphs' lives had ended quickly, but his torment continued for hours on end.
And so at last Razgut found himself on the precipice between worlds, and knew.
.
.
.
There was no end for him, for he was pain, and pain was eternal.