They would be remembered forever. Venerated. Heroes of their people, the openers of doors, the lights in the darkness. All would be glory.
He looked out of a doorway between two universes and saw a sky rapturous with stars.
.
He tasted the beauty of a beast sheathed in ivory and lapis.
.
He breathed in the changing air of the rising and falling of empires from his perch on a shadow's back.
.
He felt a tingle in his wing-spurs as he watched an angel's flight from a glass-encrusted street.
.
He heard the calling of larks far below as he climbed a deliriously blue sky.
.
And he knew the cataclysmic terror and pain that had led him to this moment. After a thousand years, he was home. But not redeemed, oh no. Never that. He was still Fallen, though he might fly. He was still broken.
What was glory?
Was it the exaltation of being chosen, set apart from his people? Was it the pride of a new world being claimed for his own?
Or was it a single sense preserved in time, whose beauty made all the pain he had suffered worth it, for an instant? See, taste, smell, touch, hear. Know.
Memories carried pain, but they also bore hope. Razgut had wished for a thousand years that he might find forgiveness, but never had he held onto any hope for himself. Hope, he realized, was the only way he could be remade. Wishing was to live in the pain of the past, but hoping was to find beauty in memory - and move on.
Could he? Would he?
He had lived a thousand years in the glories of days past.
Now he would share the beauty and the pain, set them free, and hope instead. For an end, for a beginning, for a world remade.
.
.
.
For the only glory he now desired: forgiveness.