The wind howled across the broken highlands, tugging at rusted signposts and tangled wire. Two shadows moved across the cracked road—figures out of place in a world trying desperately to forget them.
Gérard walked beside Amélie in silence.
The silence wasn't awkward.
It was reverent.
The kind of quiet that followed graveyards and gods.
They passed the ruins of old outposts, their Overwatch insignias faded and peeled. Nature had reclaimed most of the world's scars, but not this path. The earth here still mourned. Burnt trees. Black glass where fire had kissed sand. A lingering warmth, like something had died violently… and never fully left.
Ahead: a hidden facility.
Tucked deep in the mountainside.
The last embers of Overwatch still flickered there.
Winston. Tracer. Survivors.
They needed to know.
Hell hadn't opened.
It had escaped.
Gérard kept walking, but every step felt wrong.
Like his body was an echo that didn't belong to this world anymore.
The muscles remembered pain that wasn't his.
The fire was gone, but its ghost still pulsed beneath his ribs.
Amélie didn't speak, but he knew she felt it too.
The moment that split the sky.
The moment Jay let go.
Not of life.
Of hope.
"I felt it," Gérard said, quietly.
Amélie's boots slowed just slightly.
He didn't look at her. He didn't need to.
"There was a second," he continued. "Just before it broke."
His voice cracked.
"He wasn't a monster. Not yet. He was crying. Screaming for her."
"Angela?"
He nodded.
"He wanted to die with her."
A long silence passed.
Then Gérard stopped, staring out across the ridge where the facility lights barely flickered through the mist.
"Do you know what I saw?" he whispered.
"I saw a flame so bright, even the abyss tried to run from it."
Amélie turned to him.
Her eyes weren't cold now. They were human. Haunted.
"Do you still feel him?" she asked.
Gérard was quiet for a long time.
Then, softly:
"No."
And that truth chilled them more than the wind ever could.
By nightfall, they reached the gate.
Metal doors groaned open as biometric scanners finished their work.
Turrets lowered.
Spotlights dimmed.
Winston stood just inside—broad, tired, but still carrying the heart of Overwatch in his chest. His eyes widened at the sight of Gérard. At the sight of Amélie beside him, alive.
No—not alive.
Changed.
Behind Winston, Tracer stepped forward, frozen mid-step.
"…Gérard?" she whispered.
Amélie didn't wait.
She pushed past the threshold and said only two words.
"We talk."
Inside, the lights flickered as backup power hummed through the old walls.
The war room was empty.
Screens offline.
Peaceful.
But Gérard could feel it in his chest—that wasn't stillness.
That was waiting.
He sat heavily at the edge of a table that had once charted battle plans.
Maps. Skirmishes.
Hope.
Now?
It was just a tombstone.
His hand drifted to his chest.
Where the seal used to be.
Where Jay's voice once echoed.
There was nothing now. No fire. No rage.
Just absence.
And behind that absence, the whisper of something worse.
Something waking.
He looked up slowly.
Tracer hadn't moved.
Winston looked ready to cry.
"I thought you were both—" the gorilla started.
"We were," Gérard said.
And nothing else.
Because in the end…
Not even gods die clean.
They break.
And when Jay broke…
The world began to crack with him.