Veyra City never truly slept.
Even at three in the morning, its streets breathed—cars whispering over wet asphalt, neon signs buzzing like tired insects, distant sirens crying for reasons nobody bothered to remember. The rain had stopped an hour ago, but the city still smelled like rust, smoke, and old mistakes.
Detective Arjun kael stood under a flickering streetlamp and stared at the body.
The man was tied to a broken traffic pole with electrical wire. His shirt had been removed. His chest… had been opened.
Not surgically. Not cleanly. But with a kind of deliberate cruelty that suggested patience. The ribs were visible. The heart was gone.
One of the younger officers was vomiting near a garbage bin.
Arjun didn't move. He never did, not at first.
He had seen corpses in all conditions—burned, drowned, crushed, rotting. The city had taught him that the human body was fragile and the human mind far worse. But something about this scene felt… staged. Like a message.
"Forensics?" Arjun asked quietly.
Inspector Mehra, his partner, walked up beside him, face tight. "No fingerprints. No murder weapon. The cuts are… strange. Not frenzied. Not professional either."
Arjun crouched beside the body. The skin around the chest was marked with thin, careful incisions, almost respectful in their symmetry.
"This wasn't rage," Arjun said. "This was intention."
Mehra exhaled slowly. "Victim is Sanjay Raut, forty-six. Real estate developer. Charges of bribery, illegal evictions, three worker deaths in a collapsed building five years ago."
Arjun looked up. "Convicted?"
Mehra shook his head. "Case fell apart. Witnesses disappeared. Evidence went missing."
Arjun's eyes returned to the hollow cavity in the man's chest.
"Then someone remembered," he said.
A constable approached. "Sir… there's something else."
He pointed to the wall behind the body.
Written in black marker, in careful, neat handwriting, were four words:
"JUSTICE IS NOT BLIND."
Arjun stared at the sentence for a long time.
________________________________________
At the station, the air smelled of stale coffee and stress.
Arjun sat at his desk, reading the file again. Sanjay Raut had ruined dozens of families. He had walked free. He had laughed in court.
And now his heart was missing.
"Organ trafficking?" Mehra asked, sitting across from him.
Arjun shook his head. "No. If this was for money, they'd take more than just the heart. This is… symbolic."
"Symbolic of what?"
Arjun didn't answer.
He pulled out a cigarette, stared at it, then put it back. He had quit three years ago. Or at least, he kept telling himself he had.
The station TV played quietly in the background.
'—police have confirmed a brutal murder in East Veyra. Citizens are advised to—'
Arjun closed the file.
"Check recent acquittals. Big ones. People who should be in prison but aren't."
Mehra raised an eyebrow. "You think he's hunting criminals?"
"I think," Arjun said slowly, "that this man wasn't chosen randomly."
________________________________________
That night, Arjun drove home through streets that never felt familiar no matter how many years he lived in them.
His apartment was quiet. Too quiet.
He lived alone. Had for a long time.
He poured himself a glass of water and sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the wall.
For a brief, unwanted moment, an old memory surfaced.
A small house. Two brothers. One studying late into the night. The other watching silently.
Raghav.
Arjun's jaw tightened.
His older brother had disappeared ten years ago.
No body. No trace. No goodbye.
The world had swallowed him like it swallowed everything else.
Arjun lay down and closed his eyes.
________________________________________
Two days later, they found the second body.
A former judge.
His tongue was cut out.
On the wall:
"SOME VERDICTS DESERVE SILENCE."
________________________________________
The task force was formed that same morning.
The media gave the killer a name by evening:
"The Judge."
Arjun hated that.
It made it sound noble.
In the briefing room, a profiler spoke about vigilante psychology, moral absolutism, symbolic killings. Arjun listened without interrupting.
The killer was organized.
Careful.
Patient.
And deeply, deeply convinced he was right.
"What bothers me," Mehra said later, walking beside Arjun, "is that he knows how we work. He times everything. Chooses places with blind spots. Avoids cameras that aren't even on the city map."
Arjun stopped walking.
"What?"
Mehra frowned. "What?"
"He avoids cameras that aren't on the city map," Arjun repeated. "That information isn't public."
They looked at each other.
________________________________________
That night, Arjun stayed in the office, going through old files.
One case caught his eye.
Case #2173 — Collapse at Raut Construction Site.
Three workers dead.
The judge who dismissed the case…
Was the second victim.
Arjun felt a chill crawl up his spine.
He opened another file.
A hit-and-run that killed a child.
The driver was acquitted.
The lawyer?
Still alive.
For now.
________________________________________
His phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
He stared at it for a long time before answering.
"Detective Arjun Kael," he said.
On the other end, there was silence.
Then a man's voice—calm, low, familiar in a way that made his stomach twist.
"You always did hate unanswered questions, little brother."
The glass slipped from Arjun's hand and shattered on the floor.
"Who is this?" he demanded.
A soft chuckle.
"I was wondering how long it would take before you noticed the pattern."
Arjun's heart was pounding.
"Answer me."
"Tell me, Arjun," the voice said gently, "do you still believe the law saves people?"
The line went dead.
Arjun stood frozen in his apartment, phone still pressed to his ear.
Somewhere deep in his memory, a door he had sealed shut creaked open.
And for the first time in ten years…
He whispered a name he had sworn never to say again.
"…Raghav?"