***********************************************
Detective Kavya Mehra sat on the edge of her desk, a lit cigarette trembling slightly between her fingers. Her office reeked of stale coffee, burnt tobacco, and damp paper. The walls, once cream-colored, were now stained with patches of mold. A single ceiling fan spun slowly above her head, doing nothing to clear the thickness in the air.
In front of her, spread across the metal desk like a jigsaw puzzle from hell, were the crime scene photos.
Another one. Third in two months.
Same pattern.
Male, early twenties, found dead in the drainage canal behind the abandoned textile mill. Shirtless, upper abdomen punctured five times in a specific shape—like a distorted sun. Throat slit, but not enough to kill quickly. More like… to silence. A final cruel whisper. On the left side of the neck, carved with surgical precision, was a cryptic symbol. Looked almost astrological.
Most haunting of all: one eye closed, one eye forced open. Held open with what looked like a fishhook.
Kavya rubbed her forehead, eyes stinging from lack of sleep. She hadn't slept more than two hours a night since the case began. The media had christened the killer:
The Red Moon Butcher.
The nickname made her sick. It sounded like a horror story, not real flesh and blood. But the murders were real. Brutally so.
She flipped through the forensics report again. Latex fibers. Blue-gray, the kind found in synthetic gloves. No fingerprints. No DNA. No hair. Whoever this was, they were careful. Methodical. She circled the line:
"Wounds show consistency in depth and angle, possibly indicating the same handedness and blade type as previous victims. All inflicted post-restraint."
Too clean. Too controlled. Not the chaos of a spontaneous killer. This was ritualistic.
She reached for her notepad. Notes scribbled from the first murder bled into the second. Victim profiles varied slightly—different colleges, no obvious connection—but all loners. All with minor police records. All vanished during full moon nights. Always found within a 24-hour window.
"Too clean," she muttered, tapping her pen.
"Too precise for a teen."
She paused.
The words tasted strange in her mouth.
She thought of Aryan for a moment—her soft-spoken son who called her "Ma'am" around the station, who made tea for the constables, who got straight A's and carried himself like a textbook model student. He volunteered at the blood donation camp just last week. He smiled at everyone. He never raised his voice.
But something odd tugged at her memory.
At the last family dinner, he had commented on the angle of an arterial bleed. Casually. Jokingly.
She'd laughed it off.
But now…
She flipped to the back of the forensics packet. Close-up photos of the symbol carved into the victim's neck. Her fingers hovered over the image, tracing it in the air. It looked familiar.
She stood up, crossed the room to her bookshelf, and yanked down an old Vedic symbols reference her ex-husband used to read obsessively. Flipping through the brittle pages, she found it.
There it was. Page 223.
"Surya-astra," she whispered. "Sun weapon. Wielded by the righteous destroyer."
It wasn't a coincidence.
And now she saw the link. The victims—all men—were bullies. Abusers. One had been accused of sexual assault in college but was never convicted. Another had pending drug charges. The third had beat his girlfriend, but she'd withdrawn the case out of fear.
Was this revenge? Vigilante justice?
Or something deeper… more personal?
She grabbed her folder and read the latest autopsy again.
Synthetic latex residue under the nails. Torn at the edge.
Possible glove malfunction during struggle.
She underlined it.
Aryan had been wearing gloves lately.
She told herself it was because of his sensitive skin. He had mentioned a reaction to chalk. Or maybe it was detergent. Something benign.
She didn't know it was to avoid fingerprints.
She didn't know he had stood just a few feet away from the last victim, whispering verses from a poem he wrote himself, before slowly digging the blade into the man's chest.
She didn't know he cleaned the blade with lemon juice and boiling water.
She didn't know he cataloged every kill in a leather notebook hidden behind the loose panel in his study table.
All she knew was that the killer was learning.
And he was learning fast.
She stared at the corkboard behind her desk, where red string connected photos, dates, and scribbled quotes. She pinned the newest picture beside the others.
Then she lit another cigarette.
The flame flickered in her reflection on the window.
She didn't see her son's face in that glass.
Not yet.
But soon.
***********************************************