Aarav believed the danger had passed. From everything he had observed, the CBI’s suspicion seemed to have drifted away from him. The café incident had worked exactly as he had calculated. Mehra and Raghav had witnessed him sitting there the entire time while another murder took place miles away. As far as logic was concerned, the trail should have ended there.

  But reality was rarely that simple. While Aarav allowed himself a moment of calm, the CBI had quietly discovered something that could potentially change the entire game.

  Inside the hostel room, the usual noise of the evening filled the air. Ritesh was deeply immersed in his game, fingers moving rapidly across the keyboard while bursts of gunfire echoed through his headphones. Anish, as always, lay on the bed scrolling endlessly through short videos on his phone.

  Suddenly he sat upright. “Dude, what the hell is this Monster freak now?” Anish exclaimed.

  Ritesh glanced back without removing his headphones. “What happened?”

  Aarav looked up from his laptop. “What are you talking about?”

  Anish swung the phone toward them. “Look at this. The internet has completely lost its mind.”

  On the screen, a video compilation was playing. It was a collection of clips from different channels, influencers, and conspiracy vloggers discussing the mysterious figure the media had started calling The Monster.

  One commentator spoke dramatically in front of a flashing background. “Some people believe this so-called Monster is not a person at all,” the man said. “According to several online theories, it might be a supernatural entity targeting corrupt individuals across the country.”

  The video cut to another clip. A social media influencer sat in front of a microphone, speaking rapidly.

  “Look at the pattern,” she said. “First the telecom building, then the company president, then a politician accused of rape, and now a journalist with multiple corruption allegations. This isn’t random violence. Someone is deliberately targeting powerful people.”

  Another segment appeared showing a panel discussion from a news channel. “Whether this person is a vigilante or a criminal,” one analyst argued, “the fact remains that the government cannot allow a self-appointed executioner to operate freely.”

  The footage switched again. This time it showed a press briefing by a government spokesperson.

  “In response to the recent incidents,” the spokesperson said firmly, “the government has approved the formation of a special joint task force to assist the CBI in identifying and capturing the individual responsible for these crimes.”

  The words NATIONAL TASK FORCE AGAINST THE MONSTER CASE flashed across the screen.

  Anish paused the video and looked at his friends. “Bro, this is getting insane,” he said. “The whole country is talking about this guy now.”

  Ritesh removed his headphones. “Yeah, and look at the comments. Some people are literally supporting him.”

  Anish scrolled through the reactions beneath the video. “Look at this one,” he said, reading aloud. “‘The Monster is the only one delivering justice in this corrupt country.’”

  Ritesh shook his head. “People are crazy.”

  Aarav closed his laptop slowly and leaned back in his chair.

  “What do you think?” Anish asked him. “You’re the philosopher here.”

  Aarav looked at the phone screen again where the image of the mysterious “Monster” symbol filled the frame.

  “I think,” he said calmly, “people believe in monsters only when the system stops believing in justice.”

  Ritesh frowned slightly. “That still doesn’t make killing people right.”

  Aarav did not argue. Instead, he simply gave a faint smile and looked away from the screen. Across the internet, theories about the Monster continued to spread like wildfire.

  But inside the CBI headquarters, far away from the chaos of online speculation, Director Anant Mehra had begun examining a discovery that could change everything they thought they knew about Aarav Vardan.

  Aarav knew arguing was pointless. People rarely understood the things that actually benefited them. In his mind, the corrupt individuals he eliminated were nothing more than flaws in a broken system, bugs that needed fixing. He was simply correcting them.

  Yet humanity had a strange tendency to oppose the very force that tried to help it. Across the country, people were terrified of the Monster. News channels debated his identity, the government formed task forces, and the public demanded that he be captured as quickly as possible.

  But where had this urgency been when corruption thrived openly? Where had this outrage been when injustice ruined countless lives? Why did no one rise with the same fury against those evils? The question had begun to haunt Aarav.

  For the first time in a long while, he felt restless. He closed his laptop, stepped outside the hostel, and walked toward the quiet garden area. The campus was unusually calm that night. A faint breeze moved through the trees while the distant noise of students faded into the background.

  Aarav looked up at the sky. “I don’t know if there is a God,” he said quietly. “But these humans believe in you.”

  His voice carried a trace of bitterness. "For them, God is the ultimate hero. The final symbol of justice.”

  He walked slowly toward a garden bench and sat down.

  “Whatever God does is always justified in their eyes,” he continued. “They never question him.”

  Aarav leaned back slightly and looked at the clouds drifting across the dark sky. “So why do they question me?”

  He gave a faint, humorless smile. "I know I’m not God,” he said softly. “But what I’m doing isn’t any different.”

  The words left his mouth slowly. "And yet… it annoys me more than it should.”

  The moon that night was dim, barely lighting the campus garden. Shadows stretched across the ground, blending with the quiet darkness around him. Aarav stared upward again.

  “You there, God?” he asked.

  For a moment, only silence answered him. Then Aarav exhaled and lowered his gaze.

  “Maybe you’re not,” he murmured. “Maybe that’s why someone like me has to exist.”

  He sat there for several minutes, thinking.

  Suddenly Aarav stood up from the bench. The quiet reflection that had filled his mind moments ago vanished. Something inside him had reached a decision.

  Without another word to the empty night sky, he turned and walked back toward the hostel. Inside the room, the lights were already off. Anish had fallen asleep with his phone still lying beside him, while Ritesh slept on the other bed, snoring so loudly that the sound echoed faintly into the corridor. Aarav lay down silently. Hours passed. The digital clock beside his bed quietly turned to midnight.

  Aarav’s eyes opened. He rose from the bed without making a sound and stepped out into the corridor. The hostel hallway was dark and empty, illuminated only by a dim yellow tube light near the staircase. Behind him, Ritesh continued snoring loudly. Aarav stepped outside the building and looked up at the silent sky.

  Then he spoke five names softly, almost like a ritual. “Abhinav Pandey… Sarfaraz Alam… Manoj Sharma… Jaspreet Singh… Abhishek Choudhary.”

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  The wind moved gently through the trees as if the night itself was listening. Aarav’s eyes glowed faintly red.

  In the next moment he rose into the air and disappeared into the darkness above the campus.

  Abhinav Pandey was the first.

  Two years earlier, Abhinav had been the president of a powerful student organization in Lucknow. His speeches were full of promises about protecting students and fighting injustice. But behind that public image was a different man.

  A first-year student had once filed a complaint accusing Abhinav and his friends of brutally assaulting him inside the hostel after he refused to join their political group.

  The case never reached the police. Abhinav’s father was a senior government officer, and the complaint disappeared within days. The injured student quietly left the university and returned to his village.

  Abhinav continued his political career without consequence.

  That night he was sleeping comfortably inside his apartment. The ceiling fan spun lazily above him. Then the fan suddenly stopped. The room grew strangely still. Abhinav stirred slightly in his sleep, confused by the silence. When he opened his eyes, someone was standing beside his bed. A pair of glowing red eyes stared down at him.

  Before he could scream, his body lifted into the air as if gravity itself had abandoned him. Within seconds he vanished into the night.

  Sarfaraz Alam was next.

  He ran a popular coaching center in Delhi that promised government exam preparation to thousands of hopeful students. But behind the glossy advertisements was a ruthless scam.

  Sarfaraz deliberately leaked fake exam papers to desperate candidates and collected enormous bribes, promising guaranteed results.

  Hundreds of students had wasted their savings believing his lies. Some lost years of their lives chasing false hope. One student had even taken his own life after realizing the exam paper he bought from Sarfaraz was fake.

  Yet Sarfaraz continued running his business openly. That night he was counting money inside his office when the power suddenly went out. The darkness lasted only a few seconds. When the lights returned, someone stood across the room. Sarfaraz’s smile vanished. The red eyes watching him were not human. The window behind him shattered outward.

  By the time anyone in the building noticed the noise, Sarfaraz Alam had disappeared.

  Manoj Sharma was a contractor in Jaipur.

  His company had won several government contracts to build affordable housing for low-income families. But Manoj had replaced half the construction materials with cheaper alternatives, pocketing the remaining funds.

  Within a year, two of those buildings developed severe structural cracks. One rainy night a balcony collapsed. A mother and her young child died in the accident. The investigation was quietly buried. Manoj attended political parties and charity events, proudly calling himself a “self-made businessman.”

  That night he stepped out onto the balcony of his luxurious house to take a phone call. A cold wind suddenly rushed past him. Before he could react, an unseen force grabbed him and pulled him into the sky. His phone fell to the ground.

  Jaspreet Singh owned a chain of private hospitals in Punjab. Publicly he promoted himself as a humanitarian businessman. Privately he was involved in illegal organ trafficking.

  Poor patients were manipulated into signing documents they didn’t understand. Organs disappeared. Records vanished. Those who tried to question the system found themselves threatened into silence.

  Jaspreet was driving home from a late-night meeting when the engine of his car suddenly died in the middle of an empty highway. He stepped outside to inspect the problem. That was when the shadow descended from above. His terrified scream vanished into the darkness of the road.

  The last name was Abhishek Choudhary. Unlike the others, Abhishek was not powerful. He was a small-time criminal who specialized in blackmail. He secretly recorded videos of couples in hotels and then extorted money from them, threatening to leak the footage online.

  Many victims had paid silently to protect their families from shame. One woman had lost everything after her video was released when she refused to pay. That night Abhishek was busy editing another video on his computer.

  The screen suddenly flickered. Then it went completely black. Behind him, a voice spoke calmly.

  “Finished recording?”

  Abhishek slowly turned around.

  The last thing he saw was a pair of glowing red eyes.

  Before sunrise, five men had vanished from five different cities across the country.

  With the speed his powers granted him, distances between cities meant nothing. What took airplanes hours took him only minutes. And somewhere above the sleeping world, Aarav carried them toward a destination none of them could imagine.

  The next morning began like any other in Pune. Lawyers, clerks, and visitors slowly gathered around the massive structure of the Pune High Court, preparing for another ordinary day of hearings and arguments.

  But the ordinary lasted only a few seconds. At first it was a scream. Someone standing near the front gate looked upward and shouted in horror. People around him followed his gaze. Five bodies hung high above the court entrance.

  They had been suspended from the upper structure of the building, their lifeless forms swaying slowly in the morning wind. Their clothes were torn, their bodies badly bruised and burned. It was clear they had been beaten mercilessly before death. For a moment, no one moved. Then panic erupted.

  Some people ran away immediately, terrified by the horrifying sight. Others stood frozen in place, unable to believe what they were seeing. Within seconds phones began appearing everywhere as witnesses started recording the scene.

  “Call the police!”

  “My God… what is this?”

  “Are they dead?”

  The names of the victims spread quickly through the growing crowd.

  Abhinav Pandey.

  Sarfaraz Alam.

  Manoj Sharma.

  Jaspreet Singh.

  Abhishek Choudhary.

  Several journalists who had arrived for court coverage immediately began filming. The entire scene was chaos. But before anyone could even attempt to bring the bodies down, something else happened.

  A sudden murmur spread through the crowd. Someone pointed upward again.

  “Look!”

  Above the High Court building, a figure slowly rose into the air. Gasps spread through the crowd as the figure began levitating above the rooftop. The person wore dark clothing, and his face was hidden behind a terrifying mask shaped like a monstrous creature.

  The Monster had appeared.

  Fear rippled through the gathering. Some people backed away instinctively while others remained rooted in place, unable to look away.

  Phones continued recording. The figure hovered silently for a moment, letting the horror of the scene sink into the crowd.

  Then he spoke. His voice carried clearly across the courtyard.

  “People of this corrupted society… listen carefully.”

  The crowd grew quiet.

  “This… is justice.” He gestured toward the hanging bodies. “These men destroyed the lives of innocent people. They abused power, cheated the helpless, and treated human lives as if they meant nothing.”

  His voice remained calm. “They were dishonest. They were cruel. They believed their influence could protect them forever.”

  A faint wind moved across the building as the Monster slowly lowered his hand.

  “So I brought them to justice.”

  By now police vehicles were rushing toward the High Court complex. Armed officers quickly surrounded the area and raised their rifles toward the figure hovering above them.

  “Get down now!” one officer shouted.

  The Monster looked at them. “And yet… you believe I am the criminal.”

  More police arrived.

  “You will not hesitate to shoot me,” he continued. “Because in your eyes, I am the threat.”

  Without warning, the officers opened fire. Gunshots cracked loudly through the air. But the bullets never reached him. Every single bullet stopped in mid-air. Gasps erupted from the crowd as dozens of suspended bullets hung motionless in front of the floating figure, frozen by an invisible force.

  The Monster slowly raised his hand. The bullets dropped harmlessly to the ground.

  “And still you want me dead.”

  His voice grew colder. “You will never accept me as your savior.”

  He paused, looking down at the terrified crowd and the stunned police officers.

  "But that does not matter to me.”

  “My work will not end.”

  The masked figure slowly began rising higher above the court building. “This is my final warning.”

  His voice echoed across the courtyard. “Stand in my way. Try to stop me.”

  A faint glow burned behind the mask.

  “And then… I will show you the real Monster.”

  In the next instant, the figure shot into the sky and vanished above the city. Below, the crowd remained frozen in shock. Phones continued recording. Within minutes the entire nation would see the footage.

  And the world would finally understand something terrifying. The Monster was no longer hiding.