The scream caught in her throat, suffocated by fear. Little Hayler Lewis stood frozen, eyes wide with terror, as an unspeakable scene unfolded before her in the dimly lit living room. 

Two tall figures dressed in black burst through the front door like vengeful wraiths. Their faces were obscured by skull masks, eye sockets leering with malice. Hayler trembled, clutching her worn teddy bear tighter.

"Where is it?" one of the intruders growled, brandishing a wicked-looking knife.

Hayler's mother, Claire, instinctively shielded her younger sister Emily with her own body. "I don't know what you're talking about!" she cried, voice wavering with panic.

The knife-wielder snatched a porcelain vase from the mantle and hurled it. The shattering ceramic exploded across the room in a starburst of shards. "Don't lie to me, bitch!"

The figure loomed over Claire, blade raised to strike. "Last chance to give it up. Where's the stash?"

Realization crept into Claire's blue eyes, swiftly replaced by defiance. "Get out of my house, you pieces of shit"

Her words were cut off by a brutal backhand across the face from the second intruder. Hayler muffled a shriek as her mother crumpled to the floor, the metallic tang of blood filling the air. Emily screamed in terror.

"No! Leave them alone!" Claire sobbed, cradling a bloody lip.

The knife-wielder seized her by the hair, jerking her head back in a brutal grip. "Tell me where it is or you're gonna watch your brats die first."

Claire trembled violently, resolve cracking. "O-okay...okay, it's in the basement..."

The masked figure shoved her towards the basement door, knife angled at her throat to herd her along. Claire shot one last look towards the paralyzed Hayler and her sister. A tear slid down her cheek.

"I'm so sorry, my angels..."

Then her world exploded in a crimson mist.

The knife arced through the air in a silvery blur before cleaving through Claire's neck in one brutal stroke. Hayler watched in numb, childlike incomprehension as her mother's decapitated head thudded to the hardwood floor, eyes already dimming.

Her scream finally released in a piercing wail of agony and shock. The intruders looked up, regarding the cowering child for a beat.

"Take care of the brats," one of them growled.

Emily began shrieking wildly as the other figure stormed towards her, blade leading like the fang of a viper about to strike. Hayler couldn't process it. This was a nightmare...it couldn't be real...it just couldn't-

Emily's body jerked as the blade found its mark, slashing her throat with cruel efficiency. The little girl went deathly still, blue eyes staring blankly at her traumatized sister.

The nightmare made flesh surged towards Hayler then. She tried to run, legs rubbery and unresponsive, feet stumbling on the slick pool of her mother's blood. The glinting blade descended on her-

Her eyes snapped open, chest heaving with labored gasps. Hayler jolted upright in bed, bedsheets twisted around her trembling body like ghostly vines. She sucked in shuddering breaths. The nightmares again.

Rubbing her aching eyes with trembling fingers, she glanced at the digital clock. 4:16 AM. Around the same time it always yanked her from fitful slumber into the jaws of her own private hell.

She shifted position, grimacing as the sheets clung damply to her back and thighs – soaked with a cold sweat. She felt clammy and drained, as if the nightmare siphoned away more of her soul each time. Was this to be her eternal punishment?

Never to escape that accursed night? Forever reliving the brutal robbery that claimed her real family two decades ago when she was just four years old...

Her gaze drifted to the worn teddy bear slumped in the corner of her bed, missing an eye and fraying from age. The one tattered link to those final moments of innocence before her world shattered. Before she witnessed her own mother and sister murdered right before her eyes.

Before the trauma fractured her psyche into pieces that could never be reassembled. Those acts of shocking depravity planted the rotten seeds that blossomed within her while being raised by the loving Lewis family.

They nurtured the warped, all-consuming obsession that justice could only be achieved by judging the wicked and eliminating them herself.

Her life had become a double existence after choosing that darker path at fifteen years old. By day, she was Sergeant Hayler Lewis – a diligent and respected member of the Metropolitan Police Force's forensics unit. An expert in reconstructing crime scenes and analyzing blood spatter evidence.

But by night...by night she was something else. Something born of that primal wound. An apex predator brought into existence to identify evil, stalk it to its darkest lairs, and deliver savage judgment before disappearing like a ghost into the ether.

The infamous "Redeemer" – Judged by Lead.

Some sixty lives had been precisely extinguished on her crusade, and she felt neither guilt nor remorse. Only the faintest pangs of regret for the lost potential of good she saw flickering in certain souls...before they succumbed to the darkness.

As she swung her feet over the edge of the bed and planted them on the cold wooden floor, Hayler's thoughts churned with that nihilistic reality. According to her code – her ironclad system of principles – she alone was chosen to purge this world of its monsters. And the lines between justice and depravity continued to blur.

Most would see her as no better than the depraved degenerates she executed. But she disagreed. There was a complexity of method to her work they'd never comprehend. An artistry. And sobriety that made each death a precise forensic masterpiece.

Impossible to detect, let alone link together as the work of a serial killer. In their world of corrupt politicians, bloodthirsty tyrants, sadistic rapists, child abusers and other scum, she was Judge, Jury and Executioner. Her kills were righteously justified, ordained by a higher power.

Eliminating cancers that spread suffering in their wake, only to be willfully ignored or enabled by a broken system. She was the surgical blade excising these malignancies from society for good.

As she stood and crossed to the bedroom mirror, Hayler regarded the grim, hollow-eyed reflection staring back at her from within the glass. Angular features, skin too pale and sallow, dark circles like bruises beneath those piercing gray eyes.

A ghost, just like her vigilante namesake. A hollow husk threading a frayed tether between the worlds of light and shadow. That fragmented psyche barely clinging together as it strained under the perpetual weight of its depraved crusade.

Hair lank and disheveled from restless slumber, Hayler sighed deeply before padding into the bathroom. She splashed some cool water over her face, then lifted her head to stare into the mirror again. Eyes soaked with weariness and something else...a terrible resignation to the path she willingly chose.

This was her calling, her twisted Gospel of righteous damnation. And she would walk that path until her last breath extinguished in service to her cause. No matter how psychologically withering...no matter how much of her blackened soul still remained.

She drew in a steadying breath, squaring her shoulders. Soon it would be time to shed her nocturnal skin and become Sergeant Lewis once more. The diligent forensics expert, incapable of the staggering brutality ascribed to the "Redeemer" killer.

The facade was a crucial one to maintain. No one aside from herself must ever uncover the truth – that the blood-curdling legendary slasher stalked the halls of the very police force sworn to stop her.

That a brilliant but tormented woman slept restlessly each night, dreaming of raining divine cleansing purges upon the wicked souls of humanity.

A creature of vengeful contrition who dwelled within both the hallowed light of justice and the profane shadow of lawless execution. Forever seeking absolution for the horrors branded upon her soul twenty years ago in that tiny living room.

Slipping back into bed, Hayler's breathing steadied as she closed her eyes, drifting mercifully into a dreamless plane of gray until the buzzer summoned her to another day blending both roles. Sergeant and Redeemer.

And though it may ultimately consume the tattered remnants of her being...she would serve that dark calling unto oblivion.

To be continue...