Chapter 413

The city never felt right anymore. Not after they found the first body. It was in the alley behind a butcher shop, half hidden beneath a pile of old crates. The man who stumbled upon it thought it was just another homeless person, but it wasn't. It was someone's son. Someone's father. He didn't see what had happened at first. Not until he took a step closer.

It wasn't just a body. It was a person… chewed. Torn apart, but not entirely. The limbs were still attached, but the skin was gone from the chest. The ribs were exposed like a cracked door. Flesh was missing in pieces, big chunks as if something had gnawed on him like a rat would gnaw on a corpse.

The man panicked, bolted. He told no one for hours. But after he did, it was too late. People started disappearing.

It was slow at first. One person every few nights. A woman here, a teenager there. A couple more after that. The police, of course, had no idea. They didn't believe the stories about a "troll" running loose in the city. They didn't think such a thing could exist. But the people who vanished… their bodies were never found. Not at first.

It wasn't until the fourth victim—an older man this time, someone who worked the night shift at a gas station—was found that the rumors started. His body, too, was missing huge portions, pieces of skin, muscle, and bone. Only… his arms were gone, right up to the shoulder. As if they had been eaten or gnawed away.

That's when people began locking their doors at night. But that didn't help.

The creature grew bolder. Its hunger didn't stop. And neither did the city's people. They went about their business as usual. The troll didn't care.

Ben, a 28-year-old warehouse manager, wasn't a believer in fairy tales. Trolls, demons, ghosts—he scoffed at the lot of them. He worked long hours, often alone, the grind of his job like a needle pushing into his skull, a constant reminder that the world wasn't a fair place. People disappeared, sure, but that happened every day. Murders, kidnappings, drug deals gone bad—they were normal. Trolls weren't.

Ben made the mistake of working late one night, long past midnight, when the sky was dark as soot. His warehouse was on the outskirts of town, a dismal stretch of steel and concrete. Not many people came by. It was easy to hide. Easy to ignore.

But that night, there was a strange smell in the air. Metallic, bitter, like iron left in the sun too long. He thought it was just the leftover fumes from the chemicals in the warehouse, but it stayed. It grew stronger the longer he stayed there. He started to feel uneasy, a knot forming in his stomach.

His phone buzzed. A message from his sister, asking if he was coming home soon. He read it, sighed, and tucked the phone into his pocket. It wasn't until the lights flickered that he thought something might be wrong.

The power was out for maybe thirty seconds, a brief pause in the hum of machinery and city lights. When the lights came back on, Ben saw something in the corner of the warehouse.

At first, it was just a dark shape—too large to be human but not clear enough to make out. Then, slowly, it emerged from the shadows.

A silhouette of something monstrous. Something far from human.

The thing was massive, crouched low on all fours like an animal. Its limbs were thick and misshapen, arms ending in claws that scraped the ground. But what terrified him the most were its eyes—deep-set and glowing faintly red in the dim light. Its mouth was wide, stretched, and full of jagged teeth, stained with something black and sticky. Its skin was leathery, marked with patches of scabs and raw flesh, where something had gnawed it down to the bone. The stench hit him like a slap. Rot. Decay.

Ben froze, his mind unable to process the reality of the creature before him.

The troll tilted its head, as though sensing his fear, and then it crawled forward, its movements slow but deliberate. Every step it took left a smear of black, tar-like fluid on the floor.

His heart slammed against his ribs, blood roaring in his ears. His legs felt like lead. He tried to back away, but his feet wouldn't move.

The troll stopped just short of him, its face grotesque in its proximity. It sniffed the air, curling its lips back as though savoring the scent. It reached out with a clawed hand, and Ben could see the sharpness of the nails—long and gnarled.

Ben bolted. He ran.

But the troll was faster.

He didn't get far. The thing reached out and grabbed him by the arm, its grip like iron. Ben screamed, kicking, trying to break free, but the creature's claws dug into his skin, tearing through his jacket and flesh. His blood splattered on the concrete floor.

The troll dragged him to the corner of the room, its breath hot and foul against his ear. Ben thrashed, kicking and punching, but it didn't matter. It never did.

The creature sank its teeth into his shoulder, tearing away chunks of flesh, biting into his neck. Ben screamed again, but it was muffled by the creature's gory mouth. His body convulsed in pain, but it didn't last long.

The troll chewed, slow, methodical. It took its time.

Ben was alive for much longer than he should have been. His mind screamed, but his body didn't respond. The pain seemed endless. As the creature took bite after bite, piece by piece, Ben's life bled out, slow and steady.

The last thing he saw was the red glow of the troll's eyes. And then, he was nothing.

The city kept moving. People kept walking the streets. The police? They still had no answers.

No one ever connected the pieces. No one ever understood why it happened.

The troll kept eating. Slowly dwindling, growing smaller with each victim. The fewer people there were, the more it needed. And with every bite, it became more desperate. More bloodthirsty.

In the end, the city didn't stand a chance. Not against something like that.

Ben's sister—his only family—didn't believe the stories at first. She thought he had just disappeared, gone off somewhere. But when the police started talking about the troll, when they mentioned how people's bodies were found, torn and chewed, she felt a chill she couldn't shake. She thought of him. She thought of his face in his last text, his promise to be home soon.

She never heard from him again.

The people who stayed behind never saw it coming. They didn't know that the thing that had eaten them was slowly shrinking, becoming more insidious, more difficult to find. It didn't matter. It was still out there. Still hungry.

And when the last of them was gone, when the city was a ghost town, the creature stood alone in the rubble, smaller now but still living. Its eyes still burned red in the dark, and it knew one thing: it would never stop eating. It would never stop.