Beneath the moon’s unholy, ghost-lit glow,
Three witches knelt where curling vapors massed;
Their voices rose through midnight’s breath of woe,
To snare the soul of one who wandered past.

A traveler came with slow and weary tread,
His lantern wan, its trembling light grown thin;
He shivered ‘neath the dreams that terror bred,
Yet dared to gaze upon their ancient sin.

“Old hags,” he cried, “what arcane elixirs brew,
What whispered rites corrode this hallowed hill?”
They grinned as spectral airs about them blew,
Their eyes aflame with prophecy and will.

“We stir the grief that haunted years have made,
And bind the lies that fester deep inside;
For long ago, by broken vows betrayed,
Our mortal hearts in endless torment died.”

They bade him taste the cauldron’s lurid green,
He laughed and drank the strange, forbidden wine;
The stars fell silent above the haunted scene,
His words grew dim within the veil of cruel design.

The eldest witch grew thin and slowly decayed,
Her withered hands lost form in spectral mist;
Within his trembling heart, the final price was weighed,
A soul exchanged, his former world dismissed.

The traveler shrieked, transformed in the old hag’s guise,
His once-fair features gnarled and twisted by lament;
She strode away, now gleaming with his stolen eyes,
And vanished down the moonlit road where once his youth was spent.

And so their haunting song persists as pale dawn slowly breaks,
Three twisted shadows wandering, long bereft of earthly grace;
They lure the vain, whose harsher judgment makes
A mockery of beauty’s fragile face, now marked by time’s embrace.