In the wilds of Lancashire looms Pendle Hill, a mound of earth steeped in the blackest sorcery. Here, in 1612, the infamous Pendle Witches met their doom, hanged for deeds so vile that the very ground recoiled. The hill broods beneath a sky perpetually bruised, its slopes cloaked in gnarled trees that twist as though in agony. At its summit, the wind carries the echo of screams, and the soil seems to writhe with the memory of blood.
The spirits of the witches—Demdike, Chattox, and their ilk—linger still, their forms warped by hatred into abominations of shadow and flame. They appear at dusk, their eyes hollow sockets, their fingers claw-like and dripping with a substance too dark to be blood. The Malkin Tower, their lost lair, is said to rise from the mist on moonless nights, a phantom edifice of splintered wood and stone, its windows aglow with a sickly light.
Those who climb the hill report a suffocating dread, a sensation of being watched by eyes unseen, and the sudden grasp of icy hands upon their throats.
I ascended that cursed height under a waning moon, my breath stolen by the weight of the air. The ground pulsed beneath me, and from the fog emerged a figure—gaunt, eyeless, its mouth a rictus of malice. It spoke my name in a voice that was no voice, and I fled, pursued by laughter that was the sound of death itself. Pendle Hill is a crucible of evil, where the witches’ wrath endures, and the living are but moths to their flame.
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