Читать онлайн Academy of Lies. Episode 1: Welcome to the Academy of Lies

Prologue

They called this place The Academy of Lies. Behind the tall stone walls of this ancient school, falsehood was regarded as the highest virtue – and truth, a mere bargaining chip in the grand game of power. Beneath the gothic arches and cold marble vaults thrived a society where ordinary morality had ceased to exist. What the outside world would call vice was here elevated to the status of law. The school appeared on no map; its very existence was a secret known only to a chosen few.

At night, the Academy of Lies looked like a medieval fortress lost high in the mountains: its jagged towers disappeared into the ink-black sky, and only the faint flicker of torches on the walls betrayed the life within. In the very heart of the building – a vast Great Hall – hundreds of candles illuminated the ancient marble ceiling. The warm, trembling light slid across carved columns crowned with stone gargoyles and scattered into shards of color on stained glass windows. The floor of black and white marble bore a pattern of intertwining snakes and masks – as if the earth itself warned newcomers that cunning and deceit ruled here. The tall pointed windows, painted with allegories of deception and triumph, blazed crimson and gold whenever a candle flame shivered in the draft. Above the archway of the hall, a Latin motto was carved in stone: “Vis est in dolo” – “There is strength in deceit.” Shadows and whispers drifted through the air, thick with tension.