The Lies We Taught at Blackwood
A Dark Academia Novel

About this book:

Arthur Morrow arrives at Blackwood Academy seeking a fresh start—what he finds is a past he never lived. The elite Vermont boarding school is a Gothic labyrinth of soot-stained spires, silent corridors, and students who move like ghosts through a curriculum designed to break wills, not expand minds. In his locked study, Arthur discovers a yellowed note in his own handwriting, signed with a private doodle he hasn't drawn in a decade: *If you are reading this again, you must not let Albright give you the tea.* The headmaster's welcome gift—a steaming cup left on his threshold—sits cooling on a tray outside his door.

As the autumn term begins, Arthur is drawn into the orbit of the Aethelgard: five students in charcoal jackets who hold keys to archives the faculty cannot access, answer to no one, and seem to have been expecting him. Their leader, Julian Sterling, watches Arthur with the flat, yellow-eyed recognition of someone studying a specimen. Meanwhile, the school's routines curdle into ritual—mandatory tea, corrected memories, a bell tower that rings for no one—and Arthur's grasp on his own history begins to fracture. He has never been to Vermont. So why does he know which floorboard creaks in the west wing? Why does the Latin Society meet in a room that doesn't appear on any map?

At Blackwood, the curriculum is a cage, the faculty are jailers, and the students are something far older than seventeen. To survive the term, Arthur must decide whether he's losing his mind—or remembering a life the school erased. But the note in his pocket warns him: he's been here before. And last time, he didn't make it out.