Year 2779 AUC. The Roman Empire never fell. And the man who writes its history is about to discover everything he's written is a lie. Marcus Varo Cassius is a Senior Lector at the Scriptorium — the empire's propaganda arm — tasked with shaping the official narrative of a civilization that has endured for nearly three millennia. Three billion citizens believe in the divine, immortal Augustus who has ruled without interruption for four hundred years. Marcus has spent his career making sure they keep believing it. Then a sealed cache in the Imperial Archive reveals what no one is permitted to know: the Emperor has been dead for three hundred years. The Collegium — Rome's vast, faceless surveillance apparatus — has been running the world in his name ever since. Every law. Every war. Every word Marcus has ever written. Now Marcus holds the proof. And in an empire where information is the only weapon that matters, knowing the truth is the most dangerous thing a person can do. Perfect for fans of George Orwell's 1984, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, and the moral complexity of Gladiator — Pax Aeterna is a propulsive thriller about silence, surveillance, and the spark that starts everything.