AURELIA — The Last of the Empire A Literary Historical Novella Inspired by the 1,700-Year-Old Sarcophagus Discovered Near Budapest When archaeologists opened a sealed limestone sarcophagus outside Budapest—untouched since the late Roman Empire—they found the remains of a young girl, beautifully preserved by time and ritual. Her name is unknown. Her story has never been told. This book gives her that story. Set in the twilight years of Aquincum, a Roman frontier city collapsing under plague and abandonment, Aurelia follows the final weeks of a young girl whose gentle life becomes the silent echo of a dying civilization. As disease spreads through the city, as temples fall quiet and church bells stop ringing, Aurelia’s world folds into a haunting, fragile beauty that mirrors the fate of Rome itself. Her father—an aging glassmaker. Her mother—who carries the grief of a fading world. Her beloved Marcus—returning to her only as a vision through mist and memory. Aurelia moves through these final days with a calm clarity, as if walking toward a light only she can see. When the city empties and the empire retreats, she becomes its last witness , and her sealed stone chamber becomes the only voice Aquincum leaves behind. Nearly seventeen centuries later, when her sarcophagus is opened, it is not merely an archaeological discovery; it is an awakening. The silence she carried resurfaces as a story—of love, loss, plague, time, and the quiet heroism of ordinary lives swallowed by history. Aurelia is a requiem for a forgotten girl, and a meditation on the fragility of civilizations. Elegiac, atmospheric, and deeply human, this novella bridges the distance between the ancient and the modern, reminding us that even in the collapse of empires, a single life can shine.