A Novel of Collapse, Silence, and Survival in the Shadow of Rome. In the winter of 536 CE, the world begins to die. The sun no longer yields. Snow falls like ash across a war-scarred Italy, and Rome, disciplined, monstrous, and eternal, marches on. Theodoric, a hollowed-out Gothic warrior, has survived what no man should: famine, slaughter, and the slow, silent unraveling of civilization. Haunted by the ghosts of the dead and the weight of memory, he finds himself drawn once more into a war that offers no glory, only the chance to die among the last who still resist. As the Eastern Roman legions advance in inhuman formation, cutting through what remains of Gothic resistance, Theodoric and his few starving comrades prepare for one final stand. Their weapons are rust. Their gods are silent. But they remember. And memory may be the only thing left worth fighting for. Ad Finem is a brutal, lyrical meditation on war, memory, and the collapse of meaning at the edge of empire. For readers of Cormac McCarthy, Andrzej Sapkowski, and Mary Renault, this is historical fiction stripped to its bones: grim, spare, and unforgettable.