Ashes of the Forgotten Ashes of the forgotten T ha n o s Ka l a m i da s Thanos Kalamidas Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Ashes of the Forgotten Ashes of the Forgotten Thanos Kalamidas Thanos Kalamidas An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Ashes of the Forgotten T he Johannes Kepler coasted silently through the void beyond Pluto, sensors passive, crew tense. Captain Mia Tran stood at the com- mand dais, watching the blackness through aug- mented overlays. They weren’t out here to be seen. “Still nothing on scope?” she asked, voice clipped. Lieutenant Ezra Gibbons tapped the side of his neural uplink, eyes flicking with data. “Ghosts. Faint radiation wash out of the Oort Cloud, like... some- thing blinked into existence for a second. Then gone.” “Check spectral bleed. Anything artificial?” Ezra hesitated. “Yeah. The pattern resembles a Gra- vitic Imprint, like a ship running with a dark-fold drive. But the scale, Captain, if that was a ship, it was kilometers across. Possibly... city-sized.” Thanos Kalamidas Tran turned slowly. “That’s impossible.” “Tell that to the void.” * * * * * * * Twelve Hours Earlier In low Earth orbit, the Lagrange Relay station went dark. At first, no one noticed. Then data from a solar flare that hadn’t existed began streaming in from heliosats. Time dilation anomalies triggered alarms in three separate orbital observatories. By the time Earth’s defense network came online, something massive had already phased into realspace just be- yond Neptune’s orbit. * * * * * * * The creature wasn’t a ship, at least not by human standards. It shimmered, plates of something resem- bling obsidian and volcanic glass forming geometric patterns that flexed like muscle. Between the cracks pulsed dull, green light, cold, ancient, and hungry. On its hull were carvings—symbols from a lan- guage no one alive had ever seen before. Ashes of the Forgotten But somewhere, in the archives of an AI that no longer had a body, buried in the ruins of a Martian dig site long abandoned, the translation protocol blinked awake. “ALEREXAT—TRIUMVIRATE OF DUST. SCION OF THE EIGHTH BLOODFIRE. CLAIMING AN- CIENT RIGHT.” * * * * * * * Deep Orbit — Near Neptune “Something just exited phase-space again!” Ezra shouted. Mia stared at the display. Another ship or creature, now mirrored the first, but this one was different: sleek, translucent, iridescent with a kaleidoscope sheen, like a bubble of physics-defying energy. Ezra’s voice cracked. “It’s like they... sensed each other. Like they’re waking up.” * * * * * * * In a desert in New Mexico, a hidden research facil- ity buried under 300 meters of reinforced tungsten Thanos Kalamidas went into emergency lockdown. Dr. Amrita Vale was mid-sentence when the screens lit up. Her assistant, Yori, paled. “That’s... them.” Amrita’s mouth went dry. “You mean both of them?” Yori nodded. “The Shalkari and the Volarens. They were at war over a million years ago. We’ve only seen relics, dead machines, fossilized engines buried in asteroids.” “And they’ve come back?” “No.” Yori tapped the screen. “ They never left. They just stopped... until now.” * * * * * * * Earth Orbit The Alerexat moved first. A pulse of gravity expanded like a ripple through spacetime. Satellites tumbled from orbit. Luna Base’s comms went dark. A tremor passed through Earth’s crust as if something far larger than tectonics shifted in response. Ashes of the Forgotten Then the Volaren Kinetarch answered. Space cracked. Not exploded, cracked like glass under pressure. Reality wavered. Ships that didn’t ex- ist a second ago now flooded the system. Some were shaped like crescents, others like twisted lattices of starlight and scream. All moved with insectoid grace and surgical precision. Mia and her crew watched in horror. “Are they... firing at each other?” Ezra asked. “No,” Mia whispered. “They’re talking. ” * * * * * * * The Unveiling Across Earth, language broke. People started speaking in tongues. Dogs barked mathematical equations. Infants stared into walls, eyes glowing. The Shalkari’s message was clear: “Earth is the Heir-World. The War was never finished. The Price must be paid.” The Volarens responded: “This species is protect- ed. Legacy sealed. Violation is forbidden.” Thanos Kalamidas Mia’s neural comms surged with a voice not her own. You are the Inheritors. Your blood bears the key. Your silence was never innocence. * * * * * * * Antarctica, 1,500 Meters Below An ancient spire erupted from beneath the ice. It pulsed with twin energies: emerald and opaline. Both alien fleets ceased their maneuvering. “They’re converging,” Ezra said. “For the spire?” “No, Captain... for us.” * * * * * * * The Spiral War, Reignited The first volley was not light, or missile, or particle. It was time Years collapsed. Seconds stretched. Mia saw herself as a child, her father, dead twenty years, turning to her and whispering something in an alien tongue. Ashes of the Forgotten The Alerexat opened its body like a flower. From its core, thousands of fractal drones spewed into Earth’s orbit. The Volaren Kinetarch responded with a ripple that turned the drones to dust—and then regrew them backwards through entropy, trapping them in a mo- ment before they were born. The war reignited. Mia’s ship was caught in the middle. * * * * * * * Final Choices On the bridge, alarms screamed. Ezra looked up from the terminal. “They’ve locked us in a causality net. If we move, we’ll exist in six dif- ferent potential futures simultaneously. Our minds won’t survive.” “So we stay?” “We burn, or we bargain.” A voice, both fleets speaking through a shared fre- quency, entered the bridge. Thanos Kalamidas Choose. The lineage of Earth belongs to one hand only. You are the Voice of your kind. Decide who claims the Heir-World. Mia looked at her crew. Looked at Earth, clouded, blue, beautiful. “Neither,” she whispered. Ezra blinked. “What?” “I refuse. If you want the world, you’ll have to take it from us the same way you lost it last time.” The air shimmered. Time folded. A flicker ...then nothing. * * * * * * * Earth, Three Days Later The war never happened. History skipped a beat. The Johannes Kepler was found adrift near Saturn’s rings, its crew perfectly preserved, eyes wide open, mouths agape. Ashes of the Forgotten Mia’s neural log held a single entry, corrupted but legible: “We said no. They remembered what that meant.” * * * * * * * In the trench where light never reaches, a new spire awakens. This one sings in a third voice. Not Shalkari. Not Volaren. But human. And it begins to dream. END Thanos Kalamidas Ashes of the Forgotten Thanos Kalamidas Ovi eBook Publishing 2025 Ovi magazine Design: Thanos Ashes of the Forgotten Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Thanos Kalamidas Ashes of the forgotten T ha n o s Ka l a m i da s Thanos Kalamidas , a multipublished writer, cartoonist and illustrator; born and grew up in a picturesque neighbourhood on the moun- tainside of Hymettus in Athens, Greece. Then his life took him to Berlin, Germany and to London, UK for studies. After a brief stay in Yorkshire he moved his life to Paris, France while working in Tokyo, Japan and in Cape Town, South Africa. In the last 25 years he became a permanent Scandinavian resident and recently, in his glorious sixth de- cade, he moved to a scenic village in the Växjö area.