Saroshi sat on the worn charpai, its jute creaking softly under her weight. Her gaze was fixed, unblinking, on the small bundle cradled gently in her lap. It was still, except for the shallow rise and fall of its tiny chest, a rhythm so faint it was barely there.

The air hung thick with the aroma of wood smoke from the evening chulhas, usually a comforting scent, but today, it felt acrid, like ash in her mouth. Around her, the usual clamour of the village - children's shrieks, the clang of metal pots, the lowing of cattle - seemed muted, pushed into the background by a heavy, unspoken tension.

They had been quiet for a while now, those men and women who had gathered sometime after it happened. Their hushed whispers, initially laced with outrage, had morphed into something far more sinister. They muttered about ill omens, about curses, their eyes darting towards the still form in her lap. But she was sure they knew the culprit.

It had happened swiftly, brutally. The sudden flash of steel, descending with horrifying speed. It was meant to be lethal, aimed right at the delicate nape of the small creature. Only a last-second flinch, a twitch of fate perhaps, had averted disaster. The blade had missed its mark, slicing instead through the air, finding purchase only on the tip of the tiny tail, severing it with sickening ease.

Now, Jasmine lay pale and whimpering, the bright red stain of her blood stark against the charcoal fur. The severed tail lay discarded near the feeding bowl, a gruesome piece of evidence.

"Bad luck," someone finally dared to speak, the voice raspy, fear thinly veiled as anger. "A black omen in the village. No wonder misfortune follows us."

Others chimed in, voices rising in a chorus of condemnation. They spoke of darkening skies, failing crops, the illness that had swept through the village. All, somehow, twisted and blamed on the innocent creature lying injured. Their words, sharp and laced with generations of ingrained fear, echoed around the courtyard.

Saroshi's grip tightened almost imperceptibly on the small kitten. She raised her head then, her eyes, usually soft and warm, now like chips of obsidian. She looked at each of them, one by one, letting her gaze linger, letting them feel the weight of it.

There was no shouting from her, no raised voice, no accusations flung back in their faces. Just silence. But within that silence, a storm brewed. In her eyes, they could see it - the pity, not for herself, but for them, for their small minds, for their fear-driven cruelty. And beneath the pity, a cold, unwavering anger simmered. It was not the fury of a scream, but the quiet, potent wrath that burned slow and deep.

She looked at the man who had spoken first, his face a mask of false righteousness. She looked at the woman who mumbled about curses, her eyes averted, unable to meet hers. She looked at the young boy who had earlier that day chased Jasmine with a stick, now hiding behind his mother's sari pallu.

They expected tears, perhaps pleas. They expected her to defend the kitten, to argue against their superstitions. But she offered them only her gaze. A look that conveyed more than any words could. A look that spoke of profound disappointment, of understanding their ignorance, and of a deep, unwavering love for the small, injured creature in her arms.

They might curse the small black kitten for bad luck, but they had just unleashed a far more potent force within the silent woman, a force they might come to truly fear.

Rayer's words were a constant hum in my mind. "You are not the first one here," he'd croaked. "Others were abandoned too." He'd spoken of a crowd, a forgotten cast adrift in this desolate in-between. But where were they?

I turned slowly, scanning the endless expanse. No walls, no doors, just this featureless plane of grey stretching to a horizon that never seemed to arrive. If this was the author's discard pile, it was strangely empty. Rayer had been so sure, his voice thick with the shared misery of our kind.

There were no rooms, no crevices, no shadows deep enough to hide even a single lost line of dialogue. Had they vanished completely? Dissipated like ink on wet paper? Or were they... here, somewhere unseen, woven into the very fabric of this grey nothingness? The thought sent a shiver through me, colder than the monotone landscape. Were we all destined to become whispers in the grey, fading echoes of stories that would never be told? And if so, was that our fate, or had it already happened to the others?

I had walked a mile at least, not knowing for how long and how far exactly, but the room offered no end, no start, no doors and neither windows. Tired, I sat there.

The glowing rectangles hummed, a synchronized choir of electric bees trapped in glass. I sat perched between them, an oddly comfortable discomfort blooming in my lower back from the hard floor.

I was quite conscious, not willing to touch those rectangles and travel to some unknown version of my story. To have to those visions. No. The thought pricked at my skin like static electricity. Visions tended to leave me... disoriented, which was a hilarious understatement considering my baseline was already a walking, talking question mark.

Amnesia, they called it. Amnesia, schme-mnesia. Words, just... words.

Honestly, the whole set-up still felt like a prank designed by a committee of bored and powerful people. 'Let's put the amnesiac in a sensory deprivation chamber, but make it... glowy! And rectangles are edgy, right?'

But I wasn't hungry and without food I wasn't weak. I didn't get sweaty, didn't feel like I needed rest. So, it made sense that I was indeed a to-be-dead character.

So many thoughts raided my sanity. Like this amnesia. It was bizarre. You'd think waking up with a blank slate would be terrifying, but mostly it was just... confusingly normal. I knew, somehow, what a chair was for, that food went in my mouth (thankfully), and that blinking was generally a good idea. Concepts like 'caretaker', 'day', even 'riddle', were perfectly understandable. How utterly illogical.

But were amnesiac characters same as amnesiac humans? God knows.

I was supposed to be a tabula rasa, a walking, talking question mark. Instead, I felt like I'd just misplaced my keys, not my entire past.

Maybe it was the rectangles. Maybe they were dredging up the remnants, those stubborn little nuggets of knowledge refusing to be wiped clean. I focused on their soft, pulsing light, a gentle wave of cyan and lavender. I closed my eyes, bracing myself. Last time, it had been a kaleidoscope of... something. Images, feelings, disjointed and fleeting, like trying to catch smoke with a sieve. But images nonetheless.

I swear, the day I find my author I might get my hands bloody. Plus this place was no better than a prison. So, a murder and death penalty sounded better.

And I was barely making any sense to me when he just... appeared. One moment, empty space, the next, Rayer. Caretaker Rayer, to be precise. Though, caretaker felt like a euphemism. Warden maybe? Overseer? He wasn't menacing, not in a shouty, weapon-wielding way. More like... friendly menacing.

"Fragment," Rayer stated, his voice bland. "How is your day two?"

This was my second time wanting to snap his neck but I just dropped it. Calm down Ira.

"Day two? You mean sitting awkwardly between these glorified nightlights and hoping for a brain-spark? Yes. Engaging. Enthusiastically, even. Though enthusiasm might be a bit much. Mildly curious engagement, perhaps?" I surprised myself with the wit.

Where was that coming from? Amnesia humour? Apparently, it was a thing.

Rayer didn't react to my, admittedly brilliant, observation. He just stood there, hands clasped behind his back, radiating an aura of patient... something. Not patience exactly. More like the pre-programmed stillness of a robot waiting for its next instruction.

He cleared his throat. "I wanted to help you with your memories, so, I got a... riddle for you."

"A riddle for help?" I blinked. "How is this part of the help you want to provide? Memory retrieval via cryptic wordplay? Sounds... efficient."
Sarcasm was definitely a thing. Amnesia sarcasm, possibly a sub-genre.

"I can't help you directly, there are rules," Rayer said, completely missing, or ignoring, the sarcasm. "But anything else is fine so here I am with the first riddle..." He paused, for dramatic effect, I supposed. Though with Rayer, it probably wasn't drama, just... pre-programmed pause. "What is the name of the page that doesn't exist?"

I stared at him. "Seriously? That's it?"

"What is the name of the page that doesn't exist?" He simply repeated.

Page. What kind of page? Book? Newspaper? Calendar? My thoughts snagged, like silk on a rough edge. I had barely said I would take my chance before Rayer thought he wanted to help me. Because amnesia in a place that smelled vaguely of death wasn't bizarre enough.

Rayer had posed it with a thin, almost cruel smile playing on his lips. My head throbbed, a familiar dull ache that seemed to pulse in time with the fluorescent lights humming everywhere.

I was trying to solve a riddle about a bloody page! "Rayer," I said slowly, carefully, "are you... helping?"

"Assistance is within my parameters," he stated, his tone back to its usual monotone. "Guidance, if you will."

Guidance that felt suspiciously like redirection. I tried to get back to my 'blank page' idea. It made sense, didn't it? A blank page, a page with nothing on it, therefore, effectively non-existent in terms of content.

"Consider," Rayer said again, his voice cutting through my thoughts like a buzzsaw through butter, "the... limitations of language. Names are... labels. Imposed structures on the... fluid reality of being."

Fluid reality of being? Now he was just being deliberately obtuse. I swear, I could feel my brain cells, the few intact ones remaining, starting to twitch in protest. It was like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle while someone kept kicking the table.

"Rayer," I said, my tone losing its witty edge and gaining a distinct undercurrent of frustration, "with all due respect, are you actually trying to help me solve this riddle, or are you just trying to confuse me into a state of existential despair?"

He tilted his head, a fraction of an inch, the closest he'd come to an expressive gesture. "Despair is not within designated parameters, Ira. Nor is... your author. See you."

And he vanished, again. Absolute douche.

Before I could even close my eyes for a breather, another voice chirped in. "Are you the new fragment here?"

Stunned, I whipped around, my heart leaping into my throat. Standing just a few feet away was another woman. She was striking, with long, dark hair that cascaded down her shoulders like a waterfall of ink. Her skin was a rich, warm brown, and her eyes... her eyes held a spark of something ancient and knowing, despite the almost playful lilt in her voice. Enchanting. That's the only word that came to mind.

I blinked again, trying to reconcile the sudden appearance with the strange stillness of the room. Where did she come from? Had she been there all along, hidden amongst these rectangles? But I nodded.

She smiled, a slow, captivating curve of her lips. "Patience, new one. It comes in pieces, doesn't it? Like us." She took a step closer, and I noticed the way she moved, fluid and graceful, as if she drifted rather than walked. "I am Lalita," she said, extending a hand towards me. "A fragment, like you."

Hesitantly, I reached out and took her hand. Her touch was surprisingly warm, a stark contrast to the chill that seemed to permeate the air around us.

"I'm Ira," I managed, still reeling from the strangeness of it all.