The book was as blank as my mind had been for as long as I could remember. Smooth, unblemished parchment pages bound in worn leather, it felt oddly comforting in my hands, despite its emptiness. Then, on the very first page, a single line - stark, black ink against the white void. "To rewrite is to remember."

The words hung there, taunting, promising something just beyond my grasp. Rewrite what? Remember what? My head throbbed, a familiar dull ache that always seemed to accompany any attempt to delve into the shadowed corners of my past.

Plus, Rayer had said something... a riddle. "The name of the page that didn't exist." He'd chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that vibrated in his chest, leaving me more confused than enlightened. What did it even mean, a page that didn't exist? Was this blank book that page?

Frustration coiled in my stomach, tight and hot. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the answer to surface, to break through the wall of fog that perpetually clouded my mind. My fingers instinctively went to my forehead, tracing the smooth curve of the mark imprinted there. The moon.

Anger surged. What good were empty words when the core of my own story was missing? I gripped the Moon's Kiss, digging my nails into the cool skin around it, desperate to peel it off, to tear away this frustrating symbol that felt more like a curse. But it wouldn't budge. I pulled harder, a raw, animal sound escaping my throat. And then, pain. Sharp, stinging, and unwelcome. My fingers came away wet, sticky. Blood.

I stared at the crimson droplets on my fingertips, disbelief warring with a strange sense of grim satisfaction. It bled. The Moon's Kiss, actually bled. As if mocking my pain, a drop of blood detached itself from my fingertip and fell, a tiny crimson tear landing squarely on the empty page of the blank book.

And the world shifted.

Not violently, not with a bang, but with a subtle, disorienting flicker, like a candle flame caught in a sudden draft. Where there had been blank parchment, now there was an image, faint and hazy, as if viewed through a veil of smoke. A woman. Young, with dark, tired eyes, her face etched with a weariness that belied her youth. She sat on a low stool, bathed in the soft glow of what looked like...oil lamps? In her arms, nestled close, was a child, small and fragile. And in her hand, a thin, dark stylus, poised over the child's forehead. She was writing something on the baby's skin. The image shimmered, wavered, threatening to dissolve back into nothingness.

My breath hitched. I hadn't seen images like this before. Not real ones, at least. This felt different. Raw. Real. It resonated with a buried chord within me, a sense of recognition that was both terrifying and exhilarating.

Another drop of blood, inadvertently squeezed from my still trembling fingers, fell onto the page. This time, it landed near the bottom corner, just below the fading image of the woman and child. Another flicker, another shift, and a new scene bloomed into existence beside the first. This one was harsher, sharper, filled with a chilling sense of dread. An old man. Lean, gaunt, his eyes burning with a cold fury that made my stomach clench. He was lunging towards the woman from the first image, his hand raised, not in greeting, but in attack. A glint of metal flashed in his hand - a knife, or something like it. The woman's face was contorted in terror, the child clutched protectively to her chest.

Then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, the images began to fade, the colours leeching away, the lines blurring, until they were gone, swallowed back up by the blank page. Leaving behind only the echoing residue of fear and confusion. Two fleeting glimpses, two fragments of something... what? Memory? Whose memories were these? Mine? Impossible. We were taught we had no past before the Founding. Before the Histoire.

Another drop. Another image. This time, it was the child again, older now, maybe ten or twelve, standing alone in a desolate landscape. The sky was a bruised purple, the ground cracked and barren. He was looking down at something in his hands, something small and... metallic? He looked lost, abandoned, utterly alone.

Another drop. Another image. The woman again, younger still, laughing, radiant, her hand outstretched, offering something I couldn't quite see. Behind her, a village, vibrant and alive, teeming with people, with light, with... colour. Colour I had never seen in the muted, grey world of Histoire.

The visions were coming faster now, a torrent of fragmented memories flooding the blank pages. A roaring fire. A whispered argument. The glint of metal. A desperate flight through dark corridors. Faces, voices, emotions - fear, love, anger, loss - all crashing over me in a dizzying, overwhelming wave.

The single line on the first page burned in my mind - "To rewrite is to remember." Rewrite with blood? Remember through pain? Was the Moon's Kiss a key? A gruesome, self-inflicted key to unlock... what exactly? These fragmented scenes felt like whispers of a forgotten language, just out of reach, taunting me with the promise of knowledge, of a truth that lay buried beneath layers of imposed blankness.

"Ira," his voice was strained, tight with barely suppressed anger. This was the first time he had called my name. "Stop!" he hissed, his voice harsh, grating. "You are breaking the Laws! You are defiling the Histoire!"

Defiling? Defiling this blank endless room? No. I wasn't defiling anything. I was unearthing something. Something buried, something stolen. Something that was screaming to be remembered. I was unearthing what I had found.

"The page that doesn't exist," I murmured, his riddle echoing in my mind. "The blank page. It's not blank at all, is it?"

Rayer ignored me. Instead, he lunged, his hand outstretched, grabbing for the book, for me, for the flow of blood, for the unravelling truth. But it was too late. The pages were no longer blank. They were filling with stories, with memories, with a past that was fighting to be rewritten. To be remembered. And I, Ira, marked and bleeding, was the one holding the pen.

"Silence!" he snapped, his composure finally cracking. "You will not speak of things you do not understand. You will return the book to its place. Now."

A spark of defiance flared within me. Fear warred with a burgeoning sense of purpose. What were they so afraid of? What was in this blank book that could elicit such a reaction? And what was the Histoire truly hiding?

I knew, with a certainty that resonated deep within my bones, that the answer lay within these blank pages, locked away behind the barrier of my own lost memories, and somehow, connected to the bleeding Moon's Kiss on my forehead. Rayer's riddle echoed again in my mind - "the name of the page that didn't exist." A blank page. A page that was supposed to remain empty. A page that I was now, inadvertently, filling with something... else.

Slowly, deliberately, I lifted my hand, my fingers brushing against the still-tender Moon's Kiss. Another trickle of blood welled up, a tiny rebellion against the imposed blankness. I held my hand poised above the book, my gaze locked on Rayer's increasingly panicked face.

"What are you doing?" he hissed, his voice barely a whisper, his eyes wide with a dawning horror. He understood. He was starting to understand.

I let another drop of blood fall. It landed on a fresh, untouched section of the page. And as it spread, staining the parchment crimson, a new image began to coalesce, shimmering into being. This one was different. This one... this one was of me.

A younger version of me, perhaps a child, standing in a vast, desolate landscape, under a sky the colour of bruised plums. And on my forehead, even then, the pale crescent Moon's Kiss already marked my skin. But this time, it wasn't just a mark. It was glowing. Faintly, ethereally, but undeniably glowing, casting a soft, ethereal light over my small, bewildered face.

The image solidified, clearer, sharper than the previous ones. And as I stared at the child version of myself, a voice echoed in my mind, not a spoken voice, but a feeling, a resonance, deep and ancient.

Remember.

The word wasn't just heard, it was felt, seeping into my very being, awakening something dormant within me. To rewrite is to remember. The blood wasn't just blood. It was ink. Ink to rewrite the blank pages of my past, ink to remember what the Histoire had so ruthlessly erased.

Rayer lunged forward, his hand outstretched, grabbing for the book, for me. "Stop! You don't understand what you're doing! You're breaking the rules!"

But it was too late. The page was no longer blank. And neither was my mind. The page that didn't exist was the page of the suppressed memory, the page ripped from our collective history. And I, with the bleeding Moon's Kiss and the blank book, was starting to rewrite it, one drop of blood at a time. The caretaker's fear was not enough to deter me anymore. It was fuel.

The rules of Histoire be damned, I would remember. I had to. For myself, and for the ghost of the woman in the fading image, and for the child with the glowing mark. My journey had just begun.