"She is destruction incarnate-everything she touches turns to ash."
Ishani, a sharp-witted and fiercely independent businesswoman from the modern world, trusts no one, least of all men. But fate has other plans. Thrust into a treacherous era of warr...
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Mumbai, Present Day
The penthouse was too quiet.
Ishani curled her fingers around a lukewarm mug of green tea, its floral notes doing little to soothe the restless energy thrumming under her skin. The wall-mounted TV droned on, some analyst dissecting Astraea's latest stock surge.
Click.
The remote clattered onto the marble countertop. She'd built an empire, yet here she was—alone, picking at takeout noodles like a college student.
Pathetic.
She shoved the container into the fridge, its LED light glaring like an accusation. Wasteful. Ungrateful. Weak. Her mother's voice, even now, a constant refrain.
"Alexa, TV off."
The screen winked out.
A sound—sharp, metallic—sliced through the silence.
Her breath hitched. Not the elevator. Not the staff.
The security panel glowed green. Untriggered.
You're paranoid, she told herself. Arjun was in Dubai. The restraining order had held.
Then—movement. A shadow, sleek and deliberate, flitting past the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Her phone was in her hand, thumb hovering over the panic button—
—when it was plucked from her grasp.
Slender fingers. Cold. Too smooth to be human.
She looked up.
Darkness swallowed her whole.
Dwaraka, 7500 years ago..
The first thing Ishani noticed when consciousness crept back in was the silence.
Not the muted hum of her penthouse—the ever-present whir of the AC, the distant sirens of Mumbai traffic, the digital chirp of notifications piling up on her phone. This was a deep, yawning quiet, broken only by the whisper of fabric against skin and the faintest rustle of leaves from somewhere beyond the arched windows.
She lay on a bed softer than any she had known, draped in linens that smelled faintly of jasmine and something earthy—sandalwood, perhaps. The ceiling above her was carved with intricate patterns, scenes of dancing figures and coiled serpents that seemed to shift in the flickering lamplight.
Where—?
Memory returned in jagged fragments. The shadow in her penthouse. The cold grip around her wrist. The sensation of falling, endlessly, through a void that swallowed sound and light alike.
