Canvas of Timeless Fate

The portrait should have been nothing more than paint on fading canvas-
Yet the moment the students stepped into the museum hall, the air shifted. It felt as if the walls remembered things -Prisha felt it first.
Prisha Mehta-quiet, observant, orphaned-stood apart from her class, fingers grazing the railing as her eyes fixed on the newly unearthed painting.
Princess Shivanya Maheshwari.

The artist had painted her like a prayer.
Long kohl-lined eyes. Dusky skin glowing beneath jewels. A soft mouth curved with grace.
But beneath all the beauty, something felt terribly wrong. Prisha's heartbeat stilled.
Because the princess didn't just resemble her.
She looked exactly like her.The same eyes. The same bone structure. The same face.

Her professor spoke somewhere behind her, recounting how Shivanya's kingdom fell to war centuries ago. How she died young, slain by the ruthless Prince Prithviraj Kshatriya-heir of the rival throne.

That night, sleep refused to come. Something inside her whispered-
Go back.
She shouldn't have.
She shouldn't have snuck past the locked museum doors, shouldn't have wandered alone through marble corridors lit only by thunder. But curiosity-dangerous, consuming-pulled her in.

Thunder cracked above, rattling the walls.Prisha's breath hitched.

And then-even before she could scream-the ground split open beneath her. The museum vanished.

With a violent gasp, she clawed her way to the surface.
Gone was the museum. Gone was the girl she had been. She staggered to her feet-drenched, trembling-

maroon silk clinging to her body,
gold heavy around her throat and wrists.

She wasn't wearing her own clothes anymore.She was wearing the princess's.

Prisha-no, Shivanya-stood in a storm-drenched forest.

The only way back to her time was through the portrait.

But to reach it...she would have to survive the kingdom that killed her once-
-and the prince who was never meant to fall in love with her.