Shalmali: The princess of Salwa

In the ancient kingdom of Salwa, where time was measured by the movement of stars and the whispers of prophecy held as much weight as law, Princess Shalmali was born under a sky that refused to remain still. On the night of her birth, the stars shifted unnaturally, as if rearranging themselves around her arrival, and the palace lamps flickered without wind. The royal priests declared it a blessing. The scholars called it an anomaly. But deep within the sealed archives of the kingdom lay a prophecy that spoke of a child who would never belong to a single moment in time. Shalmali grew up surrounded by reverence and distance. She was adored by her people but feared in silence by those who understood the implications of her existence. From a young age, it became clear that something within her defied the natural order. Moments behaved differently around her. Time seemed to hesitate, stretch, or collapse in subtle, unsettling ways. Objects would reappear where they had not been placed. Conversations would echo before they were spoken. And sometimes, when she was alone, she would see fragments of a world that did not exist in her time, a world filled with lights that did not flicker, towering structures of glass, and strange moving machines. As she grew older, these visions became more frequent, more vivid, and more difficult to ignore. The royal scholars began to study her in secret, comparing her condition to ancient texts long forgotten. It was then that the prophecy resurfaced: “She who walks between moments shall never belong to one.” The meaning was clear. Shalmali was not simply gifted, she was bound to time itself, and her existence would come at a cost. The breaking point came during an attack on the kingdom to seize Shalmali's power, she was judged harshly and resented for it. A greater threat loomed, one that would persist wherever she went, and in that moment of misery, she made her decision. The air shifted, time stuttered and then, it shattered. The world around her fractured like glass. The sky split into overlapping realities, voices echoed from moments that had not yet happened, and the ground beneath her vanished. In a single instant, she was pulled through time itself. When she surfaced, it wasn’t onto solid ground but into the water. Adhiraj, the CEO of Rathore Group and Companies, born with a silver spoon in the wealthiest family of the country, had just secured the biggest deal of the year and was celebrating on the beach when Shalmali fell into the ocean nearby. Without thinking he reached her just as she began to sink, catching her before the water could pull her under. As he brought her to the surface, she gasped for air, her eyes wide with confusion and fear. For a moment, everything else disappeared. The noise, the lights, the people, it all faded into the background and there was only her. Shalmali stared at him as though he were the only thing in a world she did not recognize and in that moment, neither of them understood why, but something shifted, something irreversible and then came the visions, not just for Shalmali but for Adhiraj. He began to see fragments of Salwa, its palace, its people, its history. He saw Shalmali as she had been before she arrived in his world and within those visions, he saw himself. Not as Adhiraj but as someone else, someone tied to that ancient kingdom in a way he could not explain. He was not separate from Shalmali’s fate; he was part of it, bound by the same prophecy that defined her existence, his presence in her life was not coincidence, it was a collision of timelines that should never have intersected. Their love was not just forbidden, it was destructive and Adhiraj had to decide between holding onto her or saving her life. He chose her, he sent her back and for rest of their lives, the sky felt more like home than the ground.