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Vijay

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Posts by Vijay

Data Security Posture Management in Practice

In My Experience —

Data Security Posture Management is often discussed in abstract terms: Discovery. Classification. Governance. Remediation.

In reality, posture failures surface during high-pressure events: Migrations. Audits. Incidents.

This story from my experience illustrates how incomplete visibility can translate into operational disruption.

The Scenario

During a large-scale Microsoft tenant-to-tenant cloud migration, the IT team executed a structured migration plan:

  • Exchange mailboxes migrated
  • SharePoint sites migrated
  • OneDrive data migrated
  • Teams environments migrated
  • Permissions mapped and validated

From an infrastructure perspective, the migration was comprehensive. What was missing was discovery. The production team had been using Microsoft Loop as their primary planning environment. Critical project-planning data lived entirely within Loop workspaces. IT had no inventory of this usage. No classification. No tracking. No migration mapping.

When the production team accessed the new tenant, their planning data was incomplete.

The migration had technically succeeded. Operationally, it had not.

What Went Wrong

This was not a tooling failure. It was a visibility failure.

There was:

  • No centralized inventory of SaaS workloads in use
  • No monitoring of newly adopted Microsoft 365 services
  • No sensitivity tagging tied to workload discovery
  • No structured data ownership validation before migration

Loop usage had never been formally onboarded into governance oversight. It existed within the tenant, but not in IT's operational awareness or the business-critical software inventory.

This is a classic posture management gap.

The Consequence

Once the gap was discovered, the organization faced a time-critical recovery scenario.

The only viable path was manual intervention:

  • Identifying affected Loop workspaces
  • Exporting data from the source tenant
  • Recreating workspaces in the destination tenant
  • Copying content manually
  • Validating completeness with production stakeholders

The remediation effort took six full days.

Six days of cross-team coordination, late hours, manual verification, and elevated stress. The migration timeline was disrupted. Trust was strained. Risk exposure increased. The damage to reputation and team trust was far harder to repair than the actual missing data.

All because discovery had not preceded execution.

Where Data Security Posture Management Would Have Helped

A mature posture management capability would have reduced or eliminated this disruption.

1. Continuous Discovery

Automated workload inventory would have revealed:

  • Active Microsoft Loop workspaces
  • Volume of content stored
  • User adoption patterns

Loop would have been visible as a production-critical workload rather than an unnoticed collaboration tool.

2. Data Classification and Sensitivity Mapping

If planning artefacts had been labelled according to sensitivity or business criticality:

  • High-value workspaces would have been flagged
  • Migration planning could have prioritized them
  • Data validation checklists would have included them

Classification provides a signal. Without it, all data appears equal.

3. Pre-Migration Posture Assessment

A structured posture review before migration would have asked:

  • Which workloads are actively used
  • Which contain business-critical data
  • Which services fall outside standard migration tooling

That assessment would likely have surfaced Loop usage early, while remediation was still simple.

4. Ownership and Accountability Mapping

Posture management also clarifies data ownership. If each collaboration workspace had a defined business owner:

  • Owners would have been engaged during migration validation
  • Confirmation of completeness would have occurred before cutover

Instead, ownership discovery happened after the disruption.

The Operational Lesson

Data Security Posture Management is not only about compliance and regulatory alignment. It is about operational continuity. When IT lacks visibility into:

  • Emerging SaaS workloads
  • Shadow adoption of collaboration tools
  • Data criticality distribution

Strategic initiatives such as tenant migrations become risk multipliers. Infrastructure execution without data awareness creates blind spots.

From Discovery to Remediation

In this case, remediation was manual and reactive. It consumed six painful days because the discovery occurred after the impact. A mature posture management lifecycle would follow a different sequence:

  1. Discover workloads and data locations
  2. Assess sensitivity and criticality
  3. Validate ownership
  4. Incorporate findings into migration design
  5. Execute with verified scope

Remediation then becomes exception handling, not crisis response.

Conclusion

The tenant migration did not fail technically. It failed from a posture perspective. The absence of continuous discovery and workload awareness turned a standard cloud migration into a six-day-long recovery exercise.

There is an additional lesson that is often overlooked. In a fast-moving or rapidly-growing environment, it is common for teams to adopt new collaboration tools outside formal governance workflows. Without structured discovery and verification mechanisms, these adoptions remain invisible to migration planning.

In this case, there was an implicit assumption that all production critical planning data was known and accounted for. That assumption proved incorrect.

Verbal confirmation is not validation. IT leadership must independently verify workload usage, data locations, and service dependencies before executing high-impact changes. This means conducting technical discovery scans, usage analysis, access reviews, and controlled testing rather than relying solely on stakeholder declarations.

Data Security Posture Management formalizes that discipline. It replaces assumption with evidence. It ensures that the business teams' beliefs are technically validated before transformation begins.

Infrastructure planning without independent verification is highly risky. Continuous posture management closes that gap and converts uncertainty into measurable control.

State of IT Part 6: Balancing Innovation and Operational Stability

State of IT —

A quiet tension is building within most IT teams.

On one side, there is demand to innovate. Automate more. Integrate AI into workflows. Reduce headcount dependency. Move faster. Deliver more with less. On the other side, there is the unglamorous reality of keeping systems stable. Patch cycles. Identity hygiene. Backup validation. Endpoint drift. License audits. Incident response. The daily grind that nobody celebrates until it fails.

Innovation gets applause. Stability gets silence.

Yet stability is the foundation that makes innovation survivable.

The Illusion of Acceleration

We are in a time when leadership conversations are dominated by speed.

  1. How quickly can we deploy?
  2. How fast can we automate?
  3. How much AI can we embed?

The assumption is that acceleration equals progress. But acceleration without structural maturity creates fragility. If your identity architecture is inconsistent, automating access provisioning will compound those inconsistencies. If your asset inventory is incomplete, AI-driven analytics amplify blind spots. If your governance model is unclear, automation only accelerates chaos.

Innovation in this manner does not compensate for weak foundations. It exposes them.

Stability Is Not Resistance to Change

There is a misconception that teams focused on operational discipline are resistant to innovation.

This is rarely true.

The best operations teams understand a fundamental truth. Stability is not the opposite of innovation. It is the prerequisite for it.

Resilient systems allow experimentation. Documented processes allow safe iteration. Clear ownership allows confident delegation. When fundamentals are strong, innovation becomes additive. When fundamentals are weak, innovation becomes disruptive.

We need to focus on system maturity and stability before we can consider iterating on or innovating existing tools and structures.

The Cost of Ignoring the Base Layer

When innovation initiatives outpace functional stability, the symptoms appear gradually.

Small outages become recurring patterns. Security exceptions multiply. Access reviews become performative. Shadow IT grows quietly. Eventually, the organization does not suffer from a lack of innovation. It suffers from cumulative operational debt. IT then becomes reactive instead of strategic. Teams spend their time firefighting instead of designing. The irony is that the more an organization pushes for innovation without discipline, the less innovative it actually becomes.

A Practical Balancing

Juggling innovation and stability does not require complex frameworks. It needs intentional sequencing.

First, define non-negotiables.

  1. Backup integrity.
  2. Identity hygiene.
  3. Patch compliance.
  4. Monitoring coverage.

These act as foundational controls.

Second, assess operational health before accelerating growth and experimentation. If your incident resolution time is unstable, automation should focus there first.

Third, introduce innovation in limited domains.

  1. Pilot AI in reporting before applying it to access control.
  2. Test automation in non-critical workflows before applying it to production pipelines.

Fourth, preserve human monitoring. Automation decreases manual effort. It does not remove accountability. Innovation should feel like reinforcement, not replacement. This is where, in my humble opinion, most organizations fail.

Leadership Expectations and Reality

Many IT leaders are navigating expectations shaped by headlines rather than infrastructure realities. There is a belief that AI can replace inefficiency. These tools can compensate for process gaps. That digital transformation is primarily about platform adoption.

In practice, transformation is about discipline. It is about clarity in roles. It is about visibility in systems. It is about governance that scales. Technology accelerates what already exists.

If structure exists, it accelerates efficiency. If any disorder exists in your structure, it accelerates instability.

The Human Element

There is another dimension that is often overlooked. Operational dependability is not purely technical.

It is cultural. Teams that value documentation. Teams that respect change control. Teams that escalate early rather than conceal mistakes. These are the teams that innovate sustainably.

When people feel pressured to deliver visible innovation at the expense of quiet stability work, corners are cut. Over time, trust erodes. The strongest IT environments are not the most automated. They are the most accountable.

Accountability > Automation.

Redefining Success

Perhaps the biggest shift required is revising how success is measured.

Not only by how many AI initiatives were launched.
Not only by how many systems were modernized.
But by how many incidents were prevented.
How many risks were mitigated before they happened.
How stable the environment remained during the transformation.

Innovation that destabilizes is not progress. It is a deferred cost.

The State of IT Today

We are not short of tools. We are not short of ambition. What many organizations lack is calibrated pacing.

Balancing innovation and stability is not about slowing down. It is about strengthening the base before increasing velocity. In these uncertain times, the temptation to move fast is understandable. The discipline to move deliberately is what will separate resilient IT teams from reactive ones.

Innovation should expand capability. Stability assures that expansion does not collapse under its own weight.

The Colour Beneath

Poetry —
I learned too late, the world was never wrong,
It only mirrored what already dwells.
Within the hearts of those who name the strong,
And cage the rest inside their woven shells.
We rise through doors they swore would never yield,
We climb the ladders painted clean and white;
Yet every hand that claps us from the field
Still weighs our worth beneath the borrowed light.
We draw our lines, we polish what they see,
We wash our names in silence, pride and grace.
But skin remembers what it used to be;
And truth still trembles underneath the face.
No height can free us from that ancient art,
The shadow that lives inside the human heart.

A Perfect Day

Stories —

For someone with a customer facing job at a large amusement park, Kate was quite cheerful. Her demeanour almost never changed when she was dealing with the dozens and dozens of parents who came to drop off their kids, raise complaints about mundane topics or be completely unreasonable in their demands. She never lost her temper, never raised her voice and never complained about her job. Heck, she was never even seen without a smile on her face.

Anyone who knew her would agree that Kate was the most cheerful person at Strawberry Castle. She had been working at the children entertainment giant for seven years. Although she currently headed the customer service department, Kate would often visit the play area and help its staff. She was liked by the children and her Fairytale Hours on Sundays was a popular attraction.

This was a day like any other. Kate finished up her routine checks on the customer complaints and feedback received, made sure everything was responded and in order and got ready to leave. Before she stepped out of her small office, she made sure to take a piece of paper from her desk and slipped it inside her purse. Her steps were light as she exited Strawberry Castle waving to the security guards.

“Mm…hmhmm… Mm…hmhmm… This is a nice evening to be out…” she hummed to herself in a sing-song-y voice. Unlike usual, today she took a different route back home. She cut through Hiblander street and took the long path through the woods. Although the city she lived in was small, it had a nice close knit community. Corporations such as Strawberry Castle and Ronald’s Burgers were slowly destroying much of the forest and natural greenery the city had.

Despite hating this, she worked at one of them simply because she enjoyed watching children smile. Somehow keeping them safe and happy felt like it made her life a bit better. It helped her have something to do every day and feel good at the end of the day. Isn’t that the goal of our lives? To be happy and to make others happy? She thought to herself.

A sudden rustling sound from behind her woke her up from her cheerful day dreams. She stopped walking and took a look around. The road was completely empty and she could not see anything moving through the forest path on either side of the road. M_ust have been a small animal moving._ She started walking on, albeit a little faster than before. A few minutes in she heard another rustling sound, this time followed by faint footsteps.

Her mind ran a dozen different worst case scenarios and just as many equally possible rational ones. She increased the speed of her steps a bit more while listening intently. The footsteps seemed to be coming from her right side. It kept up with her, as if someone was carefully trying to follow her but not fast enough that they got ahead. Sweat drops started forming in the back of her neck and forehead.

While maintaining some calm, she quickly went through all the objects in her purse. Anything that could be used as a makeshift weapon. Like any smart woman she had a small pepper spray bottle. Without turning back, she slipped it out with one hand and held the tiny pocket knife attached to her key chain tightly in the other. She broke into a half run, her heart now pounding.

paht! paht! paht! The footsteps following her now broke into a run as well. Kate tilted her head while trying to figure out how one person could have such a heavy footstep. Maybe it is an animal? She decided to use this opportunity. She ran through the next steps in her head. She would turn around, use the pepper spray on her pursuer and then run away full speed. This was her best option as without a deterrent, the pursuer will catch up to her speed.

Having made up her mind, she turned around and pressed her finger on the nozzle of the spray while she pointed it at the massive figure behind her. The pepper mix that was spat out covered the figure before a massive arm the size of a dustbin lid was swung toward her face. “Oh, shit!” Kate’s world spun as she took a heavy slap to her face. Her body was sent flying and landed two feet away from its initial spot. Blood covered one side of her face. Her horrified eyes watched as the massive bear roared in pain from taking the pepper spray to its face.

“Yeah… i-it burns… doesn’t it?” Kate breathed her last muttering that.

“CUTTTT!” Chief Director Yeewon Nam yelled at the crew. “A bear? A. FUCKING. BEAR?!” He pointed his thick, stubby finger at the dozen technical crew members sitting in the A.I.R. office. “Are you morons THAT stupid? Or do you morons NOT understand what we are doing here?”

“S-sir…” Brennan Lager, the Lead in charge of this operation tried to explain their decisions. “We increased the difficulty to extract the most amount of emotions from the subject in the shortest time possi…”

Yeewon stepped next to Brennan and screamed in his face, “THE SUBJECT NEEDS TO BE ALIVE TO EMOTE! A bear kills a human very, VERY easily! Do you understand that?”

Brennan was scared out of his wits. He had never seen the Chief Director this angry before. He kept his mouth shut and only nodded, afraid that he might lose even more face in front of his crew if he tried talking anymore.

After a few seconds of making incoherent noises, Yeewon finally seemed to calm down a bit. “Listen here guys! This is the final run we have at getting the best results possible for Project Zebra. The idea is to get the best possible emotions out of our subjects by inducing artificially created scenarios into their mind and getting them to react to various possible stimuli. The simulation needs to include fun and sad scenarios in equal parts. A constant flow of happy, sad, bittersweet, foul, scary and tension-inducing moments are needed to fill up the Neogen 8K21 series cells. You cannot be doing things like bringing a bear into a thrill scene.”

He paused looking around, “Unlike in movies and video games, most humans would instantly get killed against such a powerful foe. No more being alive, no more emotions flowing and no more A.I. recordings.” He took a few more breaths and took a cigarette out of his pocket.

“Remember, all our subjects are people who are either old, wounded beyond recovery or otherwise classified as being non-useful civilians. They can only take a dozen virtual deaths at most before their hearts stop naturally. We are investing heavily into the life support units for preserving each of their bodies. Our goal is a minimum of 30 full cells of neural energy and a recommended 41 full cells if we want to break even next year.”

Placing it in his lips, he lit up the cigarette. “Keep the situations tense, but not enough to be fatal. Make them go through the good, the bad and the ugly. I want emotions, I want to see ecstasy, I want to see joy, I want to see tears and I definitely want to see fear. All this, while making sure the subjects feel like they accomplished something in their… ah, ‘lives’,” he made two air quotes with his fingers. 

“Heck, make them feel like superstars or heroes if you have to. But do not make things fantastical or too perfect. If they suspect that things might not be real, then the output will not be as efficient.”

He smiled at the crew once again, “Let’s take it from the top folks. This time, be more careful Brennan.” Brennan nodded, feeling a little better now that his boss seemed to have calmed down.

“Do you know the name of the subject Brennan?” Yeewon asked. Brennan took out the subject’s information chart and read out. “Katherine Taylor, sir. Age 82, paralyzed from the waist down after an incident involving domestic abuse…”

“No, you moron. Her subject-name in the file. So I can keep track of the number of A.I. deaths she has had.” Yeewon scowled.

“Oh, sorry sir. Uh, File A-9-211.”

Yeewon nodded and made a change in the YeeCorp app. 

‘Test Project Zebra’ file.

Note 1 – Subject A-9-211 : +1 death due to screw up from Crew 7.

“Who the fuck cares about her actual name anyway?” He mumbled as the new holographic projection started.

‘Studio 7. Artificially Induced Recordings – Making your energy consumption eco friendly’, a sign read in front of large theater room door as the next scenario began playing out in Subject A-9-211’s mind.

The Fish in White

Fan Fiction —

A League of Legends fan fiction

The skies are witness to the deeds of men,
The tides are witness to the greed of men.
To spin a yarn on truth told,
Or covet and lust for another’s gold;
You invite the presence of a being old
The river king cometh, lo and behold!

The last rays of the Sun were vanishing, and the buildings were casting long, dark grey shadows. The streets of Bilgewater were bustling with folk who had come from all over to watch the show being put on by the local theatre. The actors were well-known, and tonight’s show was the story of Gangplank’s Fall. After his very public fall from power, the theatre group became bolder in their depictions of the former king, and the play quickly became famous around the land. 

Reyald slowly walked around the gathering crowd. His eyes scanned the drunks, the gamblers, and the folk of the night gathering around excitedly as the theatre group started their preparations. A crowd was a haven for old Reyald, his quick hands, and slippery fingers ready to prey on his next target. He entered the crowd, having spotted a large coin purse. But he was quickly distracted by a couple who joined the crowd. The husband and wife duo looked like nobles from a distant land. Were they lost? He decided not to let this opportunity slip up and went to talk to them.

Forty minutes later, Reyald could be seen walking out of his inn, having helped the couple get a room there for the night. Apparently, the husband was a rich nobleman from Piltover who thought he could make a fortune as a bounty hunter. Reyald had seen many guys like this and took his chance to get to know the couple, posing as a friendly innkeeper and offering them protection and shelter for the night at a fair price. This was only a cover for his nightly operations. Tonight, he would pay them a visit when they were both asleep and help secure their belongings. Usually, he would just sell the women to one of the many captains of the city in an auction. But this one, he had decided to keep for himself. He was imagining the various ways he would play with her when he heard a low whistle from an alleyway.

Curious, he looked in the direction to see a figure vanishing around the corner. A beautiful, white skirt whisked away as someone had walked swiftly. What a lucky night, he thought to himself. Two pretty women on the same night. He double-checked the dagger in his belt and the hidden blade in his shirt and quickly walked into the alleyway. This long alley led to the sea inlet, and he knew there was nowhere for the woman to go after that. He started jogging in excitement as the flowing white skirt turned yet again in the corner out of the alley and into the open space.

Half jogging, half running, he reached the opening to see a beautiful woman bending over a crate in the distance, sweetly whistling to herself.

She didn’t seem to have realized he was there. “Well, aren’t you a beauty?” He called out to her as he closed the space between them. “Now turn around and don’t make a sound. Do as I tell you, and you won’t be hurt much.” He smiled, his hand gripped on the hilt of his dagger. The woman stopped what she was doing and turned around. And as if an invisible hand had wiped the air out, there was a slight shimmer, and in the place of the woman, there stood a seven-foot-tall, scaly monster. The illusion magic that was in use vanished with a low pop! With two giant tentacles that resembled a mustache growing out of its face, the demonic sea monster’s face resembled a catfish. It gave Reyald a wide grin revealing sharp dagger-like teeth and a long coiled tongue. Its voice was smooth and calm as it replied, “Oh, I have to repeat that sentence to you, I’m afraid. Do you like my clothes?”

Clothes? It took everything in his power not to keel over in fear. Reyald was a hard man, and having lived in Bilgewater all his life, he was accustomed to seeing all sorts of strange and powerful beings. But nothing he had seen or heard in his life could have prepared him for this sight. There was a huge fishlike monster in front of him wearing a beautiful set of women’s clothing. But he did not dare to laugh in front of this monster. The fish demon was oozing an aura that would chill even the most hardcore killer’s bones. He looked at the monster as its watery eyes fixed their gaze on him, waiting for his reply. He gulped, swallowing his saliva, and nodded.

“Why, thank you.” The monster seemed to smile even wider. This made it look even more terrifying than before. “Now, I’m here to make a deal with you, Reyald Barley.” The monster continued in an even tone. “I offer you a bargain. Bring the couple you have given shelter to here instead of harming them, and I will offer you this crate full of treasure in return.” It waved a large, scaly arm to indicate the now open crate. Reyald looked at the contents of the crate and gasped. Hextech! And the crate seemed to be full of the highly coveted raw material. These can be used to craft almost any gear and would fetch a great price. Better yet, with his contacts, it could be sold in a day, and no one would be able to trace it back to him. He looked at the smiling monster and nodded again. “Excellent! Then I expect them here soon.” Reyald turned around and ran towards his inn. Half scared, half ecstatic, he could not believe the turn of events tonight. What an extraordinary stroke of luck!

As the lone ship sailed into the sea through the backwaters, Reyald and his two guards stood wordlessly, staring at the crate of Hextech material. He ordered them to take the crate carefully back to the inn and looked one more time in the direction of the ship, quickly vanishing in the distance. The monster had left with the couple once they boarded the ship. He walked leisurely back towards his inn. His mind was abuzz with thoughts of luxury and power. The trio turned a corner and entered the familiar alley again. Reyald heard a Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! noise behind, and he saw a flash of blue light when he turned. The world seemed to spin and roll as his vision suddenly became witness to the night sky.

In the next two seconds, the pain settled in, and he realized that his body, now headless, was lying next to him, bleeding out on the dark floor, and beyond it were the two bodies of his guards. Two shadowy figures with masks over their faces carried the crate away, happily talking to each other, “The demon was true to his word. This crate is full of Hextech. We are going to be rich!” Reyald opened his mouth to say something, but it slowly filled with his frothing blood. And his eyes slowly dimmed.

Atop the sails, as the ship with the rescued couple sailed back to Zaun, a bright blue bird huffed unhappily, looking at the giant fish demon prancing around happily in her clothing. Janna had lent her clothes to Tahm laced with illusion magic because he promised to help guide her believers to a safe place. She would let it go this time. He did save her followers upon her request. But the sight of the Riverway King, Tahm Kench, dressed in a white priestess outfit, was one that she was sure would haunt her dreams for a long while.

Droplet in the Lake

Stories —
Lichtarr, Banaad, Gintaar.

That which is meant to happen, will happen. It was the fundamental philosophy by which the world worked. Everything is as written by the Ancient, and what the Ancient wrote becomes reality. Liza had grown up hearing this mantra every day. She was part of a large clan that lived in the Shivering Pines, the enchanted forest. The worship of the Ancient was salvation, and the teachings of the Ancient were absolute. Liza knew this.

But this day was unlike any other. Something had shaken her unquestionable resolve to abide by the laws of the Ancient. She had to do this! Growing up in one of the smaller villages among the clan, her only family were her mother and her brother. Liza’s brother had been called to a village meeting four days earlier and sent on a hunting mission to secure a sacrifice for the Festival of the Many.

Rior never came back to the village, and the elders had declared him dead. In the Reultsi belief, a hunter who died during a hunt was declared a failure, and his family would be bound to two decades of servitude to the temple of the Ancient. She knew her brother well. He was one of the best Reultsi hunters alive. He would not have died to any beast in the forest. There was something amiss about the way things were happening. For one, the village council did not send out a scouting party to determine his death. Second, the hunting mission was given to Rior unannounced in the middle of the night with no time to prepare.

Liza was not going to stand quietly and let her family be shunned. She had heard of one capable of opposing the Ancient—a being dwelt in the black lake. The children grew up hearing stories of how the Ancient had stood up against this creature and bound it to the lake. The Reultsi were prohibited from going anywhere near the lake as the creature could apparently take control of someone’s mind. It was a significant risk. But Liza was desperate and needed help. She had to find out what happened to her brother. Her mind was made up.

Her vision blurred as she tore through the thick forest with everything she had. Her legs powerfully kicked down, causing her body to be propelled forward with practised efficiency. West! This has to be West! There were footsteps behind her. She dared not turn around and look. She threw down one of the round, grey spheres she had packed in her bag and quickly darted to the side as the dung bomb exploded. She continued running as the stench of feces swiftly spread. She and her brother had devised the idea of modifying the smoke bomb into a dung bomb to cover up their scent from tracking beasts and rogue hunters.

The bomb seemed to have done its job as the footsteps behind her stopped. She could hear the sounds of the black lake ahead. She made it! No village hunter would willingly enter the lake. She had to reach the inky water, and they would stop pursuing her. She saw a glimpse of the dark, splashing water, its colour seemingly absorbing all light around it. She kicked herself forward by using a nearby tree trunk as a platform. Her body plunged into the inky black surface of the lake. She felt herself entering a thin, invisible layer of air. A barrier? Before her thought could go any further, she heard a swoosh and a loud, wet thunk! A scream escaped from her throat as she felt the sharpened tip of an arrow sink into her spine.

Liza opened her eyes. And quickly closed it again. Everything was bright. Had she died? Was this the afterlife? It has to be because the last thing she remembered was diving head first into the black lake, the inky black water swallowing her vision as she bled from her wound. She moved her shoulders and winced at a sharp pain shot through her. Wait! Why am I still hurting if I’m dead? She forced her eyes to open again and blinked several times, slowly adjusting to the bright light.

The scene before her was almost unbelievable, circling it.

“So you came here to find what happened to your brother, child?”

The voice echoed inside her head. It sounded similar to that of her mother’s. She was too dumbstruck to speak. She nodded, unable to move or speak for the time being. Was this the dark creature bound to the lake? Was this the black lake? It is so bright here. Is this a dream? 

“Yes. Yes. And no.” The voice replied as if it could read her thoughts. “You see, I was bound to the lake by the one you call the Ancient. But neither myself nor this lake is dark. You see it as such because of the barrier the Ancient had raised around this place. I am Lilori, once the goddess of pathways. If you are determined to walk, I can show you the path you need to take.”

Something about the being made Liza feel at ease. Her heart no longer felt the presence of danger nearby, her pain had reduced from the water touching her wound, and her voice slowly returned as she responded to Lilori. “Yes, I want to find out what happened to my brother. He… He is still alive, isn’t he?”

There was a pause. Then, the doves flapped their wings, flying toward Liza. A wave of water lifted Liza’s body gently. The arrow that was stuck in her back was slowly pulled out. She winced but straightened up, standing in the waist-high waters of the lake. The doves quickly dipped into the lake and came out. A large bubble of water floated between them. As they approached Liza, she noticed that the bubble showed a scene. A Sunset in a distant land she had never seen before, with rocky shores and strange-looking wooden contraptions that floated in the water. This must be a vision, she thought.

“The road you must travel is long and hard, child. You must gain power and knowledge of the Ancient to know the truth. I cannot answer your question now, but I can tell you this is the path you must take if you want to know the truth.”

Wordlessly, Liza nodded. She would do anything to save her brother. She thought about her mother. She would be made to serve the temple now. However, since Reultsi considered that to be the ultimate punishment, she would not be subject to anything worse. She looked up at the pair of eyes and then the water bubble. “Yes, I’m willing to do anything to save my family.” Tears rolled down her cheek as she slowly extended her palm. I’m sorry, mom. I will return soon, with Rior! she thought to herself.

The doves placed the water bubble on top of her hand. It did not burst like she expected it to. It slowly started expanding in size, becoming larger and larger in her palm. The scene inside it seemed to get closer and closer to her. She held the bubble with both hands as it continued to grow in size.

And before she realized it, she was being pulled into the now child sized bubble. Was this one of the pathways that Lilori mentioned? Before she knew the answer, she felt a tug in her back as she felt like she was falling face-first into nothingness. She closed her eyes tightly as her stomach was getting ready to hurl. Then, the sensation suddenly stopped. Her feet were planted once again on solid ground. She opened her eyes to see the Sunset. The Sunset from the bubble! Surprised, she looked around to find herself standing on the sandy beaches of a strange land. Broken, massive wooden vessels could be seen in the distance. Her hand gripped the dagger at her waist. 

I will walk this path! I will get stronger! And I will find my way back home!