When True North Fails

They always say, “Just follow your compass.” Like it’s that easy. Like life always offers a clear path — a direction to walk in. For most of my life, I believed that. Maybe I wanted to believe it. Until the day I ended up somewhere that compasses don’t work — a place called Entropia.

I didn’t plan to go there — I don’t even remember buying the train ticket. It just… appeared in my coat pocket one morning, while I was at the station looking for any train out of the city. I was tired, burned out, and running from something — though I couldn’t tell you what exactly.

The train was oddly empty. Just a man with a suitcase and a blank stare, and a woman humming to herself with her eyes closed. I sat quietly, looking out the window as the city disappeared behind us. It felt like we were traveling through fog. I must’ve dozed off, because when I opened my eyes, everything had changed.

We had stopped at a station I’d never seen before. No signs, no announcements — just broken lights and rusted tracks. I got off, thinking it was just a stopover. But the train pulled away behind me, and I was left standing there with a bag, a compass, and no idea where I was.

Welcome to Entropia.

The first thing I noticed was the sky. It wasn’t blue or gray — it was some strange, washed-out orange. Not warm, not cold. The air was still. The buildings looked half-finished, or maybe half-forgotten. Streets curved for no reason, signs pointed in circles, and nothing made sense.

I pulled out my old compass. It was a gift from my grandfather, a sturdy little thing with a brass cover. The needle spun in slow, dizzying circles. No north. No south. No anything. Just confusion.

At first, I tried to navigate like I normally would — stick to the main roads, look for a map, follow the crowds. But in Entropia, there were no crowds. Just scattered people, each lost in their own little worlds.

I met a guy named Leo who scribbled poems on the walls with a marker. He said he’d been here for over a decade. “Maps don’t matter here,” he told me. “What matters is what you carry inside.”

There was also Mara, who ran a tea stand under a flickering sign. She poured me something hot and strange, and said, “Most folks come here looking for a way out. Only a few ever find it.”

The more I explored, the more the city messed with my sense of time. Morning didn’t feel different from night. I stopped checking the clock. I stopped trying to get my bearings. The compass kept spinning, and I kept walking.

I saw things I couldn’t explain — a stairway that led nowhere, a man arguing with his reflection, a child drawing circles in the dust that never disappeared. I started to feel like the city was alive, like it was watching me, waiting to see what I’d do next.

Then one night, I climbed to the top of a building — or what looked like a building — and looked out over everything. Fog. Neon signs with letters missing. Lights blinking like tired eyes.

And something inside me just gave up.

I sat down and whispered, “I don’t know where I’m going.”

That’s when something strange happened. The compass in my hand — it stopped spinning. For the first time since I got there, it pointed somewhere. Not north, not south. Just… somewhere.

I followed it.

It led me through alleyways I hadn’t seen before, past people I never noticed. No one spoke. Everything felt quiet. Still. And then I reached a clearing — a space where the buildings gave way to open ground and a small fire.

An older woman was sitting there, stirring something in a pot. She didn’t look surprised to see me. “You found your way,” she said simply.

“I don’t even know how,” I replied.

“That’s the trick,” she said. “When you stop looking for the exit, the path shows itself.”

We sat for a while. I didn’t ask her how long she’d been there. I didn’t even ask her name. I just listened.

Before I left, she told me one last thing:

> “True north isn’t a place on a map. It’s the part of you that keeps going when everything else breaks. When your world falls apart, and the signs stop making sense — that’s when you find it.”

I walked away with no map, no plan, and no fear. Entropia slowly faded behind me, like a dream that finally stopped repeating.

Now, when I look at my compass, it doesn’t always point north — but I know what it means. I don’t need it the same way I used to.

Because sometimes, you only find yourself when you finally admit you’re lost.