The approach to the Heart of Entropy was the most unsettling journey Evon had ever undertaken. Their transport—specially modified with reality-stabilization fields—had to stop a full hundred kilometers away from their destination because the laws of physics became too unreliable for conventional travel to function.
"From here, we walk," said Null the Voidbringer, their guide for this mission. The shadow-wrapped figure was difficult to look at directly; not because he was ugly or frightening, but because the eye seemed to refuse to process his form properly. "And I use the term 'walk' very loosely."
Through the transport's reinforced viewports, they could see their destination in the distance. The Heart of Entropy didn't look like a place so much as an absence of place—a region where the very concept of existence seemed to be breaking down. Colors that shouldn't exist flickered in and out of reality, while shapes that followed no geometric principles drifted through space that might or might not actually be there.
"That's... disturbing," Borin said, his dwarven practical nature struggling to process what he was seeing. "How is that even possible?"
"It isn't possible," Null replied in his voice that sounded like the echo of silence. "That's rather the point. The fragment there has been trying to heal reality itself, to fix what it perceives as imperfections in the fundamental structure of existence."
"But reality is supposed to have imperfections," Veyra observed through their connection. "Uncertainty principles, quantum fluctuations, the occasional breakdown of causality—these aren't bugs in the system. They're features."
"Try explaining that to a goddess of healing and purification," Sythara added grimly. "To Yena's nature, any deviation from perfect order looks like damage that needs to be repaired."
### Into the Impossible
The moment they stepped out of the transport, Evon could feel the wrongness in the air. It wasn't just that the physics were unreliable—it was that they were unreliable in ways that shouldn't be possible. Gravity worked normally for objects under a certain mass, but completely failed for anything heavier. Light traveled in straight lines on Tuesdays but curved on Wednesdays, regardless of what day it actually was. Time flowed forward for living things but backward for anything that had ever been part of a machine.
"Stay close to me," Null instructed, his shadow-form rippling as he extended his influence around the group. "My nature exists partially outside of normal reality. I can provide some protection from the worst of the instabilities."
"How do we even know which direction to go?" Yulia asked, her elven senses completely confused by the chaotic magical signatures surrounding them.
"We follow the gradient of impossibility," Null explained. "The closer we get to the fragment, the more reality breaks down. When things become truly impossible, we'll know we're there."
They began what could generously be called walking, though in practice it was more like carefully controlled falling through a landscape that couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Sometimes the ground was solid stone, other times it was liquid music that supported their weight anyway. The sky overhead flickered between blue, green, mathematical equations, and abstract concepts that hurt to look at.
"This is making my head hurt," Titania complained, having made herself as small as possible to minimize her exposure to the reality distortions.
"That's because your brain is trying to process sensory input that doesn't actually correspond to anything real," Null said conversationally. "The fragment's influence is creating feedback loops in the basic structure of space-time. What you're seeing isn't exactly there, but it isn't exactly not there either."
"Wonderful," Quendor rumbled, his dragon senses struggling to adapt to an environment where cause and effect were merely suggestions. "How much further?"
"Hard to say. Distance becomes negotiable when reality is this unstable. We might be almost there, or we might have miles to go. Or both simultaneously."
### The Paradox Creatures
As they traveled deeper into the entropic region, they began to encounter the area's inhabitants—creatures that existed in states that should have been impossible. There was a bird that flew by not moving, its wings perfectly still while it soared through the air at tremendous speed. A flower that bloomed by wilting, becoming more beautiful as it died and more alive as it decayed.
But the most disturbing were the paradox creatures—beings that existed in multiple contradictory states simultaneously. They encountered a wolf that was both predator and prey, hunting itself in an endless loop of chase and escape. A tree that grew both upward and downward from the same point, its roots and branches interchanging as they watched.
"The fragment is trying to resolve all contradictions," Naia explained as they carefully navigated around a lake that was both water and fire at the same time. "She's attempting to heal the fundamental paradoxes that allow reality to exist."
"But paradox is necessary," Lyria added. "Light is both wave and particle. Matter is both energy and substance. Take away the contradictions, and you take away the complexity that makes existence possible."
"Tell that to her," Evon said, feeling the tenth fragment's presence growing stronger as they approached the heart of the impossible region.
One of the most challenging obstacles they encountered was a ravine that was both crossable and uncrossable depending on how you thought about it. If you approached it as a problem to be solved, it became an impossible chasm that stretched to infinite depth. But if you simply walked across it without thinking about the contradiction, your feet found solid ground that wasn't actually there.
"Don't think about it," Null advised as they prepared to cross. "Thinking makes it real, and real means impossible in this place."
"That's the most contradictory advice I've ever heard," Borin grumbled, but he followed Null's example and simply stepped onto the air above the ravine as if it were solid ground.
### The Center of All Things
The heart of the entropic region was both smaller and larger than they had expected. It occupied a space that was simultaneously the size of a closet and the size of a galaxy, containing everything and nothing in perfect, impossible harmony.
At the center of this non-space, Yena's tenth fragment had become something that defied description. It wasn't just a source of light anymore—it was a concept made manifest, the very idea of perfection and completion given physical form. It pulsed with energies that sought to resolve every contradiction, heal every imperfection, and reduce the beautiful complexity of reality to simple, sterile order.
"She's trying to perfect existence itself," Sythara whispered in awe and horror. "To create a reality where nothing can go wrong because nothing is allowed to be different."
"Look around," Evon said, gesturing to the impossible landscape surrounding them. "This is what perfect order looks like when it's imposed on a system designed for creative chaos."
The fragment had created a realm where every possibility existed simultaneously, where all potential outcomes were equally real, where cause and effect were perfectly balanced and therefore completely meaningless. It was a place of ultimate peace and ultimate stagnation, where nothing could suffer because nothing could truly exist.
"How do we reach her?" Evon asked, studying the fragment that somehow existed in all directions at once while being nowhere in particular.
"Very carefully," Null replied. "The fragment is at the center of a probability storm. Every step toward it splits reality into multiple potential futures. Take the wrong path, and you could end up in a timeline where you never existed in the first place."
"But there has to be a right path," Yulia said, her elven understanding of magical theory helping her process the impossible situation. "Otherwise, the fragment wouldn't be reachable at all."
"There is," Null confirmed. "But it requires accepting paradox as natural rather than fighting against it. You have to be willing to exist and not exist simultaneously."
### The Path of Contradiction
What followed was the strangest journey of Evon's life. Following Null's guidance, he learned to embrace contradiction rather than resolve it. He walked forward by standing still, reached out by pulling back, spoke by remaining silent.
With each paradoxical step, he felt himself becoming more connected to the fragment while simultaneously becoming more separated from it. The closer he got to Yena's trapped essence, the farther away she seemed, until finally he was standing right next to her while being on the opposite side of the universe.
"Yena," he said without speaking, his voice carrying across the impossible distance of being right there. "I understand what you're trying to do."
The fragment pulsed, and for a moment, the storm of possibilities calmed enough for her consciousness to respond.
"Everything is so imperfect," her voice whispered through the chaos. "Reality is full of contradictions and paradoxes and things that don't make sense. I'm trying to fix it all, but the more I heal, the more broken it becomes."
"Because broken is how it's supposed to be," Evon replied, reaching toward her with a hand that wasn't moving. "Reality isn't broken—it's creative. The contradictions and paradoxes aren't flaws. They're the source of possibility."
"But how can something be right if it's wrong?"
"The same way something can be beautiful because it's imperfect. The same way you can heal by accepting that some things don't need healing."
As he spoke, Evon felt his hand make contact with the fragment—not physically, since physical contact was impossible in this place, but conceptually, touching the idea of the fragment rather than the fragment itself.
The moment of connection sent ripples through the storm of possibilities, and suddenly the entropic region began to stabilize. Not into perfect order, but into the natural chaos that allowed reality to exist. The paradox creatures stopped trying to resolve their contradictions and simply existed in their impossible states. The landscape settled into being nonsensical but stable.
The fragment collapsed from its conceptual form back into simple light—not the sterile perfection it had been trying to achieve, but the warm, healing radiance that accepted imperfection as part of beauty.
As Evon carefully stored the tenth fragment, his Eyes of Fate revealed another relic piece—this one existing in several mutually exclusive locations simultaneously, all of them equally real.
"Ten down," he said as they began the long journey back to normal reality. "Three to go."
________