Waymaker

Kateb’s splinterworld is less than two hundred miles across, and much of it is ocean. Deadly winds and ravenous fiends plague what’s left. Humans eke out a living on the coast. Twelve-year-old Kateb longs to escape to another world, but in his repressive society even daydreaming about doing so is forbidden.

One day a young woman named Ryn stumbles into his world and changes his life forever. She reveals that demons secretly control all the splinterworlds. They keep the humans in each one isolated with false beliefs. Ryn has stolen a compass that senses the hidden gates between the worlds. She intends to give it to the human Resistance in Na’mor, the great city between the splinterworlds, but now she is injured and on the run.

Helping Ryn get back to Na’mor means risking his life and leaving everything he knows behind. A merciless demon pursues her, and the gate she needs lies deep within the cursed desert to the east. But turning her in means staying in his tiny prison-world forever.

Kateb chooses to help.