Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle- Volume 23 by Clamp

Princess Sakura, who knew the outcome of what would happen when the two Syaorans met, has retreated into the world of dreams to avoid seeing one of them killed. But each seeks to give her back her memories. The real Syaoran is a mage who uses his powers for good, while the clone Syaoran has ripped Fai Florite's magic powers from him and has gone on a killing spree to get back Sakura's memory feathers.

But only one Syaoran can exist and be the real one, so which will it be? And will Sakura, who cannot allow Syaoran to die, sacrifice herself to stop the future she has seen? Is the Sakura who has traveled across the universes the Real Sakura, or is she simply an image-clone like the false Syaoran?

To save the true Syaoran, Sakura sacrifices herself, after which her friends discover that her real body has been abducted by Clow Reed and taken to the Kingdom of the Clow, where he holds it in a space suspended in time. As she dies, the false Sakura melts into a storm of cherry blossom petals, and the false Syaoran, determined to save her true self, disappears.

The real Syaoran is determined to save the real Sakura, but can he bargain with Yuuko to save her? And who has already paid the fee for them to travel and fulfill his wish to save Sakura? And more importantly, do they have any chance of standing against the Powerful magician, Clow Reed?

So, not only did we have a fake Syaoran, but a fake Sakura as well, which I never even suspected. And with a translated manga, as opposed to reading it in the original japanese, there was no chance of catching it, because certain words in Japan have a fluidity of meaning that the translators cannot know which is the correct one to pick when they don't have knowledge of the upcoming series.

So, to understand what is really going on can be hard, and even the words you are reading can betray you when the meaning that was meant changes when you learn something further on in the series. "Image" might have meant "Clone", "Fake" or "Double". And so the story and the backstory keep changing.

Although this series is occasionally confusing, it's also very intriguing. It's actually two series being written at once- Tsubasa and XXXholic, and the story seems to bounce back and forth between the two manga. And they are overlapping much more now than before, making me even more curious to see how this story will end. How both of them will end. Recommended.