Prologue
Their hands were so close, yet so far apart. They were separated by a barrier of glass, reaching for each other, their desire to touch stifled by the ice-cold forbidding wall between them.
The boy and the girl's gazes locked, despair and longing shining from their eyes. Simultaneously, their foreheads touched the merciless barrier, just a finger's width away from each other.
They were imprisoned within a tunnel of harsh glass, suspended in space, in a dimension where time did not flow. Debris fell all around them, encasing the two forever in eternal darkness. They were clenched in the cruel claw of destruction, torture, and evil, unable to escape. They were trapped in a brutal net of grief and suffering.
Tears, glittering like shards of crystal, flowed down the girl's face as she pressed against the solid barrier. The boy grit his teeth in pain as he, too, fought the tunnel's spell of separation. His fists banged again and again upon the surface of the barrier, to no avail. The girl watched him, teardrops falling, completely helpless against the malevolent force that kept them apart and confined them there.
Suddenly, a burst of light shine forth, and a pair of beautiful, shimmering wings emerged from the girl's back. She started to float upwards, guided by the wings. The girl struggled against them, but her fingers left the glass barrier as she was dragged off her knees.
The girl's tears fell like rain as she was pulled backwards into the dark. Panic and anguish streaked across the boy's face as he watched, unable to stop her. He opened his mouth and shouted out the name that echoed through thousands of dimensions and the space of millions of worlds:
"SAKURA!!!"