On the island of Kur, a meeting was taking place. Part of it was all of the high officials of Kur, including its king, Hallos.

Everyone was seated at a long dining table with one end occupied by the king and the other end empty.

Everyone in the room was similar to each other. Dark skinned, with lots of muscle. Everyone here was at least seven feet with the king at eight feet.

Someone could easily mistake this meeting as a gathering for professional basketball players, but the mood was a lot more violent than that.

Almost no one was seated in their seats and instead up arguing with someone close to them.

The room was large with large statues standing at each corner. There was a single window that was pulled down so the room was very dark with the light sources being the candles that lined the table.

There was only one door in the room. No other way to get in or get out. There seemed to be a strange contraption that locked the door so that no one could enter or leave.

The men weren't wearing anything above their waist showing off their muscles. To their sides were different weapons. Most of the men had a large spear that was even longer than their own heights.

They all had similar pants, mostly chainmail with cloth woven in to keep everything together.

They were all speaking a strange language. It used a lot of low grunting noises. The language suits the people that spoke them. Both of them giving off a fierce aura.

Meetings like this one were very rare in Kur. The last meeting like this one happened over two hundred years ago when an empire tried to start a battle with the people of Kur. After fighting each other for almost two decades, both the nation and the empire decided to call a truce. Nur hadn't been attacked since then.

This meeting was about a completely different topic. One that considers a strange power that the people of Kur began to sense. It appeared out of nowhere a week ago. Almost the entire population of Kur had felt something change within themselves. Even the king, who was always the stronger person in the kingdom, felt the change.

There were two arguments. One was to use the power and get stronger. The second was to not use it since they didn't know the consequences of the power.

There was another reason that the two groups were arguing about, but it was only implied and never directly spoken about. The start of the conquest for domination of the continent of Maldor.

There was a law in Kur, written by their ancestors, to end wars and create peace.

This law was respected in Kur for thousands of years, but now people began to question it. It had been too many years since their last war and the people were getting bored. They grew tired of fighting against one and another with no real bloodshed.

They desired to fight, to kill, and to get stronger through fighting to the death.

To them, this new power was a sign. To embrace it, to make their presence know to the outside world.

The ones that didn't want to use the new power were traditionalists. They resected the laws and didn't want to start wars.

They had no problem with fighting, they too grew tired of peace, but they respected their ancestors.

The only person that could make them change their side was the king.

"Silence." The king spoke in the strange language. He was neither loud nor quiet. Many of the people didn't hear what the king said but they saw his lips move which was enough to silence them. "I have come to a conclusion." The king paused, then continued speaking. "We wait for a week, then, if nothing strange is found within the power, we use it while we are fighting. As the king of Kur, I am removing the first Divine Law for the duration of my rule."

The people in the room all knew the five divine laws that their ancestors wrote. They all realized what the king was going to do when he mentioned the first divine law, the one that concerned peace and war.

Everyone felt their excitement grow. The rest of the world had forgotten their existence, other than a few other islands and a few nations that Kur was close to. Now was the time to scar the greatness of Kur into the mind of the rest of the world.

"Send word to the Island of Cato and the Hidden Shadows. Tell them to stay out of Maldor if they didn't want to start another war." Said the king. Even he knew that there would be nothing wrong with the new power and only said it as a formality.

The king stood up and the rest of the people followed suit. The king opened the door with his key and the meeting ended.

As he walked out onto the street, he could see the effects of his message. Only a few minutes had passed since he ended the meeting and already most of the people knew.

He saw people walking towards the weapon shops, to get their weapons before the line grew too long. He saw people bringing out massive sets of armor to sell. People hurrying to the docks to make repairs to their ships.

The entire population of Kur was filled with excitement. The age of peace was finally over. After almost four hundred years of just defending, Kur was finally going on offense.

They were not the only ones that started to prepare. Top warriors of nations felt a new power and knew that change was coming. One that would definitely not be peaceful.

At first, nations disregarded them. They thought the warriors had gone crazy. Slowly as more and more time passed and they got more and more reports similar to information. Some chose to close their eyes and others began to prepare.

"Who's a good boy? That's right, you are." Xander said. After spending a few minutes with Stratus, he didn't seem so scary anymore. It was like there was an instant connection between the two of them.

Xander petted Stratus while sitting on the ground. Stratus was nervous for a little bit but after it saw that Xander meant no harm, it calmed down. It sat down on his leg and let him pet him.

"Sam," Xander called out to Sam to get his attention. Sam was stretching a few feet away from him.

"What's up?" Sam replied.

"Why is Stratus white?" Asked Xander. He noticed as soon as he saw that Stratus was a Soul Eater and all the ones they saw so far had been completely back, so he wondered why Stratus was special.

Maybe he's a shiny.

"Why don't you ask him, you two look like you have a link or something," said Sam.

Sam was a bit annoyed. For the past week, he had been forced to sleep on a branch. He left like his back was broken every time he woke up. He longed for a proper bed. He would take even sleeping on the ground. Just not a tree branch.

Sam had a few ideas on why Stratus was white. The most likely and possible one was that it was albino.

It probably got forced out of the family because it looked so different and was forced to fend for itself. That explained why it randomly came to their tree and didn't even try to bite them. It was never taught to hunt so it didn't know how to.

It had to have been born only a few days since it would not be able to survive in this forest for long.

"I need to know Sam. It's a life or death situation" said Xander trying to convince Sam.

Sam sighed and started to explain to Xander when he stopped. He thought to himself, 'what would Xander like to hear to most?' After several more seconds of thinking, he came to a conclusion.

"It's special. Maybe there's a prophecy about a knight riding a white you-know-what and so it was born just for you."

Sam had decided to call the black creatures, you-know-what. He figured it was still a much better name than Soul Eater. When they finally reached other people and learned the actual name, he would go with that instead.

Xander knew that Sam was kidding or at least suspected it, but he chose not to call him out on it.

"Anyway, let's get a move on. I have a good feeling about today." Said Xander.

They set off with Stratus walking behind them. Xander turned to look back once in a while to make sure it was still following along. Stratus, like the rest of its species, was completely silent when it was walking.

Sam watched it for a while to try to figure out how it was walking the way it did but even after carefully watching everything that it did, Sam couldn't figure out anything special from the way it walked.

'There must be something biologically different about them. Something to do with their paws.' That was what Sam concluded.

They continued to walk towards where the river flowed. The farther and farther they got in the more things that led Sam to believe they were getting close to something.

The farther they got in, the fewer trees there were. It wasn't just the tree, the bushes, and other plant life steadily decreased as they walked forward.

The animal life or the presence of them decreased. There were fewer scratches on trees, less poop on the ground.

Sam also noticed something strange, there was a particular plant that was getting more and more frequent as they walked along. Sam didn't think it was an agricultural crop since he didn't see how it could be edible.

The plant was at most three feet tall with a few light blue flowers at its branches.

The group was only walking for three hours when they saw a difference in the environment. There was a large lake. At the other side of the lake, Xander and Sam could see a village.

To either side of the village, where fields. Some of them were a golden color like a grown wheat field. The rest was a dark green color.

"Finally, after walking for sooo long, we reached civilization." Said Xander.

"Yep, I agree." Said Sam.

They started to walk around the village when Sam felt something wrong.

"Stop. Xander do you feel that" Sam turned his gaze away from the village and looked at Xander. He saw Xander on the ground, not moving.

Sam felt himself losing focus. It felt as if everything was getting farther and farther away. Sam couldn't stand up anymore and felt himself fall to his knees.

He tried to remember and see if they had been drugged somehow but nothing to mind.

It was too late anyway, Sam could barely keep his eyes open, even if he did figure something out, he wouldn't be able to move a single muscle.

As much as Sam tried to resist, he couldn't stay awake. He slipped into a deep sleep right next to the river.

Stratus looked between Sam and Xander. It was unsure what exactly was happening. It thought that the humans had already slept for a while in the night but it turned out that they slept in the day as well.

It was a little scary when Xander had suddenly fallen down, but now that it confirmed that they were both okay, it went to Xander and curled up in his lap and began to sleep.

The group just laid there, all of them asleep. It was around a few hours later than there was movement. The group was still asleep, quietly snoring away, completely unaware that they were being watched.

A small body could be seen moving around in the trees. Near but never close to the sleeping group. After observing for a few move moments, it started to move closer to the sleeping group.