Absolutely! Here's a **polished version** of your chapter, with improved grammar, flow, and sentence structure while preserving your tone, pacing, and emotional beats:
Eyes locked onto Kion as he stepped into the center of the mana circle.
He walked with the calm, collected poise of a prince, yet the sneers and snide remarks of the elders made it painfully clear—they saw him as the underdog.
"Let's just get this over with."
"Why do we even bother with his awakening?"
"He'll be deemed soulless anyway."
"Maybe this disgrace will finally get him and his worthless mother banished."
Amidst the disdainful glances, Kion caught something real—a look of concern.
It was his father's.
Even as hard and ruthless as King Aurelius usually was, he looked at his illegitimate son as if silently saying: 'You can do it.'
Kion's eyes widened ever so slightly. His father… believed in him?
That one glance gave Kion the courage to lift his head high and walk through the negativity swirling around him.
The priest—well aware of the odds stacked against the boy—felt sorry for him. So much so that, unlike with others, he chose not to publicly announce Kion's "tainted" bloodline before the ritual.
"Take the lotus position over there," he said gently.
Kion nodded and settled into the lotus pose, the well-known meditative stance used during awakenings.
Suddenly, the priests struck their staffs against the ground in unison. One after another, they began chanting in an ancient, incomprehensible language.
Kion closed his eyes and braced himself for the storm to come.
The first stage had begun.
Kion felt his pores widen as the ambient mana surged into him. It coursed through his veins like lightning.
His muscles twitched, tore, and reformed. His bones stretched and thickened. His frame bulked up.
As a descendant of a long line of swordsmen, his body was being reshaped specifically to suit the fighting style passed down through his bloodline.
His mind slipped into a meditative state, a heightened awareness washing over him. Outside the circle, the priests exchanged approving glances. They had feared the bastard prince would fail the first stage—yet here he was, enduring it.
But then came the second stage.
Kion's consciousness spiraled. Flashes of memory surged through his mind—not his own, but those of his ancestors, their battle techniques and skills imprinted into his soul.
He expected to see kings of old—Stormholt's great monarchs who carved the kingdom from stone and blood.
Instead, what he saw was horrifying.
A metaphysical version of himself stood upon a scorched battlefield, where beings of all races clashed in a brutal, merciless war.
Elves hurled flurries of arcane magic against radiant figures—gods, by the look of them.
Humans and orcs fought alongside one another, fending off the same glowing entities with weapons and war cries.
Kion realized, with a chill, that he was witnessing the **Great War**.
But... not the version he knew.
History offered many interpretations, but the widely accepted one claimed that the Great War was a conflict between mortals fighting in the name of their patron gods. Humans followed the sun god Solion. Elves fought for the goddess of magic, Hythia. Other races had their own divine champions. It was a war to prove whose god reigned supreme.
To Kion, that already sounded like a stupid cause for war.
But what he saw now was entirely different.
The sun was gone. The sky blotted out. Crimson ash floated in the air. Mortals—humans, elves, orcs—died by the millions.
And the gods...
The gods were wrong.
They looked nothing like Thea—whom Kion had already seen. These gods were twisted, corrupted, darkened in hue and soul.
Had they gone rogue?
Why weren't humans and orcs fighting alongside the elves, if they shared a common enemy?
Kion's mind raged, trying to piece the puzzle together. Meanwhile, his body in the real world convulsed—his skin reddening, burning up.
The high priest's eyes widened.
The boy's mana was spiraling wildly.
He hadn't expected such an intense reaction. This kind of struggle could only mean one of two things: the boy was either destined for greatness—or doomed to shatter.
The high priest raised his staff, signaling the others to chant louder, keeping Kion's meridians open and trying desperately to stabilize the storm within him.
Kion remained trapped in the battlefield.
He was restless, surrounded by chaos, his thoughts racing.
*Remember the way of the sword.*
He repeated the mantra silently. Swordplay had always been his peace, the rhythm to silence the noise.
Slowly, clarity returned.
His senses sharpened. His focus steadied.
But peace did not last.
A lumbering brute crashed into him, nearly knocking him off his feet.
To his surprise, the brute looked right through him—as if he wasn't really there—then turned and ran off into the fray.
*Even in this ghost form, I can be hit,* Kion realized. *I have to be careful.*
He moved to a safer position and scanned the battlefield again.
Then he saw him.
A boy, about his age, with flowing white hair, weaving through enemies like a wraith. His twin swords danced through the air, slicing throats, decapitating foes, piercing hearts. Every movement was calculated, cold, lethal.
But it wasn't the grace of his fighting that shocked Kion.
It was his face.
The boy looked exactly like him.
The only difference—his snow-white hair compared to Kion's fiery red.
As if sensing his gaze, the white-haired boy stopped. Slowly, his eyes locked onto Kion.
And then, in a voice cold and clear, he spoke:
**"Run, half-blood."**
The boy vanished.
Kion barely had time to register those words before the battlefield shifted.
The fighters—elves, humans, orcs—began fleeing, screaming in terror.
Kion turned, confused.
*What are they running from?*
A shadow blotted out the sky.
He looked up.
Tens of thousands of arrows, dark as night, blotted out the light above. All aimed directly at him.
His heart jumped.
He willed himself to move—but couldn't.
The shadow loomed larger. Death was seconds away.
Just as the first wave was about to hit, the white-haired boy appeared again—this time right before him.
"**Come with me!**" he shouted, extending his hand.
Kion didn't hesitate.
He reached out.
And the moment their hands connected, both of them vanished—just as the arrow storm crashed into the earth.
---
In the physical realm, the underdog floated mid-air.
His eyes snapped open, glowing a brilliant crimson.
The courtroom gasped. Elders and advisors stood up in shock.
Some priests stopped chanting, their mouths agape. But the high priest's stern glare snapped them back into rhythm.
Even he was shaken.
This had never happened before.
His first instinct was to call off the awakening—but something told him not to.
This wasn't the same boy who had entered the ritual.
The waves of mana pouring from Kion were monstrous. The pressure in the room was suffocating—even veteran Monarchs had never radiated such raw power.
And there was something else.
A primal force had awakened within Kion. Ancient. Unfamiliar. Undeniably powerful.
In the crowd, Kai—Kion's older brother—had just arrived, expecting to watch his half-brother fail.
Instead, his mouth hung open.
He couldn't comprehend what he was seeing, but one thing was clear:
Kion was powerful. Terrifyingly so.
And that, Kai couldn't allow.
"**Stop the ritual!**" he shouted, his voice rising above the chaos. "He's clearly broken! Stop it now!"
He turned to the high priest, who hesitated.
"As you command, Your Highness—"
"**No.**"
The King's voice thundered through the hall.
"You will do no such thing," he commanded.
The high priest obeyed without question. A higher authority had spoken.
Aurelius turned to his son, eyes ablaze.
"And who gave you the audacity to speak during such a sacred ritual?"
Kai was stunned. His father had never spoken to him that way before—especially not on Kion's behalf.
The King had always favored him. Never Kion.
And yet… here they were.
"I'm sorry, Father. It won't happen again."
"Good," Aurelius said, turning back to the ceremony.
Kion began to descend, the air still humming with his power.
"The third stage begins," the high priest declared.
Aurelius smiled faintly.
*Now, we see what you truly are.*
A symbol flared to life above Kion's head—a blazing flame, colored a deep, dark red.
Gasps echoed through the hall.
A Celestial-grade Fire Soul.
A grade that belonged to only 0.01% of the mortal population.
The pinnacle of soul power.
And that wasn't all.
Another symbol began to glow beside the flame...