Centuria Books · I Became an Angel and Accidentally Started a Church
I Became an Angel and Accidentally Started a Church — Read the First Chapter
Trevor Dwyer promised he could carry any raid. Heaven answers by giving him a halo, wings, and the tiny, beautiful body of a newly forged angel.
Chapter 1 — Last Pull
Trevor Dwyer called the wipe six seconds before anybody else; the Ash Warden had raised its left gauntlet, sending a sharp red spark through the cracked wrist. Each failed pull had ended the same way, with half the arena full of fire.
He thumbed his headset. “Stack on the left. Mitch, bait the cone, and everybody else rolls through the wrist when it locks.”
Mitch protested, “The published guide says we should spread here.”
He snorted. “The guide is why we have twelve dead bodies on the floor.”
At his cluttered desk, Trevor leaned toward the old monitor while its blue light filled his dark bedroom. Beside his keyboard stood an empty orange soda bottle. And the clock in the corner read 2:11 a.m.
In six hours, he had algebra, then a grocery shift, and a mother who would knock at seven because she trusted neither alarm. After that came the rest of his first year after high school: work, class, cheap food, and a few hours online with men who lost left under pressure. Not glamorous, but his.
But this pull belonged to him too. After three nights lost to the same rule, he said no to let a bad guide waste a fourth.
Across the arena, the massive Ash Warden turned while Mitch ran right.
He could only watch while Mitch sprinted the wrong way before muttering, “That path remains impressively different from left, brother.”
Then the boss fired; three players vanished beneath a roaring wall of flame. He hit his dash and slid under the burning arm. His blade struck the bright elbow seam, dropped the health bar by a full inch, and showed the hidden break point.
He shouted, “Everybody hit the bright wrist seam. If I can carry this lobby, I can carry anybody.”
Suddenly, white light filled his monitor and punched through the screen.
He threw himself backward, but the light caught his face and pulled until his chair struck the wall. Against his throat, the headset cord snapped tight as blue sparks raced across its metal band, then pain struck both sides of his skull, drove down his spine, and locked each muscle.
Under the shock, his rigid hand clamped the mouse while burnt plastic and hair fouled the air. Soon the raid voices stretched into an animal groan, then vanished beneath the electronic whine inside his skull.
He tried to call for his mother, but his locked jaw would not open before the clock changed to 2:12 and his heart stopped.
For one wild second, his room stretched into a thin blue tunnel. His stiff body stayed in the chair at the far end. A bright outline shaped exactly like Trevor tore free, and then his desk, house, and Springfield vanished.
At the tunnel’s end, rough stone struck his cheek. He opened his mouth to cough dust in a voice that came out light, clear, and far too pretty. He froze against the cold floor.
Beneath him, a cracked tile pressed against his bare thigh. Along his back, cold air moved in two wide bands while his left breast flattened beneath his forearm. Over his face spilled long pale hair.
He coughed until the dust stopped scratching his throat, then said, “Okay, this situation now has a few serious problems.”
Still the wrong voice when he pushed upright. Behind him, white feathers spread across the floor.
He tried to pull away, but both wings jerked with him; one struck a broken wooden bench while the other swept dust into his face.
He stared at the feathers. “Wings.”
Around him, the cracked hall returned the word in a woman’s voice. Above his brow, gold light blinked and formed a broken ring with a dark gap at the rear.
He craned his neck. “Halo.”
Then blue System letters opened in front of him.
SYSTEM // Oh, fuck it. Crisis first; identity spiral after nobody is dying.
READOUT // Founder vessel online
VITALS // HP 108/108 — full | MP 146/146 — full
Trevor Dwyer still lives within.
He remains 19.
He remains physically 19.
He still identifies as male and uses he/him.
He remains physically female and angelic.
Class: Unsworn paladin.
Terrestrial body: deceased.
Continuity status: soul intact.
Translation layer: English (United States).
You cannot currently return.
Emergency condition: active.
He read the blue panel twice; however, the awful words stayed fixed.
Of all its words, deceased hurt more than female. Back home, his bedroom had not vanished because a game portal needed a hero. By seven, his mother would find him cold in the chair, and no return spell could make that discovery gentle.
He pressed one pale palm to the tile until the new fingers ached. Grief could take its turn after he survived the next ten minutes. For now, the panel supplied two facts worth defending: his soul stayed intact, and the System still logged him as male.
Across his narrow chest, a torn white shift fell to mid-thigh. One side had slipped from a soft shoulder. Before he touched anything, the weight of breasts beneath cloth, a narrow waist, pale white skin, and long blonde hair answered the question: female body, angel.
Yet his thoughts did not crash the way they should have. One dumb part of his brain insisted the bright hair looked wild.
He caught a warm, smooth handful near his waist and brushed dust from the ends. Before tonight, his hair had stopped at his ears. Now it fell over his lap in a bright sheet and made the torn shift look costly.
He flexed his bare foot until five pale toes moved, then bent one knee. Beneath the cloth, his thigh stayed slim and soft, but firm muscle answered at once. When he turned, his waist pulled, his new chest carried more weight than expected, and both wings shifted to keep him upright.
Not weak. Also very, very cute.
He looked down at himself, raised both pale brows, and said, “I have become someone’s premium limited banner unit.”
Above him, the cracked halo answered with a small, offended pulse.
Still, his reaction bothered him more than the joke admitted. He wanted his old room, his family, and the answer to whether Mitch had wiped. He also wanted five private minutes with a mirror and each menu this angel body possessed. Worse, that second desire arrived too fast, wrapped in a warm thrill that did not feel borrowed.
In plain English, the panel declared his soul intact and logged male with he/him. He held on to that truth while the soft weight on his chest shifted with each breath.
Enjoying good gear did not turn a man into the gear, any more than a knight became the sword he admired. Unfortunately, the comparison survived for almost three seconds, then one wing twitched at his pretty voice and sent a pleasant shiver between his shoulders.
He pointed one accusing finger at his new chest and said, “We are going to watch that suspicious response very closely.”
His pulse jumped at the voice again before a wet cough sounded to his right.
He rolled toward the sound. Beside the broken circle, he found a woman sprawled on the floor. Over her dark blue tunic lay dented silver half-plate. Around one wrist looped a severed flail chain; a black claw had punched through the mail below her ribs.
Even on the ground, she looked tall. Her lightly sun-tanned white skin had gone gray around the mouth, and one thick braid lay across her breastplate, its end dark with blood.
Her gray-green eyes opened on him; at once, she reached for an iron flail head three feet beyond her armored fingers.
She breathed, “Founder angel.”
Not relief, but expectation. She did not know him. Yet someone had built this body so a wounded inquisitor would see soft cheeks, bright hair, an exposed shoulder, and a broken gold halo and expect an answer. Together, those features formed a uniform as surely as her dented plate.
He disliked being assigned a role before reading the skill list; still, he disliked leaving a party member on the floor more.
He crawled closer, stopped outside her reach, and said, “Maybe, although I was more of a raid caller five minutes ago. Tell me what you need right now.”
Slowly, the wounded woman blinked twice and studied him again.
Damaris pressed harder against her wound. Then she said, “You asked what I need instead of who I am.”
He kept his focus on the blood between her fingers. “Identity needs a longer answer, and you are bleeding now.”
She pressed one hand against the ragged hole in her mail while dark blood slipped through her fingers and entered the carved circle.
Damaris shifted against the tile, drew a painful breath, and said, “The founder rite failed because this vessel should have been empty.”
Trevor spread both hands with his palms turned upward and said, “It was not empty, so please forgive the scheduling conflict.”
For half a second, her gray-green gaze crossed his face, halo, bare shoulder, and white wings, stealing focus from the wound.
Damaris studied him as if searching for a second face and said, “You are a human man inside that vessel.”
Trevor met her stare without looking away from the challenge and said, “Yes, and that fact remains key to me.”
Damaris looked lower. One eyebrow rose toward her hairline before she said, “That female angel body is plainly not male.”
Trevor nodded toward the spreading blood between her fingers and said, “Also yes. Can we finish the identity discussion after first aid?”
At that, the woman’s mouth twitched with either sudden pain or the beginning of a laugh.
Damaris drew one more careful breath before giving him her name: “Damaris Pike. I am a twenty-three-year-old Inquisitor.”
Trevor said with the same facts and none of her gravity. “Trevor Dwyer, nineteen. I attend community college, and this is an awful night to meet you.”
Damaris grimaced as one more drop struck the carved floor. Then she said, “You asked me to tell you what I need.”
Trevor gestured for her to continue before they lost more time and said, “I am still asking while your timer keeps falling.”
With two bloody fingers, she directed him toward a wide stair at the far end of the hall. Three iron bells hung above it; two had cracked, while the third moved without wind.
Damaris warned him. “Close the hurt soul breach before the living rakers wake.”
While she spoke, he mapped the ruined hall. Four bench rows faced the broken circle, white paint clung to stone walls, and hundreds of small names ringed the bells, half chipped away. Above the stair, a round window framed gray dawn and a dark hill.
Good; he had a coherent combat picture. Benches gave poor cover but handy channels, and loose boards could become clubs or braces. Both cracked bells would fall if their ropes reached the floor, and anything climbing the broad stair had to pass beneath them. More importantly, black trails meant wounded foes, not dead ones.
Near the circle stood no doors. Between them and the closest clear exit beyond the stair, three narrow trails of black blood crossed the floor.
Trevor raised one finger. “How many living rakers remain inside this shrine?”
Damaris said him. “I killed two before the black claw reached me.”
He frowned. “That was not the question.”
Damaris tried again. “I counted six different voices before the rite failed.”
He nodded. “Great, that leaves four unless demon kindergarten teaches advanced counting.”
Over the wound, her bloody fingers tightened as she said, “They hunt open souls, and mine is close.”
He tapped his chest and asked, “And what condition would you assign to my soul?”
Damaris winced. “Your new soul is painfully bright and dangerously loud.”
He sighed. “So this founder body spawned with passive threat generation.”
Damaris narrowed her eyes. “You keep saying that you somehow spawned here.”
He held up one finger and said, “Later.”
Beneath the tiles, a harsh scrape moved from left to right, answered by over one set of claws. One creature waited below the circle, and at least one more had found the wall.
He turned as the carved circle split in six places and black light rose through the cracks like smoke beneath a door.
Then a broad impact thumped beneath the tile, paused, and struck again hard enough to shake dust from the grout.
Trevor studied the repeated knocking. “Are those things beneath us the left rakers?”
Damaris said, “Those beasts are demons made to hunt exposed souls.”
Trevor muttered, “Of course my first dungeon contains actual soul-hunting demons.”
He reached toward Damaris’s wound but stopped before touching her. “Can I examine the wound before it gets worse?”
Damaris said, “You possess no healer class or care training here.”
Trevor replied, “I have two working eyes and an active interface.”
Before he ended the sentence, gold light moved across his eyes and changed the hall around him.
Around him, thin lines traced the broken tiles, hanging bells, and Damaris’s body. Her ragged wound glowed red. Inside her lay a second shape, made from pale gold threads around a bright core. Meanwhile, three black marks clung to the outer layers and bit deeper when she breathed.
Halo Sight named her: Damaris Pike, twenty-three, human Inquisitor, Level 7. Her Health fell from 17/134 while black damage chewed through a guarded soul whose memory and free will stayed whole. Nine minutes stayed before her body died; under four more before the rakers could seize what death exposed.
Then CHOIR RITE I flared beneath the warning. It could forge one linked voice from a soul, but only if that soul opened willingly or broke. Worse, it changed the soul before it changed flesh.
That last line counted. The System could distinguish pact from surrender, even though whoever built this place had buried both choices inside the same holy tool.
It could tell soul from body, too. Maybe the identity line told the truth; maybe the System lied. Trevor knew he was a man either way; a pretty voice, a warm shiver, or even a body he enjoyed might scare him. They could not choose for him.
Instead, he trusted the clock. Damaris had under nine minutes, and the rite would not start while her soul stayed Guarded. She had to invite him in, or he had to break the part that could say no.
The cheap play was clear: hurt her, transform her, and gain a Level 7 inquisitor. Any raid leader who cared only about clear time would take that deal.
He returned to Damaris. She was not a quest marker but a bleeding woman who had given him her name and age because he asked.
And he would not turn her into gear because the cheap option carried better numbers, even as the blue timer began counting from 00:08:59 to 00:08:58.
Under his knees, the floor jumped when the creature below rammed the broken circle. Damaris grabbed his wrist with a grip that stayed firm despite the blood beneath her armor.
Damaris said, “Founder, you have nine minutes to decide what kind of angel you intend to become.”
Chapter 2 — Wrong Body, Right Problem
Trevor had never made a life-changing build choice while barefoot in demon blood or equipped with breasts. Both demanded focus; even so, only Damaris’s wound carried an eight-minute timer.
With each breath, the soft weight moved against his shift; he pulled the torn cloth over his bare shoulder and focused on Damaris’s gray face. And the body’s other surprises could wait until its only witness survived.
He held the glowing menu between them and asked, “Tell me just what Choir Rite does to a soul.”
Against the base of a stone bench, Damaris pushed herself upright and left a wet red streak across the floor.
Damaris said, “The Rite remakes the soul first, and then the flesh follows.”
“What does the ended soul become then?” he asked.
“It becomes an angelic voice bound to a Choir Crown,” she said.
He pointed at his halo. “Would that linked voice become bound to my Crown?”
Her gray-green gaze rose with his hand. “The Crown belongs to you if the founder mark accepted your soul.”
“Can the Rite change what a soul believes it is?” he asked.
Damaris took one careful breath before she said, “The Rite can cut memory, bend loyalty, and narrow choice, though identity is harder. A bad Crown can force a soul to betray itself until surrender feels easier than fighting.”
He tightened the torn shift around his shoulder and asked, “Can the founder body do that to me?”
Damaris watched the gold panel only he could read. “The vessel follows the soul and teaches it to move the body, while pleasure teaches faster than pain. Your Crown may carry one more purpose I cannot test.”
Quietly, the warning settled beside that warm wing shiver. The body could teach him, and someone had made it a dangerously good teacher, yet learning how to use it was not the same as becoming someone else.
Then one more blow shook the floor and kicked a cracked tile against his bare foot; therefore, he opened the Rite panel.
SYSTEM // Darling, the numbers are rude. You, however, remain offensively pretty.
READOUT // Choir rite I — target: Damaris Pike
VITALS // HP 96/108 — ready | MP 134/146 — ready
RITE COST // 18 MP to open the channel, then the listed Resonance package.
Target state: guarded.
Base resonance available: 53/53.
Unlocked: Packages detected.
Preserve — 42 resonance.
Memory: 100.
Autonomy: 100.
Bond release: willed.
No one forces you to obey.
Compress — 31 resonance.
Memory: 96.
Autonomy: 82.
Bond release: restricted.
No one forces you to obey.
Obedience — 24 resonance.
Memory: 92.
Autonomy: 35.
Bond release: locked.
Forced commands: installed.
Rite opens only to a soul that willingly opens or has been broken.
The rite wanted 18 MP each time. Trevor had 134. Seven clean openings, then nothing but wings, steel, and whatever dignity survived the landing. That was enough arithmetic to make mercy feel expensive without making it optional. The cheap path won the next fight and earned Trevor’s hate. Obedience saved eighteen Resonance, then gave him a Level 7 fighter who could neither leave nor refuse and might call the cage her own idea. A build guide might call that lean; any leader with people instead of units should call it delayed sabotage.
If she lost the power to argue, she also lost the power to catch his mistakes. Before Trevor died, Mitch had proven how handy disagreement could be.
He showed her the choice and said, “The System offers a cheaper path that makes you obey me.”
She fixed him with a hard stare. “You could have hidden that ugly part of the menu.”
“Then you would choose without reading the whole tooltip,” he replied.
The dark gap beneath the floor widened until a hooked limb pushed through and scraped the broken circle.
Across her lap, Damaris dragged the severed flail chain and said, “You certainly speak like a young man from one more world.”
Trevor asked, “What makes my speech sound male to you?”
She said, “You saw a holy mystery and called it a tooltip.”
He said, “If Heaven wanted to stop me scrolling, it should have hidden the bar.”
Trevor rose too fast and pitched forward when his new chest shifted beneath the loose cloth. Half a beat late, his hips followed while both wings spread to catch him. The strange motion sent a warm rush through his back.
He moved lightly without losing strength. Long hair slid over his back while the shift hugged his narrow waist, and warmth ran through both wing roots. This body was unfairly nice.
From the nearest bell stand hung a strip of polished brass. Trevor leaned toward the warped image.
The face belonged on a fantasy cover. Warm blonde hair framed pale cheeks and a small chin; meanwhile, long lashes widened his eyes. Around each pupil glowed gold edged by a thin lavender band. Even without paint, his soft lips stayed pink.
When he tilted his head, the image became dangerously cute.
He raised one wing and opened its white feathers behind his shoulder to catch the halo light, then he tried a stern glare. The brass returned a tiny princess who had just been denied dessert.
He told the reflection, “This body has awful threat scaling.”
Damaris said, “The founder vessel was designed to inspire quick trust.”
“It is inspiring a few poor choices,” he admitted.
“Which poor choice were you considering just now?” she asked.
Trevor looked from his image to the tall guard in battered armor as heat stirred beneath his shift again.
“That choice remains pending until I finish the field test,” he said.
Across from him, clear desire narrowed her eyes; he missed it fully.
Inexperience caused the miss, not disinterest. His dating record held one homecoming dance, three talks that never became dates, and a habit of spotting flirtation months late. Now a tall armored inquisitor studied a princess-faced angel, and he had no clue which parts of her desire belonged to him.
Damaris said, “Focus on the fight before you charm yourself.”
Trevor replied, “I am checking the size of my new hitbox.”
She said, “You are openly staring at your own chest.”
He pointed out, “My chest remains a key part of that hitbox.”
The answer came out in that soft, lovely voice and warmed Trevor’s face. Steadily, Damaris held his gaze one beat too long, which he mistook for a chance to try flirting.
He tried, “Your chest armor also looks impressive. It has great tank value.”
In reply, Damaris gave him the flat stare his attempt deserved.
He confessed, “That compliment sounded much better inside my head.”
She asked, “Did the words truly improve while trapped in there?”
He said, “No, they were probably doomed from the start.”
Then a heavy crash saved him from the rest of the exchange as the first raker broke through the floor.
It stood as high as his waist. Six bent legs carried a black shell under wet gray hair. Two forelimbs ended in bone hooks; a round mouth opened along its chest to expose three rings of teeth.
Red text snapped over it: RAKER — THREAT 3 — HEALTH 91/91 — SOUL REND. A second warning gave his new body a humiliating zero percent combat adaptation.
When the raker lunged at Damaris, Trevor stepped in front of its hooked limbs.
Trevor ordered, “Draw Fire against the raker attacking Damaris.”
At once, gold light marked his chest and forced the demon to change course.
Its first hook struck his left wing and tore pain across each feather. The blow spun Trevor onto one soft hip as a blue bar dropped beside his vision.
Pain carried too many facts: three bent flight feathers, tight muscles beneath his shoulder blade, and two safe inches left in the joint. Wing nerves mapped strain across his back in a language the new body understood before he did.
Draw Fire lit for five seconds. Wing Guard triggered on instinct, split the blow between Health and Stamina, and raised Body Adaptation to two percent.
Trevor said, “The System can call that instinctive after it gets hit.”
Again, the raker charged with both bone hooks spread.
Damaris shoved a fallen brass prayer-board across the floor and shouted, “Left foot on the rim. Turn your hip. Let the wing take it at an angle.”
He planted his bare foot on the brass rim. When the demon struck, he turned his hip.
The hook slid along his feathers instead of digging through them. Quickly, Trevor caught the beast’s forelimb beneath his wing and drove a bare heel into its chest-mouth.
The impact went through his narrow leg and light hips without knocking him back. His heel found a seam between wet teeth, then the body shifted before his mind caught up, and clean speed made the kick deeply satisfying.
Above the fight, Body Adaptation rose from two percent to three.
He resented the proud rush. He had chosen, read the attack, trusted Damaris, and placed the kick; the System could record his skill without pretending the body owned him.
At his ankle, black spit hissed against pale skin.
With a sharp snap, Damaris wrapped the broken flail chain around the raker’s rear knee and pulled until the thin limb broke.
She shouted, “Strike it again before the broken leg recovers.”
The raker dragged its broken leg toward the stair while Trevor chased too close to the bench. His right wing clipped stone and spun him in a full circle. Before he fell, Damaris caught the back of his shift.
Damaris said, “Your wings keep following your fear. Set both wings before you take the next step.”
He said, “I usually bind each motion to specific keyboard keys.”
She pressed two fingers between his shoulder blades. “Bind this motion instead. Move the left wing with the left foot, and keep the right wing close until you turn.”
He tried again and moved his left foot as the wing opened with it. His light body slid around the raker in one clean half-circle, and long hair streamed behind him without covering his eyes.
The wing-foot pivot worked like a dodge with no cooldown and pulled a laugh from him.
The raker snapped at him; however, he leaned beyond its reach and let the teeth close on empty air.
He laughed, “Oh, this ridiculous angel body fully rules.”
Damaris still held the back of his shift. “You adjust faster than an empty vessel should.”
He said, “I have wanted working wings since I was twelve years old.”
She asked, “How do you rate the rest of your new body?”
Trevor checked the soft chest below his torn neckline and said, “The rest of the build is testing above forecast.”
Saying it aloud steadied him. This female body was good at living; he could enjoy its strength without surrendering his identity. The panel still logged him as male. More importantly, his choices stayed his even in a voice built to sell enchanted perfume.
Quietly, Damaris released the shift before he caught the warmth across her face.
Trevor stamped the chest-mouth until two teeth broke loose, and the raker twisted free toward the stair. He stepped once after it before Damaris’s Health fell to 12 and her timer reached 00:05:41.
At once, he dropped beside her wounded side.
He said, “Choose Preserve. You keep each memory, each choice, and the power to leave.”
She warned, “You will spend most of your power before the breach fully opens.”
He replied, “Then the small power reserve is my problem to solve.”
She said, “Your bad reserve becomes my problem if I join you.”
He said, “Then you can tell me no and keep your soul.”
The answer might cost her life. He could decide for her, call it necessary, and gain a stronger party; instead, he held PRESERVE in her sight and told her what it would change.
She would remember everything. She could refuse him, walk away, or break the bond. Nothing would force her to love or obey him.
Then he gave her the price: eleven Resonance for the breach, no second full voice, and no promise the Rite would heal her in time.
Under her ribs, Damaris pressed two fingers beside the hole as black marks reached the bright core inside her soul.
She said, “I know nothing about you beyond your name.”
He agreed, “That remains fully correct.”
She said, “I have no reason to trust one more founder.”
He replied, “Your distrust sounds painfully reasonable from here.”
She warned, “I will never call a young man my queen.”
Trevor checked the white shift, pale thighs, and blonde hair pooled around his knees. “Good, because I am already having enough trouble with angel.”
Into his hands, Damaris pushed the dented prayer-board.
She said, “Hold the broad stair and give me one minute to choose.”
He said, “That timer offers us a dangerously small minute.”