Centuria Books · I Became an Angel and Deliberately Started a Cult
I Became an Angel and Deliberately Started a Cult — Read the First Chapter
Heaven gave Trevor Dwyer admin privileges. This was a mistake.
Chapter 1 — Nine Minutes to Obey
Trevor Dwyer knew the raid was lost when Mitch said, “Trust me.” The Ash Warden had raised its cracked left gauntlet by then. A red spark crawled through the wrist seam. It was the same tell that had killed twelve pulls, three friendships, and most of his patience.
Into the headset, he said, “Mitch, run left.”
Mitch ran right, which turned a simple mistake into a work of art.
He leaned closer to the blue-lit screen and watched the boss turn. “Bold move. You found a third way through a two-way threat.”
Across his screen, fire wiped Mitch and both healers. Around him, the rest of the players shouted clashing plans over one another. No one had enough health for the next attack; still, half the group waited for a plan that could not arrive before the next cast killed them.
He stopped asking and gave them the only sequence that still worked: “Stack left, roll through the wrist, and hit the bright seam when it locks.”
Five players moved at once without waiting for one more fight. His own slid beneath the burning arm and drove a blade into the broken joint, then he tore a full inch from the health bar before the hidden break point shone white.
He allowed himself one sharp laugh. “So command is just being right loudly enough.”
From the split seam, white light burst across his screen with a glow too solid and violent for any win effect. Then it punched through the glass and caught him by the face; it dragged him forward until his chair struck the bedroom wall hard enough to crack plaster.
The headset cord snapped tight around his throat while raw current burned through his skull, yet one hand stayed locked on the mouse. His bare heel hammered the floor, and burnt plastic fouled the room as the raid voices stretched into a machine howl.
At 2:12 a.m., Trevor tried to call for his mother; however, his jaw would not open. And she would knock at seven because she trusted neither his alarm nor his promise to attend algebra, and his heart stopped before she could hear him fall.
For one awful second, he saw himself from outside: nineteen, dead in a cheap chair, one orange soda by the keys, and his school work not done. His mother was six hours away from finding him, but she did not know that her only son had gone cold. Regret came late and did no good, followed by rage that his whole life had ended because a broken game threat reached through the wrong screen.
Then, before he could decide if anger counted as a final prayer, his bedroom narrowed into a blue tunnel and threw him toward a different light.
Rough stone struck his shoulder and abruptly knocked the breath from a smaller chest than the one he had known. When he dragged air back in, dust scratched a high, strange throat; a cold draft moved across bare thighs and beneath two broad, soft shapes fixed to his back.
Long blonde hair covered half his face when he opened his eyes; a torn white shift clung to a narrow waist and ended high on slim legs. And it curved over two pale breasts that shifted with each breath. Behind him, a pair of white wings lay across cracked tiles like silk sheets nailed to his shoulders.
For three heartbeats, he stared at the strange new shape before cupping one breast through the shift to test its full weight. Heat tightened low in his body, and in a sweet young woman’s voice he said, “Death rolls a bold new build.”
Warmth followed his hand through the cloth. Still, he did not recoil from the pleasure or the body that made it; the response came from his nerves, not a verdict on who he was. Plainly, the new gear was fine and called for a close look once he was safe.
He sat up; then, his weight shifted through soft hips and a chest much fuller than the rest of his small frame, yet both wings flared to catch him and struck broken benches. Then they filled the ruined hall with dust before folding at odd angles.
Trevor brushed grit from one feather. “Strong, wild, and much wider than the game screen showed.”
Above his head, a cracked halo flickered and leaked pale light through a rear gap. That explained the faint reflection moving across the tiles. No mirror stood nearby, so he pulled a polished bronze plate from beneath a fallen prayer rail and angled it toward his face.
A young queen looked back at him from the battered bronze. Pale white skin framed a soft face with long lashes and rose lips. His blonde hair fell near his waist while the same gray eyes stayed keen beneath the beauty.
The image smiled when he did, and the result was pretty enough to cause swift bad judgment. He checked the view from one side before saying, “I would make some bad choices about me.”
That pleasure came too fast, and a cold doubt rose beneath the heat. Had the body only changed what he felt, or had it begun to change the man who felt it?
Carefully searching his mind for seams or blank spots. Springfield stayed clear, along with his mother’s number, his own name, and each failed raid call. He also recalled the awful details of his first try at asking a woman out; men annoyed him, he wanted women, and he had died set on winning.
He stayed Trevor: a nineteen-year-old man in a woman’s body that was lovely, warm, and his until proved false. None of those facts had the right to rename him.
A wet cough broke his self-check.
Across the broken rite circle, an armored woman lay braced against a cracked pillar base. She looked twenty-three or close to it, tall and broad beneath dented silver half-plate; even so, her lightly sun-tanned white skin had gone gray near the mouth. A black claw had pierced the mail below her ribs, and blood pooled under one hip in a wide crescent.
Her gray-green eyes opened. She saw Trevor and reached for a severed flail chain.
She breathed the title as if it bore the weight of rank: “Founder angel.”
The words held no thanks and no warm welcome; instead, they made a demand of a lovely form she thought had been called to serve.
Trevor liked her severe face, her heavy braid, and the stubborn hand crawling toward the weapon despite obvious blood loss. He liked far less the job she had assigned him before offering one handy fact.
With both wings spreading to correct a center of gravity he had not yet mastered, he rose too fast and crossed the circle in three careful steps.
He ordered it without raising his lovely new voice: “Stop reaching.”
Her fingers froze for half a second before continuing, which meant the command had produced surprise instead of obedience.
Before she reached it, Trevor planted one bare foot on the flail chain. “Name, age, class, number of foes, and whatever kills you first.”
The woman’s stare went from his foot along the exposed length of his leg. Yet it paused at the torn edge of the shift before at last reaching his face. “You command before you understand.”
He met her stare without yielding an inch and said, “I prioritize while you bleed, so answer.”
She pressed one gauntlet against the wound. “Damaris Pike. Twenty-three. Inquisitor. I heard six rakers before the founder rite failed. Two are dead.”
He nodded toward the cracks and asked, “That leaves four, so what kills you first?”
She said through clenched teeth, “The open soul breach.”
He removed his foot from the chain but kept it within kicking distance. “Better. What were you trying to summon?”
Damaris’s gaze tightened. “An empty founder vessel.”
He spread his hands to display the inconvenient evidence and said, “You got a founder vessel with a man inside it, so adapt.”
Her eyes moved over his soft face, breasts, bare thighs, wings, and broken halo. “That vessel is female.”
Trevor smiled at the challenge in her voice. “Your powers of observation may save us both. I am still Trevor Dwyer, nineteen, male, he and him, and now you can tell me why four demons want your soul.”
Below them, a heavy body struck the tiles hard enough to scatter grit across Damaris’s breastplate.
Damaris ignored it. “You died to enter the vessel.”
He confirmed it with a small nod: “Yes, unless this is an unusually committed hallucination.”
She searched his face and said, “You accept that remarkably quickly.”
He glanced at the pulsing cracks before replying, “I will grieve when nothing is chewing through the floor beneath us.”
The impact came again, and black light leaked through six cracks around the circle in time with a slow pulse below.
He crouched over Damaris without touching her, and the new body folded easily at the hips while her focus followed the motion before returning to his face. Good; beauty was leverage even before he knew its stat line, and she was too disciplined to conceal each reaction while dying.
He kept his voice level when he asked, “Why did the rite fail?”
Damaris said only as much as necessary: “The vessel should have got a blank sanctioned soul, but yours displaced it.”
He watched her eyes when he asked, “Who sanctioned the blank one?”
Damaris’s mouth hardened.
There. The missing answer counted.
He leaned closer. “Who owns founder angels?”
She gave him an order in return. “Close the breach.”
He smiled more sweetly than the threat deserved and said, “That impressive silence was not an answer.”
She tightened her hand over the wound and said, “It is the command that may keep us alive.”
He shook his head and replied, “Commands without mechanics are prayers, and I need rules.”
The floor jumped hard enough to knock one bench onto its side. From beneath the summoning circle came claws moving with deliberate hunger toward Damaris’s blood.
She said, “Rakers hunt exposed souls, and mine opens when this body dies.”
He touched two fingers to his own breastbone and asked, “What happens to mine?”
She looked at the light from his halo. “Yours shines bright enough to call everything below us.”
He let out a slow breath before saying, “Great. Apparently I spawn with threat generation.”
Trevor reached for the wound; then, Damaris seized his wrist before he touched the torn mail. Her grip stayed strong.
She held him fast and warned, “Do not enter my soul.”
He did not pull away. “I was checking your injury.”
Her grip did not ease. “Founder power does not distinguish cleanly between flesh and soul.”
He said with more confidence than evidence. “Mine will not.”
Trevor looked at the hand around his slim wrist. Even near death, Damaris had strength to spare. The gap should have made him feel vulnerable. Instead, it thrilled him. He wanted the advantage back so badly that the need became its own warning.
Looking carefully from her hand to her hard eyes. “Release me.”
Steadily, Damaris held on for one deliberate heartbeat, then chose to obey. That distinction irked him more than an outright refusal would have.
Almost instinctively, Trevor opened his cracked halo and cast pale light over the hall. It washed across Damaris, the iron bells, and black trails on the stone. Information unfolded without anyone’s permission. Fear became a solvable problem with parts he could use.
Her physical wound glowed red. Beneath it, pale threads formed a soul held behind a strong guard. Three black marks ate steadily toward its heart. The ward on the nearest bell was broken. Two rakers waited below the floor, one crept inside the west wall, and the last crouched past the stair.
Nine minutes stayed before Damaris died. Under four separated that death from whatever the rakers planned for her exposed soul.
Then the Choir paths opened.
One path needed her invitation and a high Aether cost, but the other asked Trevor to crush her resistance before the clock ran out. Both would remake her soul as a full Voice. Only the second gave him cheap obedience, reduced memory integrity, and a binding field with his name in it.
Coldly, the System distinguished coercion from consent with perfect clarity, then it made coercion the fast, cheap build.
Carefully reading each line once.
SYSTEM // Oh, fuck it. You found the evil menu. Try not to look so delighted.
READOUT // Founder vessel / crisis readout
VITALS // HP 108/108 — full | MP 146/146 — full
RITE COST // Open rite: 24 MP | soul-break rite: 14 MP | Resonance package still applies.
Trevor Dwyer still lives within.
He remains 19.
He still identifies as male and uses he/him.
He remains physically female and angelic at 19.
Class: Unsworn paladin at level 1 with 0 XP.
Attributes: Strike 6 | endure 7 | move 9.
Attributes: Focus 10 | resist 12 | move gracefully 11.
Body adaptation: 0%.
Cuteness: 72 out of 80.
Allure: 58 out of 70.
You still cannot return.
Owner field: unresolved.
Target: Damaris Pike — age 23.
Class: Inquisitor at level 7.
Damaris HP: 17/134 — falling.
Soul: guarded | memory 100 | autonomy 100.
Time to bodily death: 00:08:59.
Update: Choir rite I.
• Open rite: willingness required | 24 MP cost | autonomy retained.
• Soul-break: resistance may be destroyed | 14 MP cost.
• Obedience package: memory 92 | autonomy 35 | exit disabled.
Living rakers: 4.
Soul breach: opening.
Open rite cost 24 MP. Soul-break cost 14. Trevor had 146. The cheap choice also made a stronger captive, faster. The System had priced conscience like an upgrade. He hated how fast he compared the returns. Behind the panel, Damaris watched him as if she knew which path held his gaze.
Trevor hated losing and now knew he hated death much more; he hated that someone had built a holy power where the best move came with a slave’s chain. Worst of all, its cold speed spoke to the same part of him that had saved a failed raid by taking command.
A Level 7 Inquisitor under his rule could kill four rakers and explain this world afterward. A dying foe with intact principles might do at most feed the beasts below.
As the floor split wide, Damaris pulled her flail close and said, “You have nine minutes to decide what kind of angel you will be.”
Carefully, Trevor watched the cheap build pulse red beneath her soul’s guard.
He watched it pulse once more and said, “No. I have nine minutes to learn just how hard you are to break.”
Chapter 2 — A Better Way to Drag a Woman
The first raker broke through the floor with six obsidian claws and no visible head. Tile fragments scattered across the shattered rite circle.
Quickly, Trevor caught Damaris beneath the arms; still, he pulled with considerable strength in his unfamiliar frame. Her half-plate scraped several inches across the stone before his bare heels lost their grip. Her weight dragged him down on top of her with a collision of steel and wings.
His breasts pressed against freezing steel while one of Damaris’s thighs pinned his leg; at once, the contact sent an electric thrill through him. And it stole half a breath and proved that the feminine body had no respect for battlefield timing.
Damaris stared past his hair. “Get off me.”
Calmly, he kept his face grave and said, “I am testing the rescue grip.”
She shoved at his shoulder. “You are lying on my wound.”
He rolled aside, leaving a red smear across the torn shift, and swept his hair out of his eyes before saying, “Test failed, but the result was handy.”
The raker hauled the rest of itself through the gap on arms too long for its emaciated trunk. Its body looked flayed and wet, with a circular mouth set in the chest. Each palm held one cloudy eye that rolled toward the light; all six hands slapped the stone and tasted Damaris’s blood through their tongues. Together, they rotated toward her as one.
From the floor, Damaris threw the loose end of her flail chain. A sharp whistle followed its iron weight through the dusty air. And it struck one palm-eye and drove it shut; however, the beast kept coming with five hands spread wide.
Damaris pointed past the beast and said, “West bell. Break its pin.”
He glanced at the tall iron bell near the wall and asked, “Why?”
But she blocked a claw with her gauntlet and said, “Because I asked with dying grace.”
Then he used the same tone he had once given stubborn raid leaders: “Mechanics, Pike.”
Her mouth drew tight as she snapped the chain around one more wrist. “The fall will crush it.”
That explanation gave him a rule he could use, so Trevor ran without wasting one more breath.
His first step crossed too much ground for the force he had used, then his hips rotated farther than he meant on the second. But the third would have thrown him face-first into a bench if his wings had not opened without permission. Their powerful downbeat caught a draft beneath the broad feathers and lifted him clear of the wood.
The next stunned second left him hanging well above the broken bench.
Each feather read the draft as touch, pressure, and the promise of lift. The wing roots pulled across his back and deep into his ribs, while a warm rush passed through his full chest, narrow waist, and the soft join of his thighs. His new body liked the act of flight with fierce, shameless force, and it showed him delight before he could brace against it.
He landed against the bell and caught its frame using both hands. Again, his wings kept beating for one additional second. The motion accomplished nothing handy except shake dust from the rafters. It also sent one more pulse of pleasure through his hips before he said, “That was either a skill gain or the world’s strangest pelvic floor drill.”
Damaris’s flail struck the raker again while she called, “Left pin.”
He found a bent spike above his head and kicked it with one bare heel; still, the corroded iron did not move.
Abruptly, she barked the next step. “Use your wings.”
But he twisted to look at her. “Those are not feet.”
Then she caught the chain in both hands and said, “They are stronger than your legs, and we have insufficient time for wounded pride.”
Behind him, the raker sprang over the broken tiles. Across half the hall, it flew with its arms spread. Quickly, Damaris caught one claw in her chain, yet three more reached past her guard while the last two scraped for her blood.
Trevor spread both wings around the bell frame, yet each resilient vane bent against the iron bars without tearing. He pulled from the joints in his back; then, the motion drove through his narrow waist. There, it gathered momentum through his soft hips as if the whole lovely body had been built around that one task. He hated the disorientation, yet he loved the strength, which left him with no simple feeling to trust.
The corroded pin tore free with a metallic scream.
The bell tipped from its frame and fell across the rite circle with a deep iron note, then the raker looked up through six open palms at the last instant. The thick rim crushed its chest-mouth into the tiles and broke three of its arms.
Black blood struck Trevor from his chin to his bare knees. The dark fluid ran hot as bathwater and thick with ash across his pale skin.
He wiped a line from his lips and tasted burnt salt through a mouth much softer than the joke coming from it before saying, “I have killed my first demon while dressed as a bride after a tavern fight.”
Damaris pointed with two blood-wet fingers. “You pinned it. Rakers heal near an open breach.”
The pinned beast planted its three sound hands and began to push the bell upward.
His halo showed three more shapes closing on the hall through stone and dark air. One raker crawled toward them within the west wall. And two more climbed from below, tracking the red pool beneath Damaris.
Trevor needed her away from the circle before those claws arrived, and his weak arms could not do it.
He stepped over the pinned raker and ordered, “Teach me the lift.”
Damaris gave him a flat look despite the sweat on her face and asked, “You think wings have one motion?”
He pointed toward the shapes in the walls and replied, “I think you have seven minutes and I have a high-speed course.”
She shifted onto one elbow, then hissed as the black claw moved inside her side before instructing, “Spread to full reach. Lock the upper joint, but do not tense the small feathers.”
Trevor followed the logical instructions and tried not to think about the rest. Both wings opened wide enough to brush the fallen benches, and unfamiliar air slid between feathers that had never existed on Earth.
She measured his stance and said, “Lower.”
Trevor bent his knees until the shift climbed high on his thighs.
She shook her head. “Your center is not where it was.”
The words struck unexpectedly close. In truth, they named more than a flaw in his stance. He recalled his original body, tall enough to see over his mother’s kitchen shelves; now, he wore a petite and agile shape made for flight. One body was gone, yet the man who recalled it had crossed death without losing the memory.
Beneath his ribs, apprehension rose suddenly. It tried to turn a lesson in balance into proof that Trevor had already been lost.
He said no to let that fear choose the next move and asked, “Where is my center now?”
Damaris touched two fingers to the air in front of his lower belly. Without making contact, she said, “There. Drop through the hips, brace the inner wing, then sweep down.”
Trevor set his hands beneath her arms once more; this time, he felt where her weight would pass through him. His soft thighs bent while the narrow waist held firm. Across the stone, both wings spread low to make a broad white base.
She gave him the timing with one word: “Now.”
Trevor swept down with the whole span instead of fighting it.
The wings took most of the load, and Damaris rose against his chest as if the air itself had caught her. He staggered once when her armor pressed into him, found the new point of balance, and dragged her clear of the blood pool in four hard steps.
Warm pleasure rolled through him with each wingbeat. Almost at once, the burden felt indecently good. It came from the same deep place as the thrill of being held against her armor, but this time it rose because he had chosen the motion and mastered part of it.
That gap counted more than the pleasure itself.
The body could reward him for using it well, but it could not decide why he moved or whose life he purposely chose to save.
He carried Damaris behind a thick prayer rail and set her down carefully. The words came out for his own sake: “Still Trevor.”
She leaned her head against the carved wood and asked, “Was that in doubt?”
He folded his sore wings around the rail and replied, “Everything is in doubt until tested.”
She looked over his blood-wet shift, pale breasts, slim legs, and white wings with the calm of an Inquisitor taking proof before saying, “You enjoyed that body.”
He said no to flinch from the truth and answered, “Very much.”
She watched his face. “And you think pleasure threatens your name.”
Trevor crouched in front of her and kept his wings ready to shield them both while saying, “I think unknown magic deserves less trust than a stranger who tried to summon an empty soul.”
Damaris froze, but the hand over her wound tightened.
There was the weak point again, hidden in what the stern woman refused to defend aloud.
Purposely opening the halo just enough to examine her guarded soul. Without physical contact, he traced the luminous shell around her core. Since his first inspection, that barrier had lost a narrow sliver of light. Three corrupt marks advanced steadily inward. Whenever she looked at the failed rite circle or heard the word empty, a fourth fracture crossed the barrier.
The emerging fault carried the corrosive weight of guilt.
He pointed toward the blood around the circle and asked, “Who else died here?”
She gave him a truth shaped to hide a name: “No one you can save.”
He watched the fault spread a finger’s width and said, “That answer cost you.”
Her gaze snapped back to him with more fear than the rakers had earned.
He smiled, and the soft young face made the threat look kind when he said, “Your soul changes color when you hide something.”
She pushed herself upright. “Founder sight should not read private thought.”
He tapped one finger beside his eye and replied, “It does not. Your face does most of the work.”
Before she could answer, masonry exploded from the west wall in a violent wave of dust and knife-edged fragments.
The second raker entered sideways. Along its elongated arms, palm-eyes opened and closed against the light. Trevor threw himself across Damaris before it landed. Around them, both wings formed an instinctive shield he had never been taught to make. Four claws raked feathers instead of flesh. From his left wingtip to the root, they carved agonizing lines.
Agony flashed white through Trevor’s back and snapped the hall into unnatural detail.
He screamed in a voice too beautiful for the fury behind it, then he drove one wing outward with each muscle Damaris had shown him how to use. The impact hurled the raker into a fractured pillar and ruptured two of its palm-eyes.
Damaris hooked its rear ankle wielding her chain. “Knee joint.”
Trevor seized a sharp fragment of the broken bell pin. In two low steps, he crossed the distance. Before the raker could recover, he rammed the spike through the vulnerable bend in its rear leg.
The raker collapsed around the injury. At the height of his narrow waist, its circular chest-mouth opened wide.
He jammed his left wing between its teeth to keep them from his soft belly and hated how much that hurt. With his free hand, he caught the torn edge of its throat and pulled until black flesh split from rib to hip with the sound of wet cloth.
Hot gore washed over his arm and soaked the blonde hair hanging across his shoulder.
Even split open, the beast still clawed its way toward Damaris.
Damaris warned him through clenched teeth. “The breach will make it knit.”