"...My name is hardly worth mentioning. I used to be called Apostasy. That was what my kin called me after I made that decision. It was a sacrifice they saw as betrayal."
[Teacher] clenched his right fist and gently rotated his wrist. The enormous mechanical eye suspended at the center of his brain watched his arm and the two auxiliary hands hanging beneath his sleeves.
"...Now, I am called [Teacher]. That is what the Shroudwalker Enclave called me after I awoke from dormancy."
Xi Yan said nothing, stepping back to let this great figure recount his past.
"...Long ago, that place, that pilgrimage site of Zarqlan's, was the source of my pride and joy. When everything ended, I refused to leave. When my body began to fail, I refused to die."
"...Becoming a Synth was the Cult's greatest taboo. I could no longer be counted among Zarqlan's children. But I was still one of his warriors. As long as my enemy lived, I would fight."
[Teacher] was also an experienced commander, but he had never revealed this hidden identity in all these years.
The Nameless Apostasy-er... As a follower of Zarqlan, abandoning his flesh was a grave taboo under the Cult's rules, but he had no choice.
As long as the Synthetic Queen remained, he could not die.
Zarqlan's Cult had been swept away by the passage of time, but Apostasy had survived, bearing his noble mission. Even if it meant betraying the Cult, he had to carry that mission forward.
"...After the Cult fell, I had no choice but to endure years of solitude, until I sank into despair. I put myself into dormancy and added a neural subroutine that would awaken me upon detecting outside life."
"...The Shroudwalker Enclave found me. Later, I awakened psionic powers as well."