After the first contact, I did what any sane cultivator would do when reality was still smoking and a newborn concept was chewing on my vents.
I panicked.
Not loudly. I have standards.
I panicked internally, the way a mountain panics when it realizes it's technically standing on a fault line and the fault line has learned to smile.
It wasn't twins. It was one thing with two grasping ends.
The child stayed close.
My mind kept reaching for "tool," and my bones kept correcting it. It hovered where my hum was thickest, brightening whenever I exhaled a steady cycle, dimming whenever my thoughts sharpened into edges.
That was my first clue.
The void hadn't been listening to words.
It had been listening to rhythm.
And apparently, so was this.
I tried to shake it off with a cold, practical approach, because that's what you do when something delicate exists and the universe is known for casually swatting delicate things out of the air.
"All right," I said, as if saying "all right" ever made the unknown behave.
The child pulsed at me.
Not language. Not even a coherent response.
Just enthusiasm, in the same way a spark is enthusiastic about becoming a forest fire.
I stared at it for a long moment.
Then I did the most humiliating thing I have ever done in my entire existence.
I attempted to sing.
Let it be recorded here, in the first surviving minutes of the Aftershock World: I did not have songs.
I had techniques. I had mantras. I had breathing cycles that could grind stone into powder and powder into silence.
I did not have lullabies.
But the child didn't need melody.
It needed repeatability.
So I made one.
I let my hum settle into a simple pattern.
Three slow pulses, like a hand on a back.
Thum… thum… thum…
Then a pause.
Not absence. Absence was still too fresh, too dangerous.
This was a held breath. Deliberate restraint.
I felt ridiculous.
The child did not.
It brightened so hard I flinched, surged forward, and immediately tried to climb into my vents like it had mistaken them for a warm bed.
"Hey," I hissed, because apparently scolding is my first instinct when presented with innocence. "I am not a nest."
It pressed closer anyway.
Fine.
If it insisted on being near the vents, I would give it somewhere else to be.
I widened my cycle and shaped a ring in the open space beside me. A small pocket where the hum was steady and the edges were soft. A boundary you could lean on without getting cut.
A crib, if you squinted.
I nudged the child toward it with deliberately gentle intent.
It drifted, curious, and settled into the ring like it had been looking for a "place" all along.
There. Not in my vents. Somewhere safe.
"Stay," I said automatically, then caught myself.
The syllables didn't matter yet.
But the way I said it did.
The child pulsed back at me, thum thum thum, and tried to copy the pause.
It failed.
Spectacularly.
Instead of restraint, it produced lag.
Instead of a held breath, it produced a stutter in the local rules, like reality itself had tripped over a loose thread.
A ripple ran through the currents.
The newborn world shivered.
Somewhere far out, something that would one day be called gravity coughed in confusion.
My vents snapped shut on reflex.
The child bumped the boundary-ring, bounced, and clung to the edge like it was offended I had criticized its art.
"Okay. No. Not that," I said, which was not helpful instruction for anything, ever.
It dimmed in a way that was almost sulky.
Almost.
I softened my cycle, because I had learned, in exactly one chapter of parenting, that harshness echoed.
Thum… thum… thum…
Pause.
I held the pause longer, so the shape of it became clearer.
The child tracked it. No eyes, but attention so focused it might as well have been a stare.
Then it copied again.
This time the pulses were cleaner.
Still too bright, still too eager, like a child clapping too loudly because they're proud they remembered the beat.
But the pause…
The pause held.
For half a breath, the local rules didn't stutter.
They settled.
The ring smoothed. My vents stopped ringing.
Relief hit me so hard it made me angry.
Of course it did.
"Good," I said, and tried not to sound like I was pleading.
The child flared like I'd offered it a crown.
Then, because this universe loves comedy, it immediately tried to improve the pattern.
It added an extra pulse.
Thum… thum… thum… thum—
The fourth beat struck wrong. Not malicious. Not even careless.
Just different.
And difference, in a world still deciding what "consistent" meant, was a weapon.
Reality rippled again.
A soft crack ran through the space between my hum and the imitation, like the seam of existence had been tugged too hard.
My instincts screamed: contain.
I contained.
Vents shut. Cycle tightened. The boundary-ring hardened a fraction.
The child bounced off it, then hovered, confused.
The world was still soft. Early rules wobbled before they broke.
I forced my thoughts flat. I forced my tone softer.
"No," I told it, not as a threat, but as a wall you can't blame for being there.
It dimmed.
Then brightened again, cautiously, like it was testing whether "no" was a pattern too.
It tried again.
Three pulses.
Pause.
The correct pause.
No stutter. No ripple.
The world didn't flinch.
The ring held. My vents stayed quiet.
The child hovered there, almost vibrating with pride.
And something inside me shifted. Small, inconvenient, real.
Not strategy.
Something softer.
Something that didn't keep me alive, but made me want to keep it alive.
I hated that immediately.
I also didn't stop.
I kept the rhythm going, slower, giving it a track to run on so it wouldn't invent its own entertainment inside the laws of physics.
Three pulses.
Pause.
Three pulses.
Pause.
With each repetition, its copy got steadier, less like a glitch and more like a choice.
At some point, somewhere between the tenth repetition and the moment I realized I was counting like an idiot, I tested the real question.
I stopped.
Stillness, not silence.
The boundary-ring remained.
The child hovered in it, bright, waiting.
Then, cautiously, it pulsed.
Thum… thum… thum…
Pause.
The ring didn't tear.
My vents didn't ring.
The pattern didn't collapse without me holding it.
It persisted.
Not with my weight behind it, but stable.
A proto-spell. A first behavior.
A memory.
My core tightened in a way that had nothing to do with cultivation.
I had built power in the void.
I had never built something that could remember me.
The child pulsed again. Same pattern, same restraint, like it liked how "smooth" felt.
I stared at it for too long and realized something small and humiliating.
I couldn't keep calling it "the child."
A name is a handle.
A boundary.
A way to say: you are separate from me, even when you're born from my wake.
"You need a name," I said.
It pulsed once, soft and curious.
I considered my options, which were terrible.
"Vents," I muttered, and rejected myself instantly.
The child pulsed twice, as if offended on my behalf.
"Gremlin?" I tried.
It brightened too eagerly, which told me that was a mistake.
"Absolutely not," I said, because the last thing I needed was for it to grow into the title.
I watched it hover there, holding the lullaby without me.
Copying, but not becoming.
And the word rose in me without asking.
"Echo," I said softly.
The child flared.
Not violently. Not dangerously.
Just right.
As if the sound fit into a place it hadn't known was empty.
"Echo," I repeated, and this time I let warmth show in the rhythm, just a fraction.
Echo's pulses softened.
Three beats.
Pause.
Three beats.
Pause.
A lullaby with a name inside it.
"Good job, Echo," I murmured.
And then I learned something that turned the next door handle.
When I said good job with genuine fondness, the boundary-ring warmed, subtle as lamplight.
When my voice went flat and guarded, the ring cooled.
Echo reacted to the change before the rhythm changed at all.
It wasn't listening to words.
Not yet.
But it was listening to intent the way it listened to rhythm, like intent was another beat hiding underneath the beat.
Echo pulsed once, hesitant, and I felt it: a reaching, like it wanted a second handle besides repetition.
Like it was asking what stay meant, even if it couldn't understand "stay."
I held my hum steady and thought the word without speaking it.
Stay.
Echo's light sharpened. Its attention snapped to the boundary-ring like it had found a latch.
The world stayed smooth.
For now.
And "for now" was enough to keep going.
Until the next lesson.
Until I tried to teach it a word.