Release did not arrive as a shock.
It began as a slope.
In New York City, price drifted outside the compression channel by 0.6%.
In London, variance swaps repriced by a fraction above modeled elasticity.
In Chicago, gamma exposure flipped sign across the upper boundary of the corridor.
None of it abrupt.
All of it directional.
Maya changed the framework again.
"Stored energy doesn't always discharge explosively," she said.
"Sometimes it follows a gradient."
In physics, systems move from high potential to low potential along the steepest descent.
She sketched the abstract energy landscape.
Force equals the negative gradient of potential.
Markets were now responding to gradient, not impulse.
The potential surface had tilted.
Jasmine mapped SSE—Stored Systemic Energy—against price displacement.
Instead of a vertical release, the curve began bending forward.
Convex.
The relationship between displacement and force was no longer linear.
She displayed the curvature conceptually:
The cubic term introduced asymmetry.
Small moves one direction created stronger restoring forces than equivalent moves in the opposite direction.
The energy landscape had become skewed.
In Frankfurt, credit spreads widened mildly—orderly but persistent.
In Tokyo, volatility sellers began reducing exposure not simultaneously, but sequentially.
In Singapore, cross-asset hedges loosened micro-synchronization constraints.
Phase lock did not reappear.
Instead, the system began sliding.
Keith watched the slope build.
"So this isn't a snap," he said.
"No," Maya replied. "It's a drift under tension."
In over-damped systems with stored energy, release can resemble controlled acceleration.
The danger is not oscillation.
It is acceleration without counterforce.
Mid-session in Hong Kong, liquidity depth decreased as desks preemptively stepped back.
Not panic.
Prudence.
Yet the gradient steepened as participation thinned.
Energy began converting back into motion.
Kinetic returned.
Velocity increased gradually.
Not a spike—an incline.
The system was self-unwinding along the path of least resistance.
Because damping had increased, oscillations did not re-emerge.
Instead, price advanced in smooth directional waves.
Continuous.
Measured.
Persistent.
Jasmine updated the risk surface.
"What matters now," she said, "is convexity."
If curvature increases faster than damping, acceleration compounds.
If damping rises proportionally, drift stabilizes.
The balance is delicate.
A late-session macro comment from Washington, D.C. nudged the slope slightly steeper.
Not enough for rupture.
Enough for confirmation.
The release mode had changed.
From compression to glide.
From stored tension to directional repricing.
SSE began declining—not abruptly, but steadily.
Energy converting into motion.
Positioning imbalance shrinking.
Liquidity returning gradually as risk normalized.
Keith exhaled for the first time in hours.
"So this is it?"
Maya shook her head.
"This is one possible path."
Systems with convex energy surfaces can settle into new equilibria.
Or they can reach inflection points.
If curvature flips sign, the slope reverses.
And gradients can accelerate faster downhill than they ever did upward.
Chapter 181 ends with movement restored.
Not chaotic.
Not violent.
But directional.
The system has chosen release by gradient rather than rupture.
Stored energy is dissipating into price.
The question now is equilibrium:
Will the slope flatten naturally—
Or will convexity increase beyond control?
In dynamic systems, drift can be safer than snap.
But drift reshapes landscapes.
And once a landscape changes—
Returning to the original valley is rarely simple.