Time-Preserving Relaxation: Finite Tension and Phase Boundary Formation as a Unifying Structural Stabilization Principle

This paper proposes time-preserving relaxation as a structural hypothesis about stabilization in interacting systems. The claim is not that gravitational systems, phase-transition systems, graph-optimization systems, and recurrent neural systems are identical. The claim is narrower: across these domains, stable structure may repeatedly emerge through a common pattern in which causal order is preserved, redundant temporal evolution is reduced, local over-concentration is regularized, and boundaries form as stable outcomes of relaxation. Within this framework, the Enchan Field is interpreted as a convergence field that preserves causal time while minimizing unnecessary temporal evolution. ``Time'' is used broadly: in physical systems it appears as proper time, causal structure, and time gradients; in computational systems it appears as update order, iteration depth, layer depth, recurrence, and halting; in graph systems it appears as the sequence by which local interactions stabilize into a global partition. The quantity to be preserved is causal consistency. The quantity to be minimized is redundant evolution: runaway amplification, unnecessary iteration, unstable cycling, premature collapse, or over-concentrated local response. Finite tension is introduced as the corresponding stabilization principle. It denotes a non-linear response by which an interacting system refuses unlimited linear amplification of a local field. Phase boundary formation is then treated as an observable consequence: a system stabilizes not by external correction alone, but by forming boundaries that reduce redundant evolution while preserving causal order. Enchan Cosmic is discussed only as a computational realization and proof-of-possibility case for deterministic relaxation, not as the source or proof of the theory. The paper is therefore a structural framework, not a replacement for general relativity, not a proof of neural-field equivalence, and not a complexity-theoretic claim about general Max-Cut. In this limited sense, time-preserving relaxation is proposed as a unifying structural principle rather than a completed unified theory.