Definitions

Lineage. An ε under its identity-as-history. The lineage is the identity; nothing travels the gap except the record history’s claim on what can come back.

Splinter and sliver. The splinter is the break’s one +1×ε — held, singular, never returning: the axiom’s standing excess. A sliver is a flow-traveler: the per-event grain that pops free at a break and returns at a snap. Two words, two roles, never conflated.

The grip. The electromagnetic hold of a configuration within its thermodynamic, gravitational, electromagnetic, and constant conditions. Opening it is the blink’s break; closing it is the snap. Gravity holds all channels always and is not a grip; the grip grips only what can be let go.

The blink event. One singular reconfiguration: break-and-snap as one event, defined at grip level — each grip that opens is one blink; grips nest, so blinks nest, each level paying its own single toll.

The window. Not a lived interior: a ledger gap — the count w ≥ 1 of sheds missing between the last held instant and the next. The event is one; w counts absence.

The two faces. Every blink’s cost has an energy face — outside, ordinary, unchanged — and a possibility face — inside, dimensionless, where the toll lives.