The sign flipped.
Not violently.
But decisively.
During early overlap between Tokyo and London, price drift accelerated beyond the prior gradient band.
A minor retracement attempt formed.
It failed to recover even half the displacement.
Jasmine ran the curvature diagnostic again.
The second derivative was no longer approaching zero.
It had crossed it.
Concavity inverted.
Maya projected the simplified landscape model:
The quadratic term now negative.
The origin no longer a stable valley—
but a ridge.
Stability shifted outward.
Equilibrium relocated.
In New York City, liquidity providers widened spreads preemptively, not reactively.
In Chicago, options gamma remained negative across a broader price interval.
Negative gamma amplifies directional movement.
Hedging reinforces drift.
Drift deepens displacement.
Keith watched the flow ladder.
"Counter-moves are weaker," he said.
Because restoring force had changed direction.
Force now pushed away from the previous center.
Mathematically, the stability condition had inverted:
Local maximum, not minimum.
Small deviations grow rather than shrink.
In Frankfurt, credit began repricing in larger increments.
In Singapore, cross-asset hedges decoupled slightly as correlation structures shifted.
In Hong Kong, volatility surfaces re-steepened beyond their pre-compression norms.
The system was not breaking.
It was relocating.
SSE—the stored energy metric—dropped rapidly now.
Energy converted fully into kinetic form.
Velocity expanded.
Yet no oscillation returned.
The movement was unidirectional and self-consistent.
That was the signature.
Not chaos.
Regime shift.
A midday macro release from Washington, D.C. confirmed expectations.
Markets still moved.
Confirmation no longer neutral.
It reinforced direction.
Positive feedback loops require only small consistent inputs.
Jasmine summarized quietly.
"We are no longer in a restoring system."
Maya nodded.
"The equilibrium point has migrated."
In nonlinear systems, regime changes occur when stability wells flatten and reform elsewhere.
Participants adapt.
Models recalibrate.
Risk limits reset.
What once was neutral becomes unstable.
What once was extreme becomes normal.
Late in the session overlap between London and New York City, a counter-trend rally attempt emerged.
Smaller than prior recoveries.
Shorter-lived.
It failed at the new curvature boundary.
The ridge held.
Keith leaned back.
"So this is the new valley."
"Yes," Maya said.
"And valleys feel stable once you're inside them."
Chapter 183 ends not with rupture—
But relocation.
The system has crossed inflection.
Stability has inverted.
Energy has dissipated into motion.
And motion has carved a new equilibrium basin.
The architecture did not collapse.
It adapted.
But adaptation carries consequence.
Because returning to the prior regime now requires climbing a ridge—
Not drifting downhill.
And climbing against curvature is harder than sliding with it.
The sign has changed.
And with it—
The rules.