A Wear-Activated Density-Release Refinement of the Hermes Gravity Equation: A Paper 1 Addendum

The Hermes equation (McGinty 2026a) predicts galaxy rotation curves from stellar age and peak baryonic acceleration with zero adjustable parameters per galaxy. Two independent diagnostics, an outer-disk residual concentration in M33 (Paper 7) and a density-structured population kink in the wear exponent, point to a coupling limitation in the transition regime between high-density and low-density baryonic environments. This addendum presents a wear-activated density-release refinement that preserves the locked Paper 1 chassis. Five candidate operators were tested against eight constraints including zero per-galaxy parameters, no refitting of inherited constants, and no material SPARC casualties. Each candidate failed for a specific structural reason; the surviving operator was forced into its form by constrained elimination, not theoretical preference. The refinement introduces no newly fitted constants: its two derived quantities (a_u = a_k/pi and 2*pi^2) are closed-form expressions of inherited Paper 1 constants. Applied to 133 SPARC galaxies, the refinement improves the median reduced chi-squared from 1.323 to 1.189 with zero material casualties, reduces the MOND loss rate from 48.9% to 42.1%, and preserves the baseline catastrophic count at 21 (versus 38 for MOND). Combined with a literature-supported component-age model on M33, the outer-disk chi-squared-nu improves from 5.79 to 1.21. The full candidate rejection path, signed residual audit, M33 component-age sweep, and production data package are provided for independent verification.