A Parity Lock in Modulo-Based Evolution Criteria: An Ablation Study of the Reflection Loop in an Organic Coupling Architecture (Technical Report)

In a self-referential learning system (Demian Nucleus v15), hidden-layer evolution is gated by the condition total mod 10 = 0. We run three ablation conditions (control, ablate, perturb) and find that silencing the reflection loop causes evolution to halt permanently after a pruning event, while control and a periodic +1 perturbation continue to evolve. We identify the mechanism as a parity lock: after pruning, total is odd and increases by a constant even increment, so it can never reach a multiple of 10; the reflection loop's +1 is the odd increment that breaks the lock. We conclude the reflection loop's functional role with respect to the trigger is structural (a parity breaker), not semantic, and recommend a boundary-crossing trigger, which we verify empirically. No claim about consciousness is made. This report is part of the same project as the companion papers on causal-control analysis.