Rhombic Field Theory (RFT) Validation Chain V5.22: Schwarzschild Null-Geodesic Ray Tracing, Literature-Form Kernels, and the Global k_max(p, r_c) Benchmark

This technical report formalizes the V5.22 step of the Rhombic Field Theory (RFT) phenomenological validation chain. Its central numerical intervention is to replace the two-iteration curved-ray proxy used in V5.21 with an equatorial Schwarzschild null geodesic while holding fixed the literature-form kernels, orientation-weighted operator, impact-parameter sampling, and inherited allowed-region manifold. The ray is propagated from periapsis toward endpoints at 1 AU and 7.43 AU, and the kernel-weighted observable is evaluated for near-pass labels of 1.0, 1.6, and 2.5 solar radii. The accompanying machine-readable dataset contains 17,292 accepted points. Direct evaluation yields median k_max values of 1.17348 for the proxy path and 1.17146 for the geodesic path, with a median ratio of 0.998272, corresponding to a 0.1728% downward shift. The result indicates that the ray-path approximation contributes only a sub-percent systematic effect to the archived central distribution. This finding is presented as a numerical validation benchmark rather than an independent observational detection or proof of the RFT hypothesis. All maps, histograms, and quantile summaries in this English edition were regenerated directly from the supplied CSV dataset.