Early Black-Hole Formation from Deep Cancellation Nodes

General relativity determines when a sufficiently compact source forms a black hole, but it does not uniquely determine the microscopic origin of the stress–energy that reaches the trapping threshold. We investigate a node-first formation hypothesis in which an evolving paired-vacuum sector contributes part of the required compactness before a comparable baryonic mass has assembled locally. The proposed paired sector contains two complementary effective potentials: a matter-supporting branch B_M and a cancellation-oriented branch B_A, termed potential antimatter in the Potential Antimatter Model (PAM). Here potential denotes an effective vacuum degree of freedom with dynamical stress–energy consequences, rather than ordinary mechanical potential energy; B_A is not Standard-Model antimatter. Defining Σ = (B_M + B_A)/2,Δ = (B_M − B_A)/2, cancellation corresponds to closure of the branch-difference channel, |Δ| → 0, without requiring Σ → 0. A deep-cancellation node is therefore a localized region in which |Δ| is smaller than in its environment. In a minimal canonical regulator, the associated node–environment transition carries positive gradient energy. For the regular spherical family Δ(r) = Δ_env − δ × exp[−(r/B)²], the gravity-normalized gradient contribution has the exact geometrized ADM mass M_ADM_grad = [3√π/(16√2)] × δ² × B. We evolve this sector with the spherically symmetric Einstein–massless-scalar equations in horizon-penetrating Painlevé–Gullstrand coordinates. An initially untrapped configuration with δ = 0.70 disperses, whereas δ = 0.90, starting from C_max(0) = 0.2272, reaches C = 1 and forms a future marginally outer trapped surface at t_MOTS/B ≈ 0.705. No baryonic matter is present in the regulator. Because the regulator is invariant under Δ → Δ + C, the calculation tests the gravitational consequences of the PAM-motivated node–environment contrast rather than absolute cancellation itself. Within that scope, it demonstrates that the resulting transition stress–energy can become sufficiently compact under standard Einstein evolution to form a future marginally outer trapped surface.