Parallel-Chain Provenance with Structural Merge-Absence: A Cross-Domain Substrate for Multi-Authority Audit Trails

We present a data-structural substrate for tracking parallel independent assessments of the same external object such that (i) each authority's chain remains structurally non-fusible, (ii) cross-chain references can be expressed without content disclosure across authorities, and (iii) each chain's history is cryptographically verifiable. The substrate (provenance_engine_v2) provides identity-by-history at the primitive level: two records with identical fold-sequences are substrate-identical, while two records with diverging histories become substrate-distinct. We demonstrate applicability across eight independent domains - patent prosecution, verifiable credentials, software bill-of-materials, AI model lineage, NGS variant interpretation, psychiatric assessment, credit rating actions, and bank credit intelligence - yielding 1322 passing test cases across the eight wrapper implementations. Seven of the eight domains exhibit merge-absence: parallel records cannot be fused at the substrate level. The eighth domain introduces a novel confidentiality-preserving cross-reference primitive supporting existence queries across parallel chains without content disclosure. We position this work as defensive prior art for the broader pattern, established by Bitcoin OpenTimestamps anchors on 2026-05-11.