Weak-field gravity is normally treated as an instantaneous response of geometry tomatter. We test a constitutive alternative in which a geometric residual q relaxes towardthe baryonic configuration with a local clock τeff. The SPARC radial-acceleration scale fixesthe galactic benchmark at τvac = 36.6 Myr. With this clock held fixed, the theory predictsgas-lensing offsets in nine dissociative cluster mergers (r = 0.925), reproduces the isolatedGAMA weak-lensing profile (χ2/N = 1.22), and recovers the environmental dependence of6dFGSv peculiar velocities (∆AIC = 54.3). No parameter is fitted to these three holdouts. Asubsequent full-covariance lensing fit measures Arel = 1.267 ± 0.032 in isolated KiDS lenses.The covariant closure activates this optical excess in nonlinear Weyl curvature while returningArel ≃ 1 in linear FLRW geometry. A direct CAMB implementation confirms the separation.With the SPARC clock fixed before the cosmological calculation, the native Planck 2018TT, TE, EE, low-ℓ polarization, and lensing likelihoods give χ 2 = 1005.291 for TIDE and1005.337 for ΛCDM. Converged chains give βtide = 1.0128+0.0326 −0.0356 and a finite posterior forthe clock evolution. The data thus separate a relaxation clock governing dynamical lag from a curvature-activated optical projection, consistent with part of the effective halo beingresidual geometry rather than unseen particulate mass alone.