# Fields Matter This part does not introduce new equations, new forces, or new postulates. It revisits familiar results under a single restriction: **only source-free Maxwell dynamics are assumed**. Throughout this work, “particle”, “mass”, and “charge” are names given to self-confined, self-sustained electromagnetic field configurations. They are not assumed as microscopic primitives. This text does not proceed by axioms and deductions, but by re-anchoring familiar results in a different ontology. The order reflects conceptual recognition rather than pedagogical construction. The guiding observation is simple: **the same equations already contain more structure than we usually allow ourselves to see.** Discrete spectra, inertia, charge, and stability appear not as added principles, but as consequences of global closure, continuity, and energy flow governed by source-free Maxwell equations and energy conservation. The Rydberg series is taken as the point of entry, as direct evidence that electromagnetic fields, when globally constrained, can organize energy discretely — without invoking quantum-mechanical postulates, particles, measurement collapse, or probabilistic interpretation. From this anchor, the remaining properties of matter —mass, motion, charge, and stability— are traced back to the same source: electromagnetic energy.