A story where the reversal defines everything but resolution never fully arrives. The story rests in mid-register: Pa or Ma, not Sa'.
The Unhealed Wound is The Full Circuit's tragic sibling. The same reversal-dominant structure, but without the completion. The protagonist is changed by the reversal, sometimes profoundly, but is not healed by it. These films end in the place where the audience must sit with what the story costs: a relationship that cannot be repaired, a loss that cannot be undone, a world that is different and worse.
Ma beats are heavy and numerous. Pa (crisis) is meaningful and sustained. The Ni (climax) and Sa' (resolution) beats are either very short or absent. The final emotional register is Pa, Ma, or Dha, somewhere in the middle of the scale. Often features a final image that captures ongoing suffering or unresolved grief.
Not The Pyrrhic Arc (Vikrama), which has more Pa weight and ends lower, a cleaner tragic fall rather than an unresolved wound. The Unhealed Wound ends in the middle; The Pyrrhic Arc falls further.
The temptation to provide cathartic resolution is the primary risk. The Unhealed Wound earns its power precisely by refusing that catharsis. The craft challenge is making the irresolution feel earned rather than incomplete: the audience should leave feeling that the wound could not have been healed, not that the story ran out of time.
Ma→Ma→Ma / Ga→Ga→GaExtended time in a register, unable or unwilling to advance. The wound keeps the protagonist in place.
Ga→Ga→MaForward momentum accumulates and converts into reversal, but the reversal does not discharge into resolution. Feels like false hope followed by return to the wound.
Ma→Pa→MaStory moves to crisis then returns to reversal rather than resolving through it. Survival without healing, the signature pattern of genuine unhealed wounding.