The question of where and how the first living system arose remains the most contested issue in contemporary astrobiology, with the debate running for decades between two schools: the submarine alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis and the surface “warm little pond” (hot spring) hypothesis. This article does not attempt to declare a winner. Instead, it introduces a new analytical framework — the topology of the free-energy gradient — which reframes the entire debate as a distinction between a standing vectorial gradient (the chemiosmotic proton and redox gradient across a barrier, characteristic of vents) and a cyclic temporal gradient (alternating wetting and drying, characteristic of ponds). Alongside the framework, a measur-able Free-Energy Coupling Index (FECI) is proposed, scoring each environment along five dimensions: gradient persistence, vectorial coupling, spatial compartmentalization, cyclic condensation, and carbon–energy flux. A comparative synthesis of thermodynamic parame-ters from peer-reviewed literature (2019–2026) shows that vents achieve a high “metabolic bootstrap” score (FECI-M ≈ 0.82), whereas ponds achieve a high “replicative bootstrap” score (FECI-R ≈ 0.79). The central finding is that these two environments are not compet-ing but thermodynamically complementary along the metabolism→replication transition: the vent provides the continuous vectorial gradient required to bootstrap carbon and energy me-tabolism, while the pond provides the cyclic dehydration regime required for polymerization and encapsulation. The article concludes that the origin of life is tied not to a single location but to a sequence of gradient regimes, interpreted here within a morphology of the first cause (prauzrok).