Hawking radiation is traditionally understood as a quantum process near a black hole’s event horizon that leads to gradual mass—energy loss. In this work, we present a unified interpretation that bridges conceptual and technical perspectives: once an event horizon forms, the external gravitational field decouples from its interior—transforming from a dynamically "anchored" field (as seen in normal massed objects) to a self-sustaining "unanchored" or fossil imprint. This decoupling permits the slow reduction of the black hole’s energy via Hawking radiation without invoking superluminal updates, thereby preserving causality, energy conservation, and the equivalence principle. Complementing the standard ADM formulation, we incorporate insights from quasilocal energy methods, isolated horizon frameworks, and quantum field theory in curved spacetime to further support our view. In contrast, for ordinary astrophysical bodies (e.g., planets and stars) where the gravitational field remains causally connected to the source mass, any analogous process would violate these fundamental principles. We also discuss observational prospects and numerical simulations that may eventually reveal signatures of this decoupled evolution