  We study infinite-distance limits in the moduli space of perturbative string
vacua. The remarkable interplay of string dualities seems to determine a highly
non-trivial dichotomy, summarized by the emergent string conjecture, by which
in some duality frame either internal dimensions decompactify or a unique
critical string becomes tensionless. Assuming the existence of light states, we
investigate whether this pattern persists in potentially non-geometric
settings, showing that (a proxy for) the cutoff of the gravitational effective
field theory in perturbative type II vacua scales with the spectral gap of the
internal conformal field theory in the same manner as in decompactification or
emergent string limits, regardless of supersymmetry or whether the internal
sector is geometric. As a byproduct, we elucidate the role of the species scale
in (de)compactifications and show compatibility between effective field theory
and worldsheet approaches in the presence of curvature deformations in
geometric settings.
