Soul

Soul is the pre-break currency the players gather and spend.

Gathering

• The players imbue soul into the ball by volleying: each consecutive hit gathers more, and the denser the soul imbued ball the faster the rally runs.

The cycle

• The climb runs through tiers. Each tier is a speed band with its own floor and ceiling.
• Reaching a tier's ceiling consolidates: the soul they have gathered binds into something stronger, the ball drops to the next tier's floor, and the climb continues from there. The first time a player reaches a given tier it also upgrades the ball.
• Each ball has its own max speed, the top of its normal climb. A stronger ball reaches a higher max; nothing in the normal climb pushes past it.
• Completing the top tier opens the final consolidation window: an extra range above that ball's max. In the window the ball keeps climbing hit by hit, up through the bonus range, and a fully imbued ball banks a reward into the next shop. The window holds while the rally lives and ends on a miss, which ends the rally as any miss does.
• The final consolidation range is a property of the ball: a stronger ball gets a taller window. The very top of the range is capped by the world's hardest speed, the hard physics limit; nothing exceeds that.
• A miss anywhere below the final consolidation window resets the climb to the first tier.

The tier count and band speeds are tuning, not fixed (start at three tiers); see Ball Speed Tiers and Tier Progression.

Levitation

• The players levitate by channelling soul; ball levitation has a range, at the end the ball arcs back downwards.
• Levitation height banks by time aloft and is cumulative (see levitation-progression.md).

Release

• Items let the player turn channelled soul into a payoff rather than only banking it: bursts, shed beads, chained rewards, multipliers.