Dear Z.
← All devlog entries

· Art · Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Temple in a Teapot

Key art for the fourth chapter — a thousand steps, a golden hall at the summit, and a gate not everyone is allowed through.

Concept art in deep cobalt blue with glowing orange trees — pale hooded figures sit outside a glowing mountain gate at lower left while a vast hand of mist reaches toward it; a white-cloaked figure with a branch staff starts up a zig-zag stair lit by lanterns, climbing sharp peaks to a golden temple hall with a bronze bell before a low orange sun, beneath a cracked porcelain dome with a round opening and a spout-like tunnel in the sky.

Chapter 4, Temple in a Teapot (壶中寺), is young adulthood.

The idea

At the top of the mountain there’s a golden hall. Everyone wants to get there, and everyone is climbing: for knowledge, for work, for a place to belong. The stairs go on forever. Some people stop to rest and never start again, some shove each other out of the way, and some just keep their heads down and climb.

Getting to the top isn’t the hard part, though. The hard part is the door, and who it lets through.

Reading the image

  • The palette is a deep cobalt-blue ink, cold and dreamlike. Against it, everything warm burns orange: the hall, the lanterns along the stairs, the low sun, and the trees that seem to glow like embers.
  • The gate at the lower left spills light, but the pale hooded figures crouched outside it aren’t going in.
  • The traveller in the white cloak has just passed through and starts up the steps, leaning on a branch.
  • The stairway of lights winds all the way up the mountain, a thin thread of gold through the dark.
  • The hand of mist is back, reaching toward the gate. It can’t follow you inside.
  • The sky is the inside of a porcelain teapot, cracked like old glaze, with light pouring in through the lid and mist drifting from the spout at upper right.

Look for the smaller shrine on the right-hand slope, lit by a few candles. It matters later in the chapter.

Updated October 1 with a revised version of the key art.