← The mountain
The Workshop

The hand behind the cover

One painting holds the whole site: the threshold, the seal, the river, the climb. David Kozlovsky painted it, and every scene you walk through here is that composition made navigable.

Reflections Against the Void, the full painting: a cave mouth opening onto a golden mountain, sealed by a web of cracks with a plate at its centre, a whirlpool in the right wall and a figure crouched at its foot
The painter

David Kozlovsky

David Kozlovsky painted the cover of Reflections Against the Void, and with it the world this site is built from. The cave you start in, the seal the mask opens, the gold river and the mountain you climb all come from that one painting, down to the light. The site only moves the camera through it.

Open the painting at full size and take your time with it.

More from the painter · @deeptownbreath
Up close

Read the painting

Detail of the cover: a square plate with a skull-like face and two eye holes, hung in a web of cracks across the cave mouth
The sealA web of cracks spans the cave mouth, and a plate with two empty eyes hangs at its centre like a keystone. The eyes are the shape the mask fills; on this site, that is how the gate opens.
Detail of the cover: a dark human figure on hands and knees at the bottom right of the cave
The figureBottom right, barely out of the whirlpool’s pull, someone on hands and knees. Not a hero. A mortal, about to climb.
Detail of the cover: a dark violet whirlpool turning inside the right wall of the cave
The voidThe whirlpool turns in the right wall. It is never hidden, only faced, which is why it still turns at the foot of the mountain in the world.
Detail of the cover: the left cave wall running red, with a pale face sinking into it
The bleeding wallOn the left the rock runs red, and a pale face sinks into it. What it means is left to the one looking.
The Mortal Ascent mask: rust-red, cracked, with open eyes and barbed wire stitched at the jaw
Made by Mortal Ascent

The mask

The mask and the logo are Mortal Ascent’s own. The mask is the face of the project: shaped by hand, cracked, and stitched at the jaw with barbed wire. In the cinematic it is the key, because the gate does not open to force, only to what is carried and seen.