The Mine
Level 4 — dwarven halls, ore, a tomb and something in the water
You find yourself in a long, dark, abandoned mine shaft. Stone dust and pine resin from the fallen torches grip your nose, and a cold wind comes up from the deep. You seem to remember passing through tunnels like this before — or perhaps through this exact one. The Mine is the darkest level in the game and the one that leans hardest on the feeling of being very far under a great weight of rock.
What you find down there
The Mine mixes working industry with something much older. There are carts abandoned on rails, seams of ore and precious metal in the walls, thin ledges along underground cliffs, a choke tube of mud you have to squeeze through, and cracks bridged by planks that have not been inspected in a century.
Between those working spaces the level opens into architecture: enormous carved halls, columns cut from living rock, and a tomb whose lid is chiselled with runes, surrounded by the remains of an old battle between dwarves and orcs. Goblins scatter ahead of your light.
Two rooms are the level's quiet centre. One is a cave whose ceiling is covered in luminous stones, arranged like a planetarium, with notes left on the floor describing a mineral called Etherium and how to use it to make crystals fly. The other is an underground lake where, somewhere out in the dark, a voice repeats the same two words to itself.
Structure and difficulty
The Mine keeps the five-stage structure but is the most heavily branched level so far, and its rooms are visually similar enough — dark rock, dark water, dark tunnel — that it feels genuinely disorienting. This is intentional.
The soundtrack evolves out of the Mountain's final stage into a heavier, metallic register: hammer strikes, dripping water, low drones.
The victory artwork does not show daylight. It shows what lies beneath the Mine: the hollow world of the next level.
Reaching 100%
Full completion unlocks the Mine's bonus artwork, in which the creator rides a mine cart holding the book, with the other two objects flying out behind him.
The three objects of the Mine
An old book
The cover is torn and stained; only part of the author's initials and part of the title survive. Enough remains to recognise a famous work of imagined mythology, and enough is missing to make you doubt it.
A worn photograph
A woman, a boy and a girl. Creased, faded, handled far too often. This is the object that changes the tone of the whole game.
An old paintbrush
A long, pointed round brush with a name engraved by hand in the wooden handle — the name of a famous painter. Whether it was his, or simply admired, is left open.