White looked around, trying to find anything.

However, he was left clueless.

There was nothing in the spiral tower besides the books and the spiral staircase.

Heading towards one of the walls, White takes one of them out and opens it.

'What is this?' White thinks, flustered, as he looks at the pages of the book.

Page after page, only one thing was depicted on them.

A black raven.

Every page was either an illustration of said Raven or a written description of it.

'The bird is black as the night follows the stream of life, its wings shrouding the light as it looks for its prey. A messenger of misfortune and death. That is the Raven' One page described it as such.

White continued to flip through the pages, all of them with the same description, only written differently.

Sweat started accumulating on White's forehead as he continued his search for anything remotely helpful.

Finally, White arrived at the last page.

Only one paragraph was written on it.

'To those who face the raven, life and death are an illusion of the mind, for the Raven neither hurts nor helps.'

'What does that even mean? Does it connect with the first page, where it calls the Raven a messenger?' White thought as he closed the book and put it back in its spot.

Taking another book in his hand, it was exactly the same. Every single page was simply a copy of the last book.

White took several books, but they were all the same as the first.

'Seems like I won't be getting any more information out of this,' White thought as he closed the seventh book and turned to look up at the seemingly endless staircase.

'Only one way forward,' White thought as he put the book back and started heading up the staircase.

At first White felt like he wasnt even heading up, feeling like he was stuck in the same place only the ground seemed to get farther away while the end stayed the same.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Thats when he noticed it however, it had already been an hour since he had started climbing, the tower was getting narrower.

White checked around to make sure, he already couldnt even see the start of the tower anymore, but he could see that he hadn't been wrong in his deduction by the sight of the stairs behind him.

*Huff*

Releasing a puff of air, White continued ahead, continuing without stopping, the eerie feeling never leaving the tower around him.

Finally, after another hour, White noticed another change.

The books around him had changed. They had lost their leather binding the pages and the pages were now only held by a simple string.

Taking one of the books out, White started reading it. The pages had now changed.

There were no more illustrations, only a vague text was written in every page, the same one it didnt even have different wording now.

'Oh great one, we plead the spirits to stop however they do not listen, we plead that they spare this tower of knowledge yet they continue, our words never lifting the curse. It is the pact with them we should have honored. We are now the cursed ones.'

'The cursed ones? cursed by spirits that continue harming the tower and even cursing its inhabitants. Just who is Krabat? Is he a Cursed one, or is he the spirits?' White thought to himself as he continued his climb.

The tower gets narrower and narrower as he climbs, and soon, changes start appearing once more.

The walls that had been covered with books were now missing some, it looked like the walls had been ravaged by some unknown storm.

'No it doesnt even look like a storm.' White thought as he saw the countless holes in the books, the were small merely a centimeter in diameter from what he estimated and they covered two thirds of the entire walls.

Taking another book, White saw that the text hadn't changed.

However, the writing had.

What was once a perfect writing style had now turned into of sloppiness, the words barely being carried into the books.

'Just what happened in here,' White thought as he placed the book back and started heading up once more.

It had already been three hours, and White was starting to get covered in sweat as he continued climbing the stairs.

Finally, the books were gone, leaving only empty wooden walls in place of the books.

However, a white piece of paper caught White's eye.

It was the only piece left of what had once been thousands of books.

Taking the piece of paper in his hand, White read the following.

'Only thy master shall control the spirits, for thy mana is not to be in the hands of the unwise.'

'Only the master can control the spirits. Does he only have the power to use mana? Or maybe it's that only he has the intelligence or experience to do so?" White thought as he contemplated the paragraph.

Putting the piece of paper back where he had found it, White continued his journey up the stairs. The walls had now become extremly narrow and only a staircase allowing but one person at a time had been left.

Minutes passed as White continued to climb the tower.

Finally, after the tower had gotten so narrow that White could barely fit his body, a door appeared before him.

It was an old wooden door with a window on its upper half.

The window was made of a mosaic of blacks and grays, and it depicted a black raven.

Cautiously, White opened the door. It made a loud, deafening creek in the absolute silence of the tower.

Heading inside the room, White couldn't see a thing. It was a complete darkness that seemed to almost engulf everything it touched.

He couldn't even see his own hands or feet.

Then he heard it, an old, raspy voice that seemed to barely be able to voice his words.

In the absolute silent dark, however, White clearly heard the words.

"You have come, oh Journeyman. Are you wiseth, or are you the sacrifice?"