The Reader is the entry point onto the Path of the Apprentice, and it is perhaps the most harmless ninth step in all of mysticism — at least at first glance.
Memory, understanding, and the ability to learn noticeably increase;
Thirst for knowledge — the bearer develops an unusual craving for it;
Reading — extensive information comes to them through books read often and at length;
Ritual magic — they gain the ability to use it.
The step grants neither a strike, nor protection, nor a sense for danger. The Reader is a person who has begun to understand faster and remember more, and that is all.
The danger here lies elsewhere, and it is built into the very structure of the path. The thirst for knowledge is not a metaphor: the bearer is drawn to information, and the Path of the Apprentice ends in a symbolism that the canon states outright — knowledge leads to calamity. It begins with the innocent desire to read just one more book.
The composition matches the craft: a book-gnawing worm and the root of addiction to knowledge — a semi-ghostly object resembling a tiny tree root, one of whose properties is precisely to make people dependent on study. The auxiliary part requires its own notebook for lessons — and necessarily a written-in one.
