Sleepless

Sleepless — the entry onto the path of Darkness and one of the most comfortable lower steps to live with. Spirituality on this path is high from the very start: the Sleepless one's perception and sensitivity noticeably surpass ordinary human ones.

He does have spiritual vision, but it works crudely: he can see the spiritual, but telling apart the exact state of individual parts of someone else's body he no longer can, and he is better off relying on his own instinct. Divination and ritual magic are also available, but in a limited form: in this craft the Sleepless is far from a Seer or an Inquisitor of Secrets.

The step's real acquisition is the Nightly Nature. The deeper the night, the stronger the bearer: bodily strength, intuition, and clarity of thought grow. Everything else follows from this:

he sees in complete darkness, without any light;

he senses danger lurking in the dark;

he gets enough sleep in three to four hours a day.

Hence the method of action too, whose sole point sounds almost like a life credo: there are too many things in the world worth staying awake at night for. The step requires no feats — it requires a way of life, and the potion settles exactly in one who has accepted that way of life.

The practical value of such a ninth step is higher than it seems. The Sleepless needs neither weapons nor rituals to be of use: he sees in the dark, senses danger where an ordinary person would miss it, and works at night without exhaustion. This is precisely why the path of Darkness became the main one for the Night Hawks — the night service of the Church of the Eternal Night, which deals with otherworldly incidents at a time when everyone else is asleep.

The step's weak spot is obvious too: by day the entire advantage disappears. The Sleepless gets no combat abilities at all, and his strength is tied directly to how deep the night outside the window is.