He slowly reached out his hand and froze. At the very bottom, the last, thin and slightly damaged book made his heart beat faster. In addition to the mysterious symbols, there were also others that he had seen before and could read. The dragon cipher. The secret of every dragon family, a runic record of the dragon language written in a way unique to each clan. He had never thought about it deeply, but two or three years earlier, Nasua had begun teaching Draco the rules governing the Ignis family code. At first, the dragon did not notice anything new in their family code that he had not learned at the Academy, but later it turned out that each of the special runes contained an additional element. His aunt taught him to look for subtle differences, and when she decided that Draco could spot them at a glance, she revealed the greatest secret of their code to him – before being encrypted, the message had to be translated into several different languages, and the additional elements of the runes indicated the language in which a given word was encrypted. Then it also became clear to him why his aunt had insisted so much on learning languages.
He took out a thin book and ran his finger over the title, Dark Speech. He opened it to the first page and scanned the text. The right-hand side was written in unknown characters, and the left-hand side in the Ignis family code. He leafed through the book and found that it was all written in this way. However, he did not notice any signature or even the author's initials.
-Draco?- The dragon turned and saw Darius standing with Erth by the torches in the centre. The boy looked at the book again and, without thinking, took it with him. -Something interesting?- The mage's gaze lingered on the book as soon as the dragon approached them.
-I think so,- Draco admitted, clutching the worn cover more tightly.- I need to... I need to try to read it. - Darius noticed the title and a
