The forest did not welcome them.
It watched.
Silent.
Judging.
Its branches were arms, coiled and clawed. Its ground—wet, untrusting. The wind didn't carry scent. It carried memory.
But the apes moved forward anyway.
They didn't belong here.
Not yet.
But they would.
Caesar stood on a ridge overlooking a bend in the river. Morning fog curled like smoke from the forest's throat, hiding the ground in a silver veil. A crow called once, then again, then fell quiet.
The others waited behind him.
Maurice.
Rocket.
Palefoot.
Fifty-four apes in total.
All of them watching him now—not as a brother.
As a leader.
He turned.
Raised his hand.
Carved the first glyph into a tree.
𐍠 — home.
The work began immediately.
No spoken words.
No barked orders.
Just signs.
Just glyphs.
They spread out from the ridge in rings. Caesar marked the slope's base with a half-moon carved in mud: 𐍢 — shelter. Maurice placed logs near it, organizing younger apes into teams of gatherers and builders. Rocket took three of the strongest and began dragging down long vines and bark from the higher trees for roofing.
Caesar marked a new zone near the river bend:
𐍨 — water.
He picked four fast-footed juveniles and signed to them: gather. clean. memorize path.
They nodded and vanished into the ferns.
Glyph by glyph, task by task, the clearing transformed into the skeleton of a village.
Not a human one.
Not concrete.
Not steel.
But alive.
They didn't need words.
Their hands spoke.
They didn't need blueprints.
Their memory held it all.
At the center of camp, Caesar dug a shallow fire pit. He did not light it. Not yet. Too soon. Smoke could betray them.
But he wanted it here.
A reminder.
A symbol.
𐍰 — gather.
As dusk approached, the camp began to breathe.
Shelters curved between roots like cocoons. Beds were laid with moss and leaf-mulch. Flat stones marked the edges of zones. Children copied glyphs in dirt with fingers and broken sticks.
Maurice painted a spiral into a large stone with soot and ash.
𐍗 — remember.
He gathered the youngest around it and sat cross-legged.
They mimicked him.
He began to draw again.
The children learned.
But Caesar watched.
He didn't join the circle.
He climbed instead—to the top of a broad-limbed pine—and gazed toward the city.
The horizon glowed orange.
Not sunrise.
Fire.
The human world was breaking.
The Simian Flu had evolved.
It moved faster.
Stronger.
In cities, people coughed in the streets and bled into their palms. Airports closed. Borders fell. Entire neighborhoods were abandoned overnight.
But what struck fear into human hearts wasn't death anymore.
It was silence.
People weren't just dying.
They were forgetting how to speak.
Teachers scribbled nonsense on chalkboards. Pilots landed planes and forgot their names. Children stared at parents and could no longer say "Mom."
Hospitals overflowed.
Governments fractured.
News anchors broke into tears on live TV, whispering sounds with no structure before blacking out.
A general somewhere gave the last coherent televised order:
"Burn the ports. Seal the borders. Kill the infected before they… turn—"
Then static.
Back in the forest, the apes heard none of this.
But they felt it.
Every ripple of the human collapse pushed deeper into the trees.
Fewer helicopters passed overhead.
Fewer boots marched through undergrowth.
The world beyond the bark was dying.
Caesar carved a new glyph near the edge of camp:
𐍱 — sky danger.
He drew it into a hanging leaf, so wind would shake it when passed—an alarm without a sound.
Then he called Rocket and Palefoot to his side.
He showed them three new glyphs:
𐍒 — guard
𐍴 — night
𐍶 — trap
He pointed toward the ridgeline and signed: defend. do not kill unless needed.
That night, the apes didn't speak.
But they sat together.
Dozens, gathered near the unlit fire pit.
Maurice taught. Rocket patrolled. The little ones curled together under vine-roofs, eyes wide with starlight.
Caesar walked the camp slowly, touching each glyph with his hand as he passed.
𐍠𐍢𐍨𐍬𐍯𐍰𐍱
Each one real.
Each one built.
Not imagined. Not dreamed.
This was theirs now.
Their world.
Their rules.
Late that night, Maurice approached him at the base of a cedar.
He sat, as he always did, with his stone slate. But this time, he brought an extra one.
He passed it to Caesar.
On it, one glyph:
𐍺 — future.
Caesar stared at it.
Then took a piece of burnt bark and added another:
𐍴 — watch.
Then another:
𐍷 — wait.
Maurice understood.
Caesar would not speak of hope.
Not yet.
But he would protect it.
Across the ridge, far from camp, a shape moved between the ferns.
Not an animal.
Not one of them.
Koba.
His face was burned. His arm, twisted. But he walked without a limp now.
He watched the fireless village.
Watched Maurice and Caesar's exchange.
Watched the glyphs being carved like commandments.
Then he crouched in the mud.
And with his finger, he drew a symbol.
𐍤 — vengeance.
He stared at it until the rain came.
Then wiped it away with his hand.
And vanished into the dark.