Tao was small, but her eyes missed nothing.
She didn't command. Didn't lead drills. Didn't even carry a spear.
She walked softly.
Listened closely.
And remembered everything.
That's why Caesar chose her.
Not for strength.
For silence.
Her first assignment led her to the lower tunnels — far from the training fields and grow pits. Damp corridors that smelled of rust, mold, and something older.
She crouched beneath a leaking pipe and wiped ash from the wall.
Three glyphs scraped roughly into stone.
𐍘 — Fear
𐍵 — Freedom
𐍶 — Below
Tao tilted her head.
The last glyph… it wasn't part of the scrolls.
It was new.
Not wild. Not child-made.
Deliberate.
Deeper into the corridor, she found more.
Scrap bark tucked behind bricks.
Charcoal etchings under stone benches.
All carried broken versions of Koba's glyphs — but they weren't exact copies.
They'd been changed.
Distorted.
Some mirrored. Others inverted.
The meanings shifted depending on how they were drawn.
Some meant end. Others… begin.
It was a language being born in the cracks.
Tao crouched and watched from the dark as two young apes snuck past. They whispered in sign.
One drew something into the dust with a stick.
A glyph with no official name.
A circle with a line through it.
The other nodded, tapped his chest, and whispered one word in gesture:
"Ours."
Tao didn't stop them.
Didn't correct them.
She just waited until they left.
Then copied the glyph onto a bark scrap and tucked it away.
By midday, she returned to the old records chamber.
Maurice was there, hunched over Caesar's original glyph tablets, cross-checking signs for distortions.
When Tao handed him her findings, he didn't speak.
Didn't move.
Just stared.
Then signed slowly:
"This is not just Koba."
Maurice brought Tao's glyphs to Caesar that night.
No council.
Just them and the quiet crackle of the fire pit.
Tao stood silent as Caesar read the bark sheet.
His brow furrowed at each distortion.
At each new variation.
When he reached the final glyph — the circle with a slash — his fingers hovered over the stone fire ring.
He didn't crush it.
Didn't toss it aside.
He placed it in his lap.
And signed:
"They think this is new."
"But it's just the old—twisted."
Maurice signed:
"What do we do?"
Caesar replied:
"We teach."
The next morning, Caesar gathered the youth.
Not soldiers. Not scouts.
Just the young.
He took them beyond the main square to the flat stone wall by the central cistern — where glyphs were usually taught.
Instead of giving them bark, he handed each a smooth, flat stone.
And he drew.
Three glyphs, clean and known:
𐍟 — Peace
𐍯 — Law
𐍷 — Path
And then… something new.
Not from the scrolls.
Not from Koba.
A circle within a triangle, cut by a diagonal slash.
The young apes looked confused.
"What is this?" one signed.
Caesar didn't answer.
He simply placed the stone into their palms and motioned for them to sit.
Then he etched the glyph into the teaching wall beside the older ones.
No explanation.
No name.
Just presence.
By that evening, the glyph had already spread.
The young copied it onto their staffs. Some marked it into the dirt near their dens. Others tied it into beads around their necks.
They didn't know what it meant.
That made it powerful.
Symbols with clear meanings can be challenged.
Symbols without them become belief.
Flint noticed.
He grabbed Rocket during water rotations and gestured furiously:
"New mark. Caesar didn't explain it."
Rocket shrugged.
"He doesn't need to."
Flint's reply was sharp:
"Then it's not law. It's mystery."
Maurice saw the divide forming.
So did Tao.
But Caesar didn't stop the glyph's spread.
He didn't fuel it either.
He simply let it live.
By day four, Koba's marks reappeared again.
Three locations.
Each one deliberate.
The water station. The food crate hall. And worst — the birthing chamber.
The glyph left was always the same:
𐍳 — Break.
Tao scouted each site personally.
The marks weren't just scraped.
They were offered.
Positioned where eyes would linger.
Meant to provoke.
That night, Tao returned to the old sewer corridor.
She didn't go alone.
She brought Ash.
Together, they followed the glyphs down the crumbling pipe lines and into the forgotten bends of the shelter — past the old training den, deeper than any food storage run.
They reached a cracked wall behind the rusted incinerator bin.
And there… they found it.
A stash.
Dozens of bark sheets.
Hidden in a hollowed vent.
Tao opened them one by one.
Each bore distorted glyphs.
Some old.
Some entirely new.
But every sheet had one thing in common:
At the bottom was a new symbol.
A spiral.
Drawn in dark red.
Ash touched it. His fingers came back stained.
"Blood," he signed.
Tao nodded.
Not dry.
Not old.
Fresh.
One sheet had more than glyphs.
It had a name.
Not written in glyph — but in crude English letters, scratched like a child learning by copying humans.
"K-O-B-A"
They left the sheets where they were.
Didn't burn them.
Didn't take them.
Caesar had made one thing clear:
"Let them reveal themselves."
The next morning, Caesar gathered the council.
He placed one of the stones with his new glyph on the table.
Then signed:
"I gave them a seed."
"They planted fire."
Rocket leaned forward.
"Should we pull it out?"
Caesar's fingers paused.
Then signed:
"No."
"We water both."
"Truth and lie."
"Let them grow. Let them show themselves."
Maurice nodded.
Tao didn't.
She stood, stepped forward, and signed directly:
"You're waiting too long."
"Every new glyph spreads faster than the last."
"They're ahead of us."
Caesar studied her.
Then signed calmly:
"I know."
"But we're not fighting glyphs."
"We're fighting what lives between them."
That night, Caesar walked the shelter alone.
No torch.
No guards.
Just him and the dark.
He didn't erase the broken glyphs.
He touched them.
Each one.
Ran his fingers across the grooves.
And then he drew one more beside them.
His.
The new one.
No sound. No meaning.
Only presence.
Then he turned, walked into the dark tunnel, and disappeared for hours.
When he returned, he gave Tao one order:
"Watch the young."
"They will decide."
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