Caesar moved through the skeletal remains of the redwood forest, his broad shoulders hunched against the downpour. The wound in his side—a ragged gift from a traitor’s bullet—throbbed with a dull, persistent fury. Behind him, his colony marched in silence. Not the silence of peace, but the silence of the hunted.

Caesar did not answer. His mind was no longer a place of strategy or hope. It had become a dark cave, and at the back of that cave sat a single, glowing ember: revenge.

The night before, they had found the body of his eldest son, Blue Eyes. He had been sent to scout a northern passage. The humans had not just killed him. They had posed him. Tied to a cross of splintered pine, facing east—toward the rising sun, toward the hope he had been seeking.

The War for the Planet of the Apes had not begun with a battle. It began with a father walking into the rain, carrying a spear he had sharpened on the grave of his son.

Maurice, the wise orangutan, placed a heavy hand on Caesar’s shoulder.

The rain fell harder. The world held its breath.