Chapter 43 – The Silence of the Judge is a Death Sentence

This wooden chair was going to be the death of me.

The VIP judge’s box was all polished mahogany and fancy cushions, built to impress visiting dignitaries and nobles who probably had actual butts with nerve endings. I had neither. My puppet body was just hollow wood and enchanted joints, which meant sitting for extended periods felt like balancing on a medieval torture device. The worst part was that I couldn’t even complain about it because opening my mouth might trigger another international incident.

I tried to shift my weight to the left.

The cheap pine of my puppet frame ground against the expensive hardwood of the armrest. A low, ominous groan echoed through the judge’s box, followed by a sharp crack that sounded like a tree splitting in a storm. My wooden hip joint protested with a screech that made every head in the tournament arena snap toward me.

“The Great Judge grows restless.”

One of the tournament organizers whispered it from somewhere behind me, his voice shaking like he was narrating the apocalypse. I couldn’t turn around to tell him to chill because my neck joint was locked at a forty-five-degree angle. I was stuck staring at the arena floor, watching two fighters circle each other with swords, completely unaware that the real drama was happening in my spine.

“Perhaps the chair displeases him.”

Another voice joined the panic party behind me. This one sounded younger, more frantic. I could practically hear the sweat dripping off his forehead. I wiggled again, trying to find literally any position that didn’t make me feel like a marionette left in the rain. My joints popped and cracked in a symphony of wooden suffering.

“The chair is unworthy of his divine presence.”

The first organizer hissed it like a death sentence. I heard the scratch of frantic note-taking, the kind of sound people make when they’re documenting their own failures for posterity. My butt, or the place where my butt should have been, ached with phantom pain. This was genuinely the most uncomfortable I’d been since I woke up in this puppet nightmare.

“Fetch the Master Carpenter who built this monstrosity. He will answer for his incompetence.”

I froze mid-wiggle.

Wait, what? They were going to execute a guy because I had a stiff back? That was absolutely not okay. I tried to wave my hand in a universal gesture of “no no no, it’s fine, I’m just bad at sitting,” but my arm wouldn’t cooperate. It stayed locked at my side like it was bolted to the armrest. My panic was rising, but my face remained the same blank, wooden mask it had been since this whole mess started.

“Bring cushions. Silk ones. Imported from the Eastern Isles.”

The younger voice was practically sobbing now. I heard footsteps scrambling away, probably to raid some noble’s bedroom for overpriced pillows. I just wanted a normal cushion, the kind you’d find at literally any furniture store. This was getting out of hand so fast.

I gave up on moving and decided to accept my fate as a statue.

The arena below continued its tournament, blissfully unaware that the VIP box was having a full meltdown over lumbar support. My gaze drifted across the crowd, searching for anything to distract me from the uncomfortable silence and the creaking in my joints. Then I saw it, glinting in the afternoon sun like a beacon of hope.

A street vendor was grilling chicken skewers at the edge of the arena.

The smell didn’t reach me because this puppet body had no nose, but I remembered that smell from my real body. Charcoal smoke, soy sauce glaze, the slight char on the edges of perfectly grilled meat. My mouth would have watered if I had saliva. I hadn’t eaten anything since I left the mountain, and the sight of those skewers made me realize just how much I missed food.

I needed one of those skewers more than I needed air.

I raised my hand to get the attention of the organizers behind me. My plan was simple: point at the vendor, ask them to buy me a skewer, enjoy a nice snack while pretending to watch the fights. Easy. Normal. The kind of thing any reasonable person would do.

My arm snapped up like a drawbridge.

The joint locked into place with a mechanical click that echoed across the box. My finger extended in a rigid, accusatory line, pointing directly at the poor barbecue guy who was just trying to make an honest living. I looked like a prophet calling down divine judgment, not a hungry dude asking for street food.

“He has identified a target.”

The head organizer’s voice dropped to a terrified whisper. I tried to lower my arm, to wave it casually and indicate that no, I was just hungry, please calm down. My shoulder joint refused to budge. I was stuck pointing like the world’s most aggressive statue.

“Guards! Seize that man immediately!”

I watched in absolute horror as a squad of armored soldiers sprinted toward the yakitori vendor. The poor guy didn’t even have time to put down his skewer tongs before they tackled him to the ground. His grill tipped over, sending perfectly good chicken skewers rolling into the dirt. A plume of charcoal smoke rose into the air like a funeral pyre for my lunch.

No.

My arm finally unlocked, dropping to my side with a defeated thud. The vendor was being dragged away in chains, screaming something about his innocence and his family recipes. I had just gotten a man arrested for the crime of selling delicious food. This was officially the worst day of my second life.

“The threat has been neutralized, Great Judge.”

The organizer behind me sounded so relieved, so proud of himself for protecting me from the dangerous chicken man. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell them they’d just destroyed my only source of happiness in this boring tournament. Instead, I sat in silence, mourning the loss of my skewers.

The guards returned, dragging the vendor past the VIP box.

He looked up at me with wide, terrified eyes, probably wondering what cosmic crime he’d committed to deserve my wrath. I tried to make my wooden face look apologetic, but puppet expressions weren’t exactly my strong suit. He was hauled away, and I was left with nothing but regret and an empty stomach I didn’t technically have.

“Great Judge, please accept our deepest apologies.”

The head organizer’s voice trembled as he spoke. I heard the soft shuffle of feet, the clink of ceramic plates. A massive tray appeared in my peripheral vision, carried by three servants who looked like they were transporting a live bomb. They set it down on the table in front of me with the kind of reverence usually reserved for holy relics.

The tray was loaded with gourmet food.

Roasted duck with crispy skin, delicate sushi rolls arranged in perfect rows, some kind of soup that steamed with expensive-looking herbs floating on top. It was the kind of feast that would make food critics weep. Under normal circumstances, I would have been thrilled. These were not normal circumstances.

I stared at the food and felt my soul leave my body.

This puppet had no stomach. No digestive system. No throat that actually led anywhere. If I tried to eat any of this, it would just rattle around inside my hollow wooden torso like marbles in a jar. I would be a walking, talking food storage container, and that was somehow even more humiliating than getting a guy arrested for grilling chicken.

I was so tired.

I reached out and shoved the tray away from me. It slid across the polished table with a harsh scraping sound that made everyone in the box flinch. The servants jumped back like I’d pulled a sword on them. I just wanted them to take it away, to stop reminding me of my tragic, food-less existence.

I tried to sigh.

My jaw, which had been clenched shut for the past hour, decided this was the perfect moment to malfunction. Instead of opening smoothly to let out a breath of air I didn’t have, it unhinged with a sickening snap. The lower half of my face dropped, hanging open at a crooked angle that would have made a horror movie director proud.

The servants screamed.

It wasn’t a loud scream, more like a collective gasp of pure terror that they tried to swallow back down. I heard bodies hitting the floor behind me, the dull thud of people prostrating themselves in absolute panic. Someone was muttering prayers under their breath, begging for mercy from powers they didn’t understand.

“Forgive us, Great Judge! The food was unworthy of your magnificence!”

The head organizer’s voice was muffled by the floor he was currently kissing. I wasn’t even looking at them, but I could picture the scene: a dozen grown men lying face-down on expensive carpet, convinced they were about to be consumed by a wooden puppet with a broken jaw.

I was so done with this.

I reached up with my right hand and grabbed my lower jaw. The wood was cool against my palm, smooth and unyielding. I pushed up, wiggling it back and forth until I felt the joint click back into place with a sound like a door latch closing. My face was whole again, blank and expressionless as ever.

The tournament continued below, fighters clashing with swords and magic.

Nobody in the arena knew that the judge in the VIP box had just manually reassembled his own face after rejecting a feast because he was secretly a hollow wooden puppet who really just wanted a chicken skewer. This was my life now. This was what I had become.

I missed my mountain so much it hurt.