They say history is written by the victors.
But when the victors are blind, history itself becomes a lie.
I am no victor.
I am only a witness.
And what I record now, I record so that those who come after may understand the truth of this cursed age. Perhaps they will despise me for it. Perhaps they will dismiss my words as madness. But even if my parchment burns and my name rots, the memory of what began two centuries ago must remain.
Manifestation.
That is what the world calls it now, though in the beginning it was given many names. The Plague of Beasts. The Curse of Flesh. The Devil's Touch. Some thought it divine punishment, others claimed it was nature rebelling against mankind. But whatever the words used, the truth was simple: men and women awoke one day to find their bodies… no longer their own.
It began with rumours, folktales. A farmer in Kentucky whose arms had swelled with thick bristles like a boar's hide. A sailor in Liverpool whose jaw unhinged wider than any man's should, snapping like a crocodile's. A girl in New York whose skin had hardened into glass that cracked with every movement.
At first, these were dismissed as curiosities, freak accidents, or the work of liars and performers. But then it spread. Not as a disease of touch or blood, but as a curse of possibility.
One day, an ordinary man might wake with nothing strange. The next, his hands would warp into claws, or his shadow would move without him. There was no pattern, no bloodline, no warning. Rich or poor, soldier or priest, American or foreigner, anyone could wake as a Manifestation bearer.
And worse still, each transformation carried with it a grotesque ability. A body changed was a body cursed, and the powers granted were as unpredictable as the forms themselves. Fire blooming from skin. Blood hardening into steel. Voices that shattered glass. And some abilities were far stranger, crueler, or more useless , whispers that only birds could hear, eyes that could never close, bones that grew too fast until they burst through skin.
It was a horror not only because of its unpredictability, but because of its permanence.
There was no going back.
Fear spread faster than the Manifestation itself.
The first laws came quickly, passed in Washington, London, and Paris. Those who manifested were to be registered. Contained. Studied. Watched. For "the safety of the public," they said.
But fear does not stay in the hands of governments alone. The ordinary citizen grew restless, angry. People whispered that Manifestation was contagious, that merely breathing the same air as a bearer would taint you. Mothers dragged children away when a disfigured man walked the streets. Landlords drove out tenants with even the faintest mark of change.
In the newspapers, headlines screamed of monstrosities:
"THE BEAST IN BROOKLYN KILLS THREE"
"IS YOUR NEIGHBOR HUMAN?"
"MANKIND'S END: SCIENTISTS FEAR CURSE IS SPREADING"
The bearers were no longer human.
They were beasts.
Disgraced.
I remember… I was a boy then. My uncle's neighbor, a kind man who brought us apples in autumn, woke one morning with his jaw jutting forward, tusks breaking through his gums. He could no longer speak clearly, only grunt, his words lost behind his new teeth. The children screamed. The neighbors spat. By the next week, he was gone. They said he "moved away." But I saw the torches. I heard the shouting.
That was the first time I understood the word disgrace.
The Age of Disgrace
What began as fear became policy.
In America, Manifestation bearers were stripped of rights. They could not vote, could not serve, could not marry those untainted. Britain called them Aberrants and exiled many to colonies in Africa and the far Pacific. France experimented on them openly, dissecting both the living and the dead. In Russia, they were simply executed, their bodies left in the snow.
And yet… despite the cruelty, Manifestation did not vanish. It grew.
Like weeds breaking through stone, new bearers emerged every month, then every week, then every day. A shopkeeper might hide her scaled hands beneath gloves. A schoolboy might vanish when the moon was full, leaving only claw marks in the dormitory. Some lived quiet, desperate lives of concealment. Others fled to hidden enclaves, gathering in slums and sewers where they could exist without constant stares.
But many… too many… turned violent.
When a man is told he is no longer human, he ceases to live as one.
The first Manifestation gangs appeared in New York, Chicago, and London. They were not simple thieves they were armies. Men who could sprout wings to escape rooftop to rooftop. Women whose blood turned to oil. Children who melted into shadows and slit throats unseen.
Police forces were powerless. An ordinary man with a gun could not stand against a monster whose skin was permanently that of ghouls or whose voice could crack skulls. Governments scrambled to create specialized units, armed with electric weapons, tranquilizers, or crueler tools of suppression.
But with every step, the divide grew.
Manifestation was not only feared.
It was hated.
And hatred is the surest seed of war.
When men are cursed, they search for meaning.
I recall one cult in Texas. They carved pig-head masks and declared themselves "Children of the Swine," claiming the curse would one day birth a savior who would lead the disgraced to triumph. They were slaughtered by the National Guard in 1898. And yet… their whispers never died.
By the turn of the century, mankind was split.
On one side: the "pure," the ordinary, the human. On the other: the disgraced, the cursed, the Manifestation bearers.
There was no wall, no titan, no simple boundary, only hatred, laws, and violence.
But hatred is never simple. For some of the pure pitied the disgraced. And some of the disgraced hated themselves more than anyone else could. Marriages were forbidden, yet they happened in secret. Children were born, some normal, some bearing strange marks. And governments whispered to themselves: What if this curse is the future?
Because though Manifestation was grotesque, though it was terrifying , it was also power.
And power… is never left unused.
Here I must pause. My hand trembles as I write these words, for though I try to speak as a historian, I am no machine.
I remember the eyes of the disgraced. The way they looked at us, not as beasts, not as monsters, but as men desperate to be seen. I remember the night the riots began in Boston, when Manifestation bearers rose up, claw and fang against rifle and torch. I remember the smell of the burning.
And though I am told to record only fact, not feeling, I must confess:
It was not the Manifestation that disgraced mankind.
It was us.
Yet history does not stop. For where there is division, there is always one who seeks to control it.
Even as the world split, a man rose. His name… ah, I will not speak it now.... but remember this word, The Swine.
I write these words not as prophecy, but as warning.
The plague of Manifestation is not finished. It is only beginning. Every day, more awaken. Every day, more are cast out. And every day, hatred deepens its roots.
Somewhere in the slums, a child discovers her hands burn with fire. Somewhere in the city, a man's reflection moves without him. Somewhere, a girl grows wings she cannot hide.
Scientist came out with a simple theory, it came with the second plague, a disease, a virus.
But that is not today's story.
Today is only the beginning.
And I, the historian, remain a witness.
Recording the fall of mankind…
and the birth of something far worse.