The shapes of Bad Times

I was discussing what to do with this prompt in the Discord lounge and mentioned that my boy Bad Times was only anthro/beastlike in the first place because of a curse, so if he was human again he'd just be relieved. Someone suggested the possibility of the curse getting worse and him losing his remaining humanity, or of both versions at once -- an accelerated curse form with how he sees himself in his head? So that's sort of where I went with this. But not quite...

You see, the curse/warping spell was enhanced not by natural progression, but because his current villainous boss Lord Ruslethe decided it would. (Did he step out of line and get punished, or was this just a flex -- promising it could always be worse? I'm not completely sure.) And the mirror isn't showing his self-image as much as his history -- the moment before things began to go wrong. I don't think it was even neccesarily an intentional curse, so much as a misfired spell -- something like an experimental blessing with magical typos in it! But the local natural magic before portal-appearence started bringing in elemental magic was a very slow ceremonial sort, where depending on the strength of the spell and the available reagents adequate prepwork could take years, which is part of why when their son suddenly became a monster his parents panicked instead of just reversing it....