  We propose that the only possible realization of a magnetic pole is emergent,
it being an artefact of a torsion defect in a curved spacetime. This special
phase is characterized by a class of degenerate metric spacetime solutions of
first order gravity in vacuum. The (apparent) magnetic charge is shown to have
a topological origin, given by a lower dimensional counterpart of the Nieh-Yan
index. At the invertible metric phase at a distance, this topological charge
gets reflected as the (magnetic) Reissner-Nordstrom charge to an asymptotic
observer, even though the defect itself remains hidden.
