Confront the Past

One variable runs both halves of this card, and that shared X is the whole point: the same number that decides how large a planeswalker you can drag back from the graveyard also decides how deep you can carve into an opposing walker's loyalty, stripping twice X counters to shave off one critical activation at low X or to wipe most walkers clean at high X. The removal mode is comfortable territory: black answers planeswalkers about as reliably as any color does. The reanimation mode is the color-pie stretch. Black's recursion overwhelmingly leans on creatures and the occasional artifact, and planeswalkers have historically sat outside its reach, so returning one to the battlefield is a genuine reach for the color, live only when your deck actually fields walkers worth the trip. The Lesson subtype resolves the tension between those two halves. Instead of committing a maindeck slot to a spell that might be dead against half the field, the card waits in a fetchable pool until the game demands one clause or the other, so a stranded reanimation mode converts to loyalty removal on demand and back again. Sorcery speed draws the boundary the removal half lives inside: it answers a walker during your main phase, never in response to a loyalty activation, which keeps the disruption honest against tempo. A modal design that lets a single number drive both an offensive and a graveyard axis, disciplined by when it can be cast.