Divert

Most counterspells answer a spell by stopping it; this one answers by stealing its aim, a different and slipperier kind of interaction. Redirection turns an opponent's removal back on their own creature, bounces their targeted draw into nothing useful, or steers a burn spell at its own caster. The tax clause keeps the redirect honest rather than absolute: the spell's controller can pay through it, so this works less as a hard answer than as a tempo lever, most punishing when the opponent has already tapped out for the turn. The single-target restriction is the real design fence: it cannot touch a spell with multiple targets or no target, which carves it down to the precise class of pinpoint removal, bounce, and burn that redirection most wants to humiliate. That narrowness is also why it lives in the same family as Misdirection and Ricochet without overlapping them cleanly. Where a true counter ends an interaction, this prolongs and bends it, asking the caster either to eat the redirect or to spend two mana they may not have to keep their aim. It rewards the player who reads the tempo of a turn over the player who simply holds up countermagic.