Ennis, Debate Moderator

The blink here points inward, and that inversion is the whole design. Most white flicker effects reach across the board to reset an enters-the-battlefield trigger; this one only touches your own creatures, and it returns the exiled card at the beginning of the next end step rather than immediately. Cast on your turn, that end step is your own: the creature leaves during your main phase and comes back before your opponent untaps, so it dodges instant-speed removal cast during your turn and is back to block by the time the turn passes. The delay costs you the exiled creature's presence for your own combat step, which makes the blink a real tempo decision rather than a free re-trigger. What you buy is the second clause, which reads any card entering exile this turn as fuel for a counter. That deliberately widens the aperture past the flicker itself: the built-in exile is one way to feed the growth, but so is removal that exiles, a self-exiling value engine, or a second blink from elsewhere on the board. A two-mana 1/1 that converts your recurring exile effects into a slow-building threat is a build-around wearing a value creature's clothes, rewarding a deck assembled around repeatable exile rather than a single big flicker. The debate-moderator framing tracks the mechanic more than the flavor lets on: the card presides over departures and returns, tallies each one, and grows larger for having run the proceedings.