Ephemeron
The self-bounce clause on a flying body is a defensive design pattern that predates the keyword vocabulary now used for it. A 4/4 flyer at six mana is unremarkable on rate, but discarding a card to return it to hand turns that body into something that refuses to die: any time targeted removal, a hostile trigger, or a bad block threatens it, pitching a card resets the exchange and leaves the threat alive in your grip. The cost is real and it compounds. Each escape eats a card, and recasting the body eats another six mana, so the design asks you to spend resources to defend resources rather than handing you the dodge for free. That friction is what keeps a self-protecting evasive threat from being oppressive: it is protection you pay for repeatedly, not protection you own. The discard cost also opens a quieter axis, feeding graveyard-matters and discard-reward strategies that want to ditch cards anyway, where the bounce ability stops being pure insurance and becomes an engine input. As an Illusion, it carries the old creature-type baggage of fragility while playing against type: most Illusions of its era folded to a single point of damage or a targeting trigger, and this one's whole identity is slipping out of exactly that, at the price of a card every time it does.


