Geistwave
Bounce spells split along a fault line: the ones aimed at your opponents (Boomerang, Vapor Snag) and the ones aimed at your own board (Peel from Reality, Ghostly Flicker). This one refuses to pick a side, and the conditional draw is what lets it. Sent at an opposing permanent, it works as a plain Unsummon-style tempo play with no cantrip attached. Turned inward on something you control, it replaces itself, converting the bounce into a self-serving reset that costs nothing in card economy. That gives it two separate jobs in the same two mana: a tempo tool that answers a threat by returning it to hand, and a value engine that re-triggers your permanents' arrival effects while keeping your hand size flat. Because it targets a nonland permanent, the whole transaction resolves on the battlefield; its window opens on a threat that has already landed, not on the earlier one a counterspell would catch. What holds it in balance is the way the reward attaches only to the use that would otherwise set you back a card. Sending an opponent's threat home is already worth the mana, so it earns no bonus; bouncing something you control is normally card disadvantage, so it earns the draw that erases the deficit. One line of text, priced so neither mode is the toll charged for the other.


