Gilraen, Dúnedain Protector

A flicker outlet that reads its own template in two registers. Blinking a creature you control usually pays off a card's arrival trigger, and the immediate-return mode covers that ground: retrigger the arrival, dodge a targeted spell, reset the object. The wrinkle is the delayed mode. Decline the immediate return during resolution and the creature waits in exile until the next end step, when it comes back with a vigilance counter and a lifelink counter permanently attached. The payment is the creature's absence from activation until that end step, the next end step to begin regardless of whose turn it is, so the window is short: a fraction of the turn if you activate before combat, a beat of it if you tap on someone else's turn. And the gap is not a survival test: the exiled card sits untouchable, safe from removal and damage until it returns on schedule, so the only cost is tempo, not risk. Both counters point the same direction: vigilance lets the creature attack without dropping its guard, lifelink turns its combat damage into a life cushion, so the delayed mode builds a defensive attacker, not a value engine. The catch worth naming, because it looks like a scaling engine and isn't, is that the returning creature is a new object: any counters or auras it carried are gone, and the vigilance and lifelink don't stack across activations, since each blink wipes them clean. The choice at each tap is genuinely binary: the trigger now, or a one-time keyword grant later.