Heart of Ramos

Part of the cycle of "Heart" artifacts from the gods of the Mercadian Masques world, each tied to a Ramosian deity and each a mana rock that doubles as a one-shot ritual. The body of the rock is dead simple: a tap for red, the same color it sacrifices into. What the second mode buys is timing flexibility on the back end. A mana rock that taps is locked into the tempo of a single tap per turn; the sacrifice clause lets you cash the artifact in for an extra red the turn you need to push past a curve point, accepting that you lose the rock to do it. That makes it a ramp piece with a built-in finish line: it pays the same mana whether it lives or dies, so the only question is which turn you decide to spend the chassis itself. The design slots into the broader family of artifacts that want to be sacrificed (fodder for effects that care about artifacts leaving the battlefield, or simply a way to convert a no-longer-needed rock into a final point of ritual mana). On rate alone the tap ability is unremarkable, and the sacrifice adds exactly one red across its whole life. The interest is in the shape, not the numbers: a fixed-color rock that quietly knows it is disposable.