Keiga, the Tide Star
Killing it doesn't buy a clean trade: when it dies, its controller reaches across the table and takes an opponent's best creature, no rider attached. Most death-trigger creatures pay back the player who cast them with value that refills their own side (a card drawn, life lost, damage dealt). This one shifts ownership of someone else's most valuable threat, and the stolen creature stays put: no end-of-turn return, no sacrifice-it-later catch. That permanence is what makes it worse to kill than to leave alone, and it works just as well when the controller feeds it to their own sacrifice outlet as when an opponent obliges, which makes the 5/5 flier almost incidental to the job. The wording is precise, though: the trigger keys on death, the move from battlefield to graveyard. A flicker effect exiles and returns the body without ever sending it to the yard, so blinking buys nothing; the reward lives in the sacrifice line. It belongs to a cycle of five-power Dragon Spirits with color-keyed death triggers, but theft is the one that rewrites the board rather than draining life or sweeping creatures. Steal a token and the trade was a wash; steal a bomb or a closer and the death was a windfall.




