Long Road Home

A blink spell that pays you a permanent dividend for the favor. White's flicker effects have always traded in temporary exile and the value that falls out of the round trip: a re-triggered enter-the-battlefield ability, a wiped aura, a dodged removal spell. The wrinkle here is that the creature does not come back unchanged. It comes back bigger, and that +1/+1 counter reframes the card's whole posture. Most flicker spells are reactive tools you cast at instant speed to save a creature or reload an ability; this one doubles as a permanent buff, so the floor when you have no enter-the-battlefield trigger to reset is still a creature that grew. The cost is the timing: the creature stays exiled until the beginning of the next end step, so casting it on your own attacker pulls it out of combat, and casting it on a blocker leaves you open until it returns. The return window is tied to that end step specifically, which shapes how the card behaves on an opponent's turn: cast before their end step begins, the creature comes home the same turn; cast during or after that end step, it will not return until the following turn's end step, stranding it through your untap. Used proactively it is value insurance for a creature you do not want to lose; used on an opposing creature it is a soft tempo tax, exiling a threat and handing it back slightly larger, which is the price of the trick. The counter cuts both ways: it turns a plain flicker into a buff, and it turns a clean answer into a loan you repay with interest.