Ominous Parcel

Fixing artifacts have always paid for their smoothing with a tempo tax, and this one splits the tax across two invoices. Cracking it for a basic costs two mana on top of the one you spent to cast it, which puts the land in your hand a turn later than a cantrip fetch would; but the artifact does something those never do: if the game slows down and you no longer need the fixing, the same permanent converts into removal. Four damage to a creature costs five to activate, six counting the cast, a deliberately dreadful rate priced so the mode reads as insurance rather than a plan. That is the whole logic of the design. The card is a mana rock's poorer cousin dressed as a modal artifact: a cheap early drop that guarantees a color you were missing, with a late-game escape hatch stapled on so the topdeck is never fully blank. Neither activation is efficient in isolation, and that inefficiency is the point; a colorless one-drop that fetched basics on turn two and killed creatures on demand would be a staple, so both modes are weighted down until they land on a turn where the extra mana costs you nothing. It is filler with an option attached, built for decks that want their fixing to have a second use rather than sit dead once the mana base is online.