Otherworldly Escort

The dies trigger is a two-stage creature disguised as one card: it walks in as a flash-blocker, gets killed, and reassembles on the other side as a Spirit Detective loaded with four charge counters and a repeatable removal engine. The type-change is what keeps the loop from running forever: the return happens only "if it's not a Spirit," so once the escort comes back as a Spirit Detective it stays dead the next time around. That single conditional is doing all the balancing work, converting what looks like a recursion loop into a strict one-time upgrade. What arrives is a slower, meaner creature: each removed charge counter destroys something that dealt damage to you this turn, which quietly rewards you for taking the hit before you retaliate. It is punitive removal that reads combat backwards, asking who bloodied you rather than who threatens you next, and the flash on the front half means you can drop it into an attack step and invite the trade that flips it. The whole structure is a piece of transformation design that never uses the transform mechanic: no double-faced card, just a death trigger and a printed line telling you the creature has changed identity. A body that gets more useful by dying, then spends the counters it earned settling scores, is a tidy expression of the noir-detective flavor the type line is reaching for.