Otherworldly Journey

The +1/+1 counter is what turns a flicker into something more than a save. Exiling your own creature to duck an incoming kill spell dodges the removal and resets its enter-the-battlefield trigger, the obvious line; but the body comes back fractionally larger, so the blink is never a pure wash even when the trigger does nothing. The counter, not the exile, is the design's signature: this reads as a growth-and-protection spell rather than one more way to recycle an arrival effect. Pointing it at an opponent's creature is the weaker line, since handing over a counter to delay a blocker for one combat step rarely earns its mana, and that asymmetry is what keeps the card a defensive tool rather than a removal substitute. The return timing rewards careful sequencing: the creature comes back at the beginning of the next end step, so cast on your own turn before that trigger it returns before the cleanup step and before the opponent ever untaps, putting the body online again almost immediately. The exile costs you nothing when you hold it for a spell to respond to or for combat, where the creature slips out and returns ready to block. The Arcane subtype is a second hook from this era's spirit-and-arts synergy web: because the spell is Arcane, the abundant Splice onto Arcane effects can be attached to it, giving a modest blink a reason to be cast for more than the save alone.