Parallax Nexus

Hand disruption usually charges a flat price: a card from your hand, a card from theirs, done. This one turns the transaction into a lease that bills you back. Every fade counter you spend exiles a card from an opponent's hand, but those same counters are the enchantment's lifespan, so each activation shortens how long the engine survives. Strip five cards and you have burned all five counters, which means your next upkeep cannot remove one and the Nexus sacrifices itself, returning everything it took. The fading clock does not trip the moment the last counter is gone; it trips at the upkeep when no counter can be removed, so the timing of the giveback is wired into your own turn structure. The exile is a loan, and the loan comes due the instant the card leaves play. What sets this apart from its more notorious siblings is the line reading "activate only as a sorcery." The trick that made Parallax Wave and Parallax Tide infamous (responding to a bounce or sacrifice by burning the last counters to lock the exile in permanently) does not work here, because you cannot activate at instant speed. Once the Nexus is leaving, the cards simply go home. It reads as a disruption engine and plays as a puzzle about ownership and clocks: every card you take is one you have already promised to return, and the meter is running the whole time.