Presumed Dead

Cast it in response to removal and you turn a kill spell into a temporary setback: the targeted creature comes back under its owner's control, this time with menace and a can't-block clause bolted on. But the more honest read is that this is a combat trick that wants to be answered. The +2/+0 nudges a favorable attack or trade, and the death clause is the payoff for a losing one, so the card rewards putting your own creature in a spot where it might die: a block into a bigger body, a chump that isn't really a chump, an attack that trades up. The recursion is deliberately narrow. The death trigger fires only once, and only the creature that had the buff when it died, so there is no loop and no permanent value engine hiding here. What sharpens the effect is the suspect rider doing double duty: menace is upside on a returning attacker, but can't-block is a real cost the returned creature inherits, which converts a defensive save into an offensive commitment (your blocker comes back as an attacker that can no longer hold the ground it just died defending). The instant speed is the whole point. A protection spell that quietly rewrites your creature into a menacing crackback threat, priced at two mana, asks you to hold it up and bait the interaction rather than deploy it proactively.