Redirect Lightning

Redirection is one of the game's oldest defensive tricks, but it has almost always demanded a full three mana to pull off: Deflection, Ricochet, and Misdirection each asked you to hold up a chunk of a turn to bounce a spell back at its caster. This one splits the price differently. A single red mana starts it, then an additional cost lets you choose the currency for the rest: two more mana if you have the room, or five life if you would rather keep your lands untapped for other things. That life clause is the real lever. It lets a red deck answer a burn spell or twist a targeted removal onto a creature its controller never meant to kill without committing the mana a redirect normally costs, paying instead in the resource red has always been happy to spend. The "single target" clause is what keeps the effect narrow: it cannot touch a spell that hits multiple things, so it answers the precise burn, the pointed counterspell, or the single-target removal, and leaves the sweepers alone. The Lesson type folds all of this into a learn-and-fetch shell, so the card sits outside the deck until a board state actually produces something worth redirecting, which is exactly the window a card like this was built to exploit. What you are buying is a cheaper reaction, with your life total as the discount.