Rune of Protection: Lands

The most specialized member of its Rune cycle, and the one whose existence maps how often lands hit players directly in an earlier era. The other Runes answer a color; this one answers a category, naming "land source" because the relevant threats were lands themselves: manlands like Mishra's Factory swinging in as creatures, and the various damage-from-the-mana-base plans of the period. That narrowness is the design tension. A prevention enchantment that only stops one type of source sits dead in hand against most decks, so cycling is the release valve: when the matchup never arrives, pay two and convert the brick into a fresh card. The repeatable activation is what earns it a slot when the matchup does show up. Note the discipline in the wording, though: each prevents the next instance of damage from a chosen land source "this turn," and only damage dealt to you, so an attacking manland costs a white mana every combat it connects. The toll is per-turn rather than permanent; it holds recurring damage at bay only while the mana keeps feeding it, and lets the threat back through the moment you cannot pay. It is a fossil of a moment when lands swung hard enough to warrant dedicated prevention, and a clean case study in how cycling rehabilitated effects too situational to run otherwise: the narrowest answers became the easiest to justify once a useless card could always be cashed in for a draw.