Spaceshift

The blink spell that leaves a fingerprint. Flicker effects have long been Azorius territory: exile a permanent and return it to reset its state, dodging removal, retriggering an enter-the-battlefield ability, or blanking a spell that was targeting it. Here a small permanent upgrade rides along in the same window, so the reset never comes for free and the target creeps upward each time you protect it. That instant-speed exile-and-return is the whole toolkit at once: cast in response to a burn spell, it removes the creature before damage lands and hands it back untouched; it reuses an artifact's or creature's entry trigger; it strips auras and unwanted counters off a permanent an opponent has been dressing up; and it leaves your own board a stat bump on the way out. The counter matters most on repeatable engines and on creatures that scale off counters, where each cast compounds rather than merely holding position. The two-mana cost keeps it reactive rather than tempo-positive: you are usually spending a turn's worth of interaction to reposition one permanent, not developing your own game. The counter is the design wrinkle that changes the card's math over time, converting a defensive tool into slow accumulation and rewarding a deck that expects to cast it several times across a game over one that saves it for a single crisis.