Spectral Adversary

Phasing out is the rare protection mechanic that answers something without answering it: the object leaves, then comes back on its controller's untap step with its counters, auras, and tap state intact, having dodged whatever was pointed at it. Wrapped inside a two-mana flash flyer with a scalable escalation cost, that quirk turns into the most flexible instant-speed protection package a blue tempo deck has ever had in one card. Point the trigger at your own creatures to slip them past a sweeper or a targeted removal spell. Point it at an opponent's artifacts and enchantments to blink a static ability off the board for a turn, or at their blockers to open an attack. Point it at your own creature mid-combat to fog damage and preserve the body. Each you feed it does two things at once (a +1/+1 counter here, a phase-out there), so the card scales cleanly from a cheap surprise flyer in the early game to a mana sink that grows a real threat while stripping the opponent's turn. The design belongs to a cycle of adversaries built on the same repeatable pay-any-number-of-times template, but the phasing clause is what gives this one its identity: it is the closest blue has come to packaging Fog, protection, and a temporary Disenchant into a single reactive body you can hold up on an empty turn.