Traitorous Greed

Threaten effects have always paid for their power with an expiration date: you borrow the creature, throw it at the opponent or into a sacrifice outlet, and the loan comes due at end of turn. This iteration reframes that exchange by folding a small ritual into the theft, adding two mana of a single color alongside the stolen body. The borrowed creature does not just swing and untap; it becomes a launchpad. Send it in, then convert the ritual mana into something that closes the gap, whether a finisher cast the same turn or a sacrifice payoff that turns the borrowed creature into permanent value before the loan expires. The four-mana price and sorcery-speed limit keep it in check: this cannot ambush an attacker mid-combat, and the two extra mana rarely refunds the full investment on its own. The card's real axis is tempo compression, letting a red deck spend one turn doing two things at once, so it rewards a board where the mana matters as much as the creature. That makes it a narrower design than a bare Threaten or Act of Treason, but a more explosive one when the pieces line up: the ritual is only ever worth what you have to spend it on.