Vedalken Shackles

Permanent theft usually demands a real card or a steep recurring payment. This artifact rewrites the price entirely: it costs nothing but the activation and the willingness to leave it tapped. The control duration is leashed to that tapped state, which promotes the optional-untap clause from footnote to engine. Every turn you skip its untap step, you keep the creature; let it untap (or have it forcibly untapped) and the stolen body walks home. The result is theft you can re-aim, bounded not by mana but by how many Islands you control, so a deck sinking deep into a blue manabase can eventually reach almost anything that crosses the table. The clever part is the resource it spends: not life, not cards, but a single permanent held still, a cost almost nothing else in the game charges. The size cap built on Island count is the natural brake, since its reach grows from the same lands that power the rest of the deck. Truly repeatable theft has historically lived on creatures like Rubinia Soulsinger or artifacts like Helm of Possession, where you reaim the effect each turn at the cost of an ongoing commitment: a body to protect, a sacrifice to feed. This belongs to that family but pays its rent differently. The price is paying a permanent's untap step turn after turn, which is why the theft feels earned rather than free: you forfeit the option to untap it for as long as you want to keep what you took.