Volrath's Curse

A pacifism effect with an escape hatch built into it, and the escape hatch is the whole design. Most lockdown auras of this era simply turned a creature off: Pacifism stops attacking and blocking, Exile-style removal ends the conversation. This one keeps the door cracked open by letting the enchanted creature's controller pay an ongoing tax (sacrifice any permanent) to ignore the effect for a turn. That converts a hard lock into a recurring toll, which is a subtler thing to do to an opponent's board: each turn they want to swing or block with that creature, they bleed a permanent for it, and the bleeding never stops while the aura stays put. The bounce-to-hand clause is the second half of the engineering. It makes the aura immune to the usual punishment for committing a card to a single creature (the two-for-one when the creature dies or gets bounced), since you can pick it up in response and replay it later. It also lets you relocate the tax onto whichever creature matters most as the board changes. The result is a control-flavored piece that trades raw efficiency for permanence and flexibility, asking the opponent to keep paying rather than solving them once.