Ward of Lights

The pseudo-flash clause is the entire design here, and it is a clever one. A protection-from-color Aura is a serviceable combat trick on its own: drop it in response to a removal spell or a blocking assignment and the enchanted creature suddenly can't be targeted, can't be blocked, and shrugs off damage from the chosen color. But the card grants instant-speed timing only if you accept a self-destruct: cast it outside a normal sorcery window and the permanent it became is sacrificed at the next cleanup. So the flash isn't a free upgrade; it's a rented one. You pay for the timing by surrendering permanence. The "doesn't remove this Aura" line solves a second problem the design creates for itself: protection normally makes an Aura fall off the creature it enchants, so the rules text explicitly carves out an exception, letting the spell grant protection from its own color without immediately unmaking itself. This is early Magic working out the seams of its own keyword interactions in real time, before templating had settled into anything consistent, and what you get is a card that reads like a designer reasoning aloud. The effect at the center is plain; the framework wrapped around it, a conditional instant-speed window that punishes you for using it, is the genuine artifact of a 1996 design sensibility.