Zephid's Embrace

Shroud is the load-bearing word, but its protection arrives later than instinct suggests. While the Aura sits on the stack, the enchanted creature is still a legal target; an opponent holding removal can kill it in response and reduce you to the classic pump-aura two-for-one. The shroud only switches on once the Aura resolves, and that window is the real price of the design: you have to be willing to walk into it, and if you survive, the payoff is total. The package is deliberately overloaded for a single resolution: +2/+2 to push damage through, flying to make the body evasive, and shroud to seal it off from targeted removal. The catch is that shroud cuts both ways. Once the creature can't be targeted by your opponents, it equally can't be targeted by you: no later Auras, no equipment shuffling, no targeted combat tricks, no targeted recursion. The double-blue cost () marks this as the color's structural answer to the Aura problem rather than generic creature support, the same instinct that later produced hexproof- and ward-granting effects. It is a clean, self-contained piece of design: the upside is front-loaded and complete, the restriction is the permanent loss of all future interaction with the creature you just committed to, and the lone seam in the armor is the resolution window you have to live through to claim any of it.