Athreos, God of Passage and Persist

[pocari79]

I'm just wondering if you have an Athreos in play and a Kitchen Finks with no -1/-1 counter that's going to the graveyard, what happens?

[Koby]

1) Creature dies.
2) Two triggers generate for the player controlling Athreos and Kitchen Finks: Athreos' and Persist.
2a) Because there are two simultaneous triggers, the player selects the order they become placed on the stack.
3) Based on the order, either Persist or Athreos' ability resolves first.
3a) If Athreos' ability resolves first, target opponent may pay 3 life to prevent Kitchen Finks from returning from the g/y to your hand. If they pay, then nothing else happens here. Now Persist resolves, returning Kitchen Finks to play with a -1/-1 counter. Otherwise if they don't pay, Finks will return to its owner's hand before Persist resolves.
3b) If Persist resolves first, then Kitchen Finks returns to play with a -1/-1 counter. Athreos' ability now resolves with nothing to bring back. Target opponent would still have the option to pay 3 life, but there would be no effect either way.

[ahg113]

3a) If Athreos' ability resolves first, target opponent may pay 3 life to prevent Kitchen Finks from returning from the g/y to your hand. If they decline, then nothing else happens here. Now Persist resolves, returning Kitchen Finks to play with a -1/-1 counter.

This doesn't seem right. If the player refuses to pay 3 life, shouldn't the completion of the effect return Finks to hand, thus preventing it from returning to play with the -1/-1 counter? If the player does pay 3 life, then the finks stays in the yard, persist triggers, which should return it to play with a -1/-1 counter.

Derp, I dunno. Am I reading things correctly?

[Koby]

Good catch. I've corrected the above post. Logic statements in written form are easy to mess up.