Ashes to Ashes

Two-for-one removal that charges its rate in life rather than mana, and the bargain it strikes is unusually steep for the era it comes from. Exiling, not destroying, was a premium effect when this was printed: it sidesteps regeneration, death triggers, and graveyard recursion entirely, answering two creatures cleanly at a time when most black removal merely sent things to the bin. The five damage to its caster is the structural counterweight, and it is a real one. Spending a quarter of a twenty-point starting life total to clear two bodies means the spell works best when you are ahead enough to spare the life or desperate enough not to care. That self-inflicted cost runs on the same design logic that animates Dark Confidant and Necropotence: black gets to break a rule, and the rule it breaks is its own life total. The nonartifact clause is the other limiter, narrowing the target pool just enough to keep it from being a universal answer. The life payment is fixed regardless of what you exile, so the spell punishes you exactly as hard for killing two tokens as for killing two genuine threats. It is removal that demands a plan for the life it costs.