Aspirant's Ascent

A pump spell built to shave a turn off a poison kill rather than a life total. The +1/+3 is the smallest part of the package: it keeps the creature alive through a burn spell or a trade while flying gets it past a ground stall. What actually matters is toxic 1, which converts an unblocked swing into a poison counter and turns any evasive attacker into a clock on the ten-counter alternate win rather than the twenty-life one. That reframing is what separates this from an ordinary combat trick: the goal is not to push lethal damage through, but to land one more unblocked hit and advance the count. The timing is the caveat. Flying is evasion, not unblockability (a flier or a reach creature can still block), so this does its work when cast before or during declare attackers, on a creature the opponent has no answer for in the air. Cast after blocks are locked in, on an already-blocked attacker without trample or a similar effect, the flying and the toxic do nothing for you: the creature is not connecting with the player, so there is no combat damage to translate into poison. Read correctly, it is a one-mana instant that rewards you for reading the board before blocks, not for ambushing after them. Inside a toxic-focused strategy it is the reach that finishes the count; anywhere else it is a modest trick that lifts a creature over the ground.