Bitter Downfall

The full price is a bluff. Sticker-shocked at four mana, this is an overcosted destroy-and-drain that no fair deck wants to cast; the whole card is engineered around never paying that number. Deal a creature any damage first, even a single point of chip damage in combat or from a burn spell, and the cost collapses to a single black mana for premium removal plus a two-life clock. The design leans on a specific sequencing trick: because it reads "dealt damage this turn," the discount survives regeneration and toughness resets, and it turns any pinger, any attacker that got blocked, any Bolt-adjacent effect into a setup step. That makes it a two-part removal spell dressed as one card, rewarding a board where damage is already flying rather than a control shell casting from an empty hand. The condition also gives it a clean instant-speed use that older destroy effects lacked: hold it up, let an attacker connect or trade, then finish the survivor for one mana at the end of the exchange. Unconditional creature destruction that also drains has always been priced at a premium in black; the innovation here is not the effect but the ramp toward it, folding a discount mechanic that usually lives on spectacle-style cards into an instant that punishes an already-bloodied board.