Bontu's Monument

The black member of the Monument cycle splits its labor into two abilities of different kinds, and the distinction is where the design lives. The cost reduction is a static effect: it shaves a generic mana off every black creature you cast, quietly, while the spell is on the stack. The drain is a triggered ability, and its trigger reaches wider than the discount it sits beside, firing whenever you cast any creature spell at all, not just a black one. A white token-maker or a colorless artifact body still pings each opponent for one and refunds you a life, even though it never benefited from the rate cut. That asymmetry between the two halves is the real character here: the discount narrows to your color, but the life swing rewards raw creature volume regardless of color. Because the trigger keys on the cast rather than the creature's arrival, it pays out whether the spell resolves or gets countered, and it counts any creature spell you cast from any zone, hand or graveyard or exile alike, while ignoring tokens and copies that were never cast. The shape that wants this is a deck emptying a fistful of cheap bodies, where the incidental lifegain stabilizes a go-wide plan against the aggression such decks usually dread. The drain also scales sideways: you gain a single life per cast, but each opponent loses one, so the closer grows with the table while the lifegain stays flat.