Captive Flame

Firebreathing as a permanent. The keyword has lived on creatures since the earliest dragons, baked into Shivan Dragon's stat line and a dozen imitators, but here the pump engine is split off the body entirely and parked on an enchantment that survives whatever happens in combat. That decoupling is the whole point: a creature with firebreathing dies and takes its pump with it, while this keeps feeding red mana into +1/+0 increments turn after turn, on whatever attacker is still standing. The cost is the obvious one. Three mana up front buys you nothing on the turn it lands, and the ability targets a single creature, so the value only materializes if you have a board to point it at and the mana to spend repeatedly. That makes it a build-around in the strictest sense: it does the work of a firebreathing creature without occupying a creature slot, which matters precisely when you want the effect to outlast the bodies that carry it. The design tension is patience versus pressure, and the enchantment frame is what resolves it in favor of the long game.