Caress of Phyrexia

The word is "target player," and that single hinge splits the spell into two completely different cards depending on where you point it. Aim it at yourself and you have a five-mana draw-three, the cards bought with three life and three poison counters that most decks will treat as ignorable noise: black has always priced its biggest refills in life rather than mana, and this is a steep but honest version of that bargain. Aim it at an opponent and the same effect inverts into three-tenths of a poison kill, with the cards and life loss reframed as the sweetener that makes the deal look generous. The poison counters are the constant that survives both readings: ten of them end a game regardless of life total, so the spell is never neutral in either direction. Self-targeting, three poison on yourself is a standing liability the moment an opposing infect threat can finish what you started; opponent-targeting, you are advancing a clock you must already have the pieces to close, since three counters do nothing on their own. That is the Faustian symmetry the flavor sells: the cards are a real gift, and so is the infection riding underneath them. The design refuses to fold its cost into a flat drawback; it externalizes the whole question into the targeting line and asks the deck to have already decided which way the gift should point.