Closing Statement

The premium hides in the timing clause. Cast this at any point other than your own end step and it is a five-mana removal spell with a small kicker, unremarkable next to any number of cheaper answers. Wait until your own end step and it collapses to three, a rate that competes with the color pair's best two-for-ones while also nudging a creature toward lethal. The design turns removal into a patience puzzle: the discount only applies during your end step, so the reflexive uses of an instant (fighting over the stack earlier in your turn, answering a threat on your opponent's turn) still cost the full five. The card is legal at instant speed the whole time; the discount is the part confined to that one passive window, and that is what pays for the rate. Cheap instant-speed removal that also grows a threat would warp things; forcing the discount to wait until the very end of your own turn, after combat, after your whole board has developed, keeps it in check. It asks the deck that already sequences around holding mana into its second main phase to plan the kill a step ahead rather than answer on reflex. That counter clause signals intent: this is not a control card. It is a tempo-and-attrition card that wants you to press the attack, swing with a creature already on the table, then spend the end step killing a blocker they held back and fattening your attacker for next turn.