Contaminated Bond

Pacifism turns a creature off; this turns it into a liability. The enchanted creature can still attack and block freely, but combat now carries a price: three life to its controller each time it engages. That is a different kind of answer than a lock. Not removal from the battlefield, not even removal from combat, but a tax that punishes the threat for doing the only thing it is good for. Against a single large attacker the math gets ugly fast, because the controller faces a fork: hold it back (the soft Pacifism outcome, the creature pinned at home) or swing and bleed faster than most burn can manage. The penalty fires on defense too, so leaving the creature behind as a blocker costs three the moment it steps in front of anything. It reads as a downgrade from clean removal, since the body stays on the board and the opponent keeps every decision. That is the design, not a flaw in it. The aura belongs to a deck already grinding a life total down, where three a swing is a clock rather than an annoyance, and it answers the threat that is hard to kill but easy to make unprofitable to use. A narrow tool, sharpened for the specific tension between a board you cannot break and a life total you are already racing toward zero.