Contract Killing

Five mana to kill one creature is a steep tax for unconditional removal, and the two Treasure tokens are the rebate that makes the math defensible. The kill resolves now; the mana comes back over the next turn or two, smoothing a curve that otherwise stalls when you spend your whole turn answering a single threat. That refund reframes what looks like an overcosted Murder into something closer to a tempo-neutral exchange: you trade five mana for a dead creature and two mana of any-color fixing you deploy on your own schedule. The catch is the body of the deal. Unconditional destruction is premium, but stapling ramp and fixing to it keeps the removal half deliberately soft, so the card never threatens to outclass the leaner answers black already has. What it offers instead is a different job: removal that also unsticks a clunky hand, splashes an off-color bomb, or feeds an artifact-matters payoff with the leftover Treasure. The flavor seals it. A contract killing comes with a finder's fee, and the tokens are the blood money you collect for the hit: a piece of color-pie storytelling where black's transactional ruthlessness pays out in literal coin.