Cruel Witness

Prowess relocates its payoff to combat: a temporary buff that scales with how many spells you can chain in a single turn. This bird points the same trigger somewhere quieter, converting every noncreature spell into a surveil rather than a swing. The distinction is the whole strategic axis. The trigger fires on the cast, not on resolution, so a countered spell still surveils, and it fires once per spell rather than compounding across a turn, which means the reward comes as a steady stream of card-selection across a long game rather than a burst of damage in one attack step. A 3/3 flyer for four is a fair evasive clock on its own; the surveil turns your cantrips, removal, and counterspells into small digs that smooth your draws and stock a graveyard without asking you to spend extra cards feeding it. The Bird Horror is not built to race. It grinds, filtering your future draws while quietly loading a yard for delve, flashback, or other graveyard-value payoffs. That makes it a bridge piece: an on-board threat for a reactive shell that would otherwise pass its turns holding up interaction, and a persistent card-quality engine for a spells-matter deck that wants a flyer to close on while its removal answers the opponent's board. The rate is deliberately modest, because a flyer that improves every draw step is worth more over a long game than the 3/3 line reads at a glance.