Cursed Flesh

Evasion paid for with a stat penalty on the same line: the enchanted creature gains fear but loses a point in each direction, so what you grant in reach you take back in size. That tradeoff is the whole design. A one-mana aura that handed out fear with no cost would be a clean aggressive enabler; the -1/-1 turns it into a card whose value depends entirely on whose creature it lands on. Cast on your own beater with toughness to spare, it buys a near-unblockable clock against any deck without artifact or black creatures to interpose. Pointed across the table at a one-toughness creature, the -1/-1 doubles as a one-mana removal spell, the kind of dual-use the "Enchant creature" wording quietly permits: the toughness drops to zero and the creature dies to state-based action before the aura ever has to stick around. The friction lives only in the aggressive line. Spend the card and the mana to suit up your attacker, then watch the whole investment die to a single removal spell that two-for-ones you. That exposure is why fear-granting effects drifted toward creature bodies and onetime pumps in later years rather than permanent enchantments: the aura tax was too steep for an effect already this conditional. As a snapshot of late-90s aggressive black, this is the genre in miniature: evasion was a resource you bought, and the price was written right into the rate.