Dark Nourishment

Removal that also pays you back exists all over black's history, but the price tag here is deliberately punitive: three damage and three life at a mana value that no competitive deck has ever asked to pay. That is the concession baked into the design. Black gets to bolt a creature or chip a planeswalker and claw a full three points back onto its life total in the same instant, but only by paying full retail for an effect red buys at a discount and white usually staples to incidental gain. The color pie has long taxed black drain this way, and this is the tax pushed to the top of the curve. Instant speed is the one thing keeping it from being purely a limited-quality answer: hold it against a swing, kill a blocker in the middle of combat, or take the final points off a burn-out plan while the three life quietly undoes the clock that prompted the cast. The effect wants combat math and life-total races, not a tempo curve. It was never built to anchor a deck; it sits near the top as a flexible answer aimed at the player who counts the three life as half the value of the kill.