Eternal of Harsh Truths

Afflict turns a creature's combat math inside out: blocking it stops the body but not the cost, so the defender takes the hit no matter how they respond. Stack that on a card that draws when it connects, and you have a threat that punishes a defender for every choice. Block it and lose two life; let it through and the attacker buys a card. The 1/3 frame is what makes the squeeze real: three toughness survives the small blockers that might otherwise eat it for free, so the defender is genuinely choosing between two losses rather than trading up. Its whole value comes from being too small to bother with, which is the trap: this is a creature you never want to have to make a decision about, and afflict denies you that. The Zombie Cleric line matters less than the role, which is a blue evasive engine whose evasion is not flying or unblockable but a tax that makes blocking irrational. That is a quietly unusual way to build a card-advantage threat in a color that usually buys its draws outright rather than swinging for them, and the design leans on the defender's incentives instead of raw evasion to get its damage and its cards through.