Extinguish the Light

Unconditional destruction that hits creatures and planeswalkers alike sits at a stable price in black, and this one buys itself back a small dividend when the target is cheap. The double-black cost is the tell: this is built for decks committed to the color, not splashing it, and in exchange it asks nothing else of the board or the graveyard. The life clause is the interesting wrinkle, because it inverts the usual threat-assessment math. Most removal wants to answer your opponent's biggest problem; here the payoff scales the other way, rewarding you for spending four mana on a two-drop when doing so also stems the bleeding. That gap keeps it from being a strictly reactive card: against aggressive starts, killing an early creature and gaining three life closes the tempo hole the way a lifegain spell would, while against slower decks it simply kills whatever matters and skips the reward. It belongs to the same family of flexible black kill spells that pay a rider only under a condition, the way Vraska's Contempt attaches life and exile to a similar body of targets. What distinguishes this one is the direction of its incentive: it is a removal spell that is happiest cutting down small threats, a rarer posture than it sounds, and one that gives it a natural home wherever black wants a clean answer that also survives the early turns.