Fierce Retribution

Cleave answers a familiar tension in conditional removal: the situational spell that rots in hand because the situation never arrives, and the flexible spell you overpay for on the turn you only needed the cheap effect. Here, both fit one slot. Cast as printed, it destroys whatever has already declared as an attacker, priced low precisely because the target has to have thrown itself into combat first. Pay the cleave cost and "attacking" vanishes from the text, leaving unrestricted destruction at a rate no one pays by choice but is glad to have when the problem is a stubborn blocker or a threat sitting back untapped. Each version answers a different game state: the cheap catch to an early first-strike attacker, the expensive catch-all later against a creature that never leaves the ground. What the keyword buys is an escape hatch. A pure combat trick sits dead against a defensive draw; this one always has a second gear, even if that gear costs too much. The choice happens at the moment you point the spell, not during deckbuilding, so a single card covers two problems without the builder locking into either ahead of time. Modest work, but exactly the demonstration cleave was designed to give: a narrow answer that never has to stay strictly narrow.