Foolish Fate

Unconditional destruction has always been the premium priced above the conditional stuff: creature removal that asks no questions costs a little more or bends its color pie a little further. This one takes a different tack. The base spell is exactly the clean kill black rarely gets to print without a rider, and the infusion clause bolts a Bump in the Night's worth of face damage onto it whenever you've gained even a single life earlier in the turn. That precondition governs everything: the drain isn't a mode you pick at cast, it's a state you have to have arranged, so the payoff flows to a deck already leaning on lifegain rather than showing up free in every black list. Because the check reads "gained life this turn" and not "control a lifegain permanent," it plays wide: an early lifelink connection, a cracked Food token, a soul-sisters trigger off a creature entering all arm it retroactively, and the instant-speed window means you can bank the life gain earlier in the turn and still fire back with the full three later that same turn. It inverts the older black tradition of removal that charges your own life total (the drains and edicts and rack-a-fear effects that make you pay first): here you collect the life yourself, then spend the opponent's.