Grasp of Darkness

The double-black pip is the entire argument here. Most cheap instant-speed removal pays for its flexibility with a casting cost any deck can stretch to reach; this one demands a commitment to black that walls it off from splashes and rewards the mono-black or near-mono build that can pay it on turn two without contortion. What that pip buys is a kill range wide enough to matter: a flat -4/-4 erases the early-to-midgame creatures most decks lean on, ducking under the indestructibility tricks that turn destroy-based removal into a blank, since shrinking a creature to zero toughness sidesteps "indestructible" entirely. It does have a ceiling. The fixed modifier means a sufficiently large threat survives, and unlike exile-based answers it sends the creature to the graveyard rather than around it, so recursion and death triggers still fire. But within its band it is among the cleaner answers black has printed at this rate: no life payment, no clause about nonblack or nonartifact targets, no sorcery-speed restriction to telegraph it. The design lineage runs through black's long history of -X/-X effects (the color's preferred way to kill what white and red destroy outright), and this is the version that sized the number and the cost to punish midrange creature decks specifically, asking only that you build to support the pips.