Kaervek the Merciless

A punishment engine dressed as a beater. The premise is hostage-taking: every spell an opponent casts hands you a bolt scaled to its mana value, and the bigger the spell, the bigger the bullet. That turns the opponent's own game plan into your removal suite and burn reach at once, because the target is open. Point it at their face, their blockers, their dorks; the only thing that limits you is what they choose to cast. The cruelty is that the cost of playing the game falls entirely on the other side. A patient opponent can simply stop casting spells, and against that you have a 5/4 body to do the rest, which is the tension the card lives inside: it is a deterrent first and a clock second. Seven mana is the toll, and at that price the table has usually committed to spells worth punishing. This is an early-era black-red taxation effect that monetizes an opponent's tempo rather than their board: it does not care what the spell does, only that it was cast and what it cost. The damage trigger fires on the cast, not resolution, so it lands whether or not the spell is countered or fizzles. That detail is the whole personality: Kaervek does not answer threats, he prices them, and the bill comes due before the opponent ever gets what they paid for.