Live or Die

The modal split here is the whole design: the card either kills a creature or reanimates one, and the choice sits on the same instant, at the same five mana. That symmetry is the point. Reanimation spells and removal spells occupy opposite corners of black's toolkit, and stapling them into one modal card means the spell is rarely dead in hand regardless of the board. If your reanimation target is still in the graveyard, take it back; if the opponent has committed a threat you cannot answer, destroy it. Neither half is cheap for what it does (a five-mana Raise Dead-to-the-battlefield or a five-mana unconditional kill would both be middling in isolation), but the flexibility is what you are paying the premium for, and instant speed is what elevates the reanimation mode above a slow Zombify: the creature can come back mid-combat, or as a threatened piece is about to leave, on any turn. Choose-one modality has long been black's way of hedging bets, but pointing both halves at the creature-in-graveyard axis is the sharper version: the card asks whether the best creature in this game is one of yours to bring back or one of theirs to remove, and answers whichever question the board is posing.