Necrologia

Black's life-for-cards exchange, built around two restrictions that define the whole design. The first is the X life paid as an additional cost: there is no per-card ceiling and no toughness check, so the draw scales as far as your life total and your nerve will carry it, all the way down toward lethal. The second is the timing clamp: the spell can only be cast during your own end step, which is what separates it from a true instant-speed refuel. You commit to the size of the draw before your next untap, with no way to fire it after a wrath to rebuild mid-turn, no chance to dig at instant speed during combat to find an answer, no fog-shaped trick. That end-step lock is the pressure valve that keeps a no-limit Draw X honest: the refill is planned, not reactive, and it taxes the resource black trades most freely. What the timing does grant is that the cards land in your hand before the opponent's turn begins, so any instants or flash spells you draw are live to answer their plays; the restriction governs when you commit to the draw, not when you can use what it finds. It belongs to decks that treat life as fuel rather than a buffer, capable of converting a fistful of cards into a closed game before the cost comes due.