No Way Out

The trick is what the discard costs you. Classic hand disruption in this color is asymmetric: you strip two cards from the opponent's grip and get card advantage at the expense of tempo. This one bundles the disruption with a body, and the body is exactly as compromised as it needs to be to price a three-mana two-for-one down to something fair. A decayed Zombie can attack once and then dies: it can't block, and it's sacrificed after the combat it swings in. So the token is a single point of pressure, not a defensive asset, which keeps this from being a strictly-better discard spell that also stonewalls aggression. That trade-off does all the balancing work. The design fits a specific pocket of black's toolkit: attrition strategies that want to peel away answers while still developing a board, and sacrifice-oriented decks that would rather have an expendable creature than a permanent one. Decayed reads as a downside, but for a deck that converts bodies into resources (drain triggers, sac fuel, graveyard fodder), a Zombie destined to die anyway is often upside. The Zombie is the rider that keeps the rate honest: disruption for a deck that also wants a clock it can afford to throw away.