Nocturnal Hunger

Premium unconditional removal in black has always carried a small tax, whether it was the two life on Doom Blade-style effects or the color restriction on their close relatives. What this does differently is let you choose whether to pay that tax at all. Kill anything at instant speed, and settle the bill one of two ways: eat the two life yourself, or hand your opponent a Food token and keep your life total whole. That is a negotiation compressed into a single spell, and the accounting rarely favors the recipient. The Food is three life gated behind mana and a sacrifice, a slow return your opponent has to work to collect; the two life you would otherwise spend is immediate and gone. Refuse the trade and you have a clean, if slightly worse, black removal spell. Promise the gift and you convert a fixed penalty into deferred value handed to someone who has to spend a turn's worth of resources to cash it. The Gift mechanic is at its sharpest when both branches are genuinely live, and they are here: against an aggressive board, two life can be the difference in a race, so surrendering the Food is worth it; when nobody is under pressure and life totals are inert, paying the two yourself is the cheaper choice, because a Food in your opponent's hands is a real concession you would rather not make. Removal that asks you to price your own life total is a subtler design than the rate lets on.